Enter your card balance, its APR, and the fixed amount you can pay each month — you’ll instantly see how many months until you’re debt-free, the total interest you’ll hand the card issuer, and how much faster doubling the payment would get you there. Free, no signup, and the math runs entirely in your browser.
How to use this calculator
- Card balance — the current balance from your latest statement.
- APR — your purchase APR, also on the statement; many cards charge 20–30%.
- Monthly payment — the fixed amount you’ll commit to paying every month.
The result updates as you type and the URL updates with it, so you can bookmark or share a scenario. If the payment is too small to beat the interest, the calculator says so and shows the minimum that makes progress.
The minimum-payment trap, in real numbers
Card minimums are usually calculated as that month’s interest plus about 1% of the balance — just enough to keep the account current, not to retire the debt. Take a $5,000 balance at 24% APR. At a fixed $200 a month, you’re done in 35 months and pay $2,000.56 in interest. Drop to $150 and it stretches to about 56 months and roughly $3,300. Pay $105 — barely above the $100 of monthly interest — and the payoff takes nearly 13 years and costs around $11,000, more than twice what you borrowed. This is exactly why the minimum payment warning box on your statement (required by Regulation Z) shows how long minimum-only payments take: small differences in the payment produce enormous differences in the outcome.
Why the balance grows if you pay too little
Your APR divided by twelve is charged on the balance every month: at 24% APR, a $5,000 balance adds about $100 of interest monthly. Pay $100 or less and the balance never shrinks — the calculator’s “never” result, which also tells you the smallest payment that starts moving the number down. Every dollar above the interest charge reduces principal, and a smaller principal means a smaller interest charge next month, so extra payments compound in your favor. That’s why doubling the payment cuts the timeline by more than half in the example above (35 months to 15) rather than exactly half. The same logic is worth applying before big purchases: an auto loan at 7% is cheap money compared with a card at 24%, so clearing card debt first usually wins.
Picking a payment you can actually keep
The single most effective trick is to freeze your payment at today’s minimum — or more — and keep paying that same amount as the balance falls, instead of letting the required minimum drift down with it. Try a few payment amounts in the calculator and watch the interest column: the difference between “comfortable” and “slightly uncomfortable” is often measured in thousands of dollars. If you carry several cards, put the extra money toward the highest APR first while paying minimums on the rest, and set up autopay so a missed month doesn’t add late fees and a penalty APR to the problem.
Limits
The model assumes a fixed payment, no new purchases, no annual or late fees, and a single APR — real statements can carry purchase, cash-advance, and promotional balances at different rates. Interest is applied monthly (APR ÷ 12) while most issuers compound daily, a small and usually conservative difference. Declining minimum payments (a percentage of the balance) stretch payoff far longer than the fixed payments modeled here — one more reason to fix your payment amount and keep it fixed as the balance falls. For longer-horizon borrowing math, see the mortgage payment calculator, or browse all our calculators and browser-private tools.