Card payoff calculator

How the payoff math works

Each month the calculator adds a month of interest to the balance, then subtracts your payment. It repeats until the balance hits $0. All amounts are in whole cents, and each month’s interest is rounded to the nearest cent.

Monthly interest = balance × APR ÷ 12
New balance = balance + monthly interest − payment
The last payment is only what’s left.

That’s a simplification. Many issuers charge interest daily: the CFPB explains that the daily rate is the APR divided by 360 or 365, applied to what you owe at the end of each day. Billing cycles also run 28 to 31 days. Real statements will come out a little different, but the payoff month and interest total land close.

When a payment never pays it off

If your payment is less than or equal to the first month’s interest, the balance never goes down. The calculator says so and shows the smallest payment that makes progress, which is one cent more than that first month’s interest. A payment that small would still take decades, so it also shows the payment that clears the balance in five years.

Paying it off in a set number of months

In this mode the calculator searches for the smallest payment, to the cent, that brings the balance to $0 within your number of months. Because it runs the same month-by-month math, the answer matches what you’d see if you typed that payment in.

The minimum-payment example

Issuers set their own minimum formulas, and the formula is in your card agreement. A common one is the month’s interest plus 1% of the balance, with a $25 floor. The calculator uses 1% of the balance before that month’s interest, rounded to the cent. If the balance plus interest is under $25, the minimum is the whole amount. Federal rules require your statement to show how long paying only the minimum would take, so check your own statement for the real figure.

Worked example

Say you owe $5,000 at 22.36% and pay $200 a month. That rate is the Federal Reserve’s G.19 average for accounts that paid interest in August 2026, the latest figure when this page was written.

Carried forward, $200 a month clears the balance in 34 months. You’d pay $1,792.98 in interest and $6,792.98 in total, with a last payment of $192.98.

On the minimum-payment example, the same $5,000 takes 231 months, a little over 19 years, and costs $8,241.30 in interest. To clear it in 36 months instead, the payment would need to be $191.89.

Where paying it down meets your credit

A lower card balance also lowers the utilization that reports to the bureaus, which FICO counts in the amounts owed category. The utilization planner shows what each balance means as a percentage, and snowball vs. avalanche covers which card to pay first when you have several.

Sources

• Federal Reserve G.19 Consumer Credit (current release): Federal Reserve G.19 Consumer Credit, released Oct 7, 2026, commercial bank interest rates on credit card plans (percent, not seasonally adjusted)
• What is a “daily periodic rate” on a credit card? (CFPB)
• 12 CFR 1026.7, periodic statement contents, including the minimum payment disclosure (eCFR)
• What is Amounts Owed? (myFICO)