Credit Card Payoff Calculator

Credit Card Payoff Calculator answers the two questions a statement does not: how long the balance will take to clear at the amount you are actually paying, and how much of what you pay is interest rather than debt. It works month by month on the declining balance, which is how a card really works, rather than applying a single annual figure.

The first month's interest is shown on its own because it is the number that makes the situation clear. On 5,000 at 19.9% it is about 83, so a payment of 100 reduces the debt by 17 and a payment of 90 barely moves it. If the payment is below the monthly interest the balance grows no matter how long you keep paying, and the calculator says so instead of running forever.

The minimum-payment comparison is there because minimums are calculated as a percentage of the balance, so they fall as the balance falls. That is what turns a few thousand into a repayment period measured in decades. Setting the same debt against a fixed payment and against the minimum shows the difference in both time and money.

One assumption matters more than the rest: this arithmetic holds only if nothing new is charged to the card. A single purchase part-way through resets the balance the interest is charged on, and it is the reason a card being cleared should be a card that is no longer being used.

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 time to clear, interest you pay, total repaid, paying extra saves and interest in month one together, so you are not running it twice
• Full month-by-month 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 credit card payoff calculator is used by writers, developers, students, marketers and anyone else who needs the job done once without installing software. Common cases include:

• Finding out when a card will actually be clear
• Seeing what another 50 a month would save in interest and time
• Comparing fixed payments with paying only the minimum
• Deciding which of two cards to clear first
• Checking whether a balance transfer fee is worth paying