Car Loan Calculator

Car Loan Calculator works out the monthly payment on a vehicle loan from the price, what you put down and the interest rate. It handles the three things a generic loan calculator makes you do by hand: subtracting a cash deposit, subtracting a trade-in allowance, and adding the fees a dealer rolls into the balance rather than charging up front.

The amount you borrow is rarely the price of the car, and that is where most estimates go wrong. Price minus deposit minus trade-in plus fees is the figure the interest is charged on. A 500 admin fee added to a five-year loan costs more than 500, because you pay interest on it for five years, and the calculator shows it in the borrowed amount for that reason.

Balloon payments are supported because PCP and similar deals are now the normal way cars are financed. A balloon is a lump sum deferred to the end of the term, so only the rest of the balance is spread across the monthly payments. That makes the monthly figure look much lower than a straight loan on the same car, and the comparison is not like for like: the balloon is still owed, and the total interest is higher because the deferred part keeps accruing.

The term comparison table is the most useful part of the page. Shortening a car loan from five years to three raises the monthly payment substantially and cuts the interest by more than most people expect, and seeing both numbers side by side is what makes that a decision rather than a default.

This is arithmetic, not financial advice. It tells you what the numbers do; it cannot tell you whether a decision is right for your circumstances. Fees, taxes and local rules vary, so check anything that matters against the actual offer and speak to someone qualified before committing.

Everything is worked out inside your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, logged or stored, which matters for the financial calculators in particular: the figures you put into them are nobody else's business.

• Shows monthly payment, amount borrowed, total interest, total you pay and cost of the car in full together, so you are not running it twice
• Full year-by-year balance you can open and check
• Updates as you type, with no button to press and no page reload
• Copy the result in one click
• Download the detail as a .csv for a spreadsheet
• Free, no sign-up, and it runs entirely in your browser

The car loan calculator is used by writers, developers, students, marketers and anyone else who needs the job done once without installing software. Common cases include:

• Checking a dealer quote before signing anything
• Working out what deposit brings the monthly payment into budget
• Comparing a three-year loan with a five-year one on the same car
• Seeing what a PCP balloon payment does to the total cost
• Deciding whether to put a trade-in towards the deposit or sell privately