This loan calculator works out the fixed monthly payment — the EMI, or equated monthly instalment — on any loan repaid in equal monthly amounts, from a personal loan to financing for a car or a home. Next to the payment you get the total interest, the month of your last payment, the APR once upfront fees are counted, and a year-by-year balance table. It is free, needs no signup, and every number is calculated in your browser.
How to use it
- Enter the loan amount, the interest rate per year and the loan term. The term switches between years and months, and the number converts when you switch.
- If the lender charges an origination or processing fee, enter it under Upfront fees to see the APR. Leave it at 0 otherwise.
- Pick a currency — INR uses Indian lakh and crore grouping — and the month of your first payment, which dates the payoff.
- Read the payment, then check the year-by-year summary for how much of each year’s payments went to interest. The address bar keeps your inputs, so a scenario can be bookmarked or shared.
The form opens on a published example to replace with your own loan: $3,000 at 16% over two years, the furniture loan from David Lippman’s Math in Society. The textbook’s answer is $146.89 a month, and so is this calculator’s.
EMI and “monthly payment” are the same number
Indian banks quote an EMI; US lenders quote a monthly payment. The Reserve Bank of India defines an equated periodic instalment as a fixed repayment of principal plus interest that fully pays off the loan, and calls it an EMI when it falls due monthly — which is exactly what a US installment loan’s monthly payment is. Both come from the same formula, shown under How this is calculated below.
Every payment first covers one month’s interest on the balance still owed; whatever is left reduces the balance. So even though the payment never changes, its mix does. On the opening example, the first year’s payments include $381.62 of interest and the second year’s only $143.72. The year-by-year table makes that shift visible for any loan.
Rate or term: what moves the payment
Two levers set the payment. Here is $10,000 borrowed at two rates and two terms:
| Rate | 3 years (36 payments) | 5 years (60 payments) |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | $322.67 a month, $1,616.20 interest | $212.47 a month, $2,748.26 interest |
| 14% | $341.78 a month, $2,303.97 interest | $232.68 a month, $3,961.04 interest |
Stretching the term from three to five years cuts the payment by about a third, but at 10% it adds more than $1,100 of interest. Four extra points of rate add less than $20 a month to the three-year loan, yet almost $700 over its life. The payment tells you whether the loan fits a monthly budget; the total interest tells you what the loan costs. Comparing offers on only one of them can mislead.
Interest rate vs APR
The interest rate prices the money. The APR also prices the fees: the CFPB describes it as the interest rate plus any additional fees the lender charges, such as origination charges, and it is the figure lenders must disclose so borrowers can compare offers. This calculator finds the rate at which your payments exactly repay the cash you receive after fees — the actuarial method set out in Regulation Z’s Appendix J. A $300 fee on a $10,000, three-year loan at 10% raises the APR to about 12.11%. The RBI’s Key Facts Statement illustration works the same way: ₹20,000 at 15% for 24 months with ₹400 of charges gives an APR of 17.07%. Enter those figures and you will see the same result.
Limits worth knowing
- Fixed rate for the whole term. A floating-rate loan resets when its benchmark moves; when your rate changes, run the calculator again with the new rate and the remaining balance.
- Reducing balance, not flat rate. Interest is charged only on what you still owe, the method the RBI illustration uses. A “flat” rate charges interest on the original amount for the whole term, so it will not match these figures — ask the lender for the reducing-balance rate or the APR.
- No extra payments. For every month’s row and a CSV download, use the amortization schedule calculator.
- Cent rounding at extreme rates. The payment is rounded to the cent, which on most loans moves the last payment by a few cents. At a very high rate over a very long term the fraction of a cent adds up: $100,000 at 36% over 40 years rounds to $3,000.00 a month, which only covers the interest, so the whole $100,000 falls due with the last payment. The results say so whenever the last payment differs noticeably from the others.
A few loans have their own tool here: a car purchase with sales tax and a trade-in fits the auto loan calculator, a home loan fits the mortgage payment calculator, and card debt without a fixed term fits the credit card payoff calculator. Lending money to a friend or relative? Work out the payment here, then put the terms in writing with the promissory note generator.
Privacy
Loan figures are personal, so the calculation runs entirely in your browser and nothing you type is sent to us. So that you can bookmark or share a scenario, your inputs are kept in the page address — the part after the “?”. Our analytics receive page addresses without that part, so your numbers don’t reach them either. Anyone you send the link to will see the figures in it. The privacy policy has the details.