Credit Card Payoff Calculator

This calculator shows how long it takes to pay off a credit card if you stop using it and pay the same amount every month. Enter the balance, the card's APR and your monthly payment; it returns the payoff time, the total paid, the interest cost and how much of your first payment goes to interest.

Use it to pick a payment that clears the card by a target date, to see the cost of paying only a little above the minimum, or to judge whether a balance transfer is worth it. The payment must be more than the first month's interest, otherwise the balance never falls.

It assumes no new purchases, no fees and a constant APR. If you have several cards, list them in the debt avalanche calculator or debt snowball calculator to plan the order you pay them off.

This is the standard loan amortization formula solved for the number of payments. Card issuers actually charge interest on the average daily balance at APR ÷ 365, so real statements differ by small amounts each month.

Total paid is calculated as payment × months, which treats the final payment as a full one. Because the last payment is usually smaller, the interest figure can be overstated by up to one monthly payment; the payoff time is unaffected. A 0% promotional APR cannot be entered directly, so for a 0% balance simply divide the balance by the months of the promotion.

Small increases in the monthly payment cut the payoff time sharply when the payment is close to the interest charge. Figures below are for a $6,500 balance at 24.99% APR, where the first month's interest is $135.36.

A balance transfer card moves your debt to a new card with a 0% or low introductory APR, usually for 12 to 21 months, in exchange for a one-off transfer fee, commonly 3% to 5% of the amount moved.

To check one: add the fee to the balance and divide by the promotional months to get the payment that clears it before the rate jumps. Moving $6,500 with a 3% fee gives $6,695; over 18 months that is about $372 a month, with no interest at all. Compare that with paying the same $372 a month at 24.99% in this calculator. Transfers make sense when you can clear most of the balance within the promotion and will not add new spending to either card.

Minimum payments are usually set as a small percentage of the balance plus that month's interest, with a fixed dollar floor. As the balance falls, the minimum falls too, so the debt shrinks more slowly every month. Under the US Credit CARD Act, your statement must show how long paying only the minimum would take and the monthly payment needed to clear the balance in three years. Picking a fixed payment, as this calculator assumes, and keeping it level as the balance falls is one of the simplest ways to cut both time and interest.