Credit Card Payoff Calculator: How Long, and What It Costs
Enter a balance and an APR to see how many months a payment takes to clear the card, what the interest adds up to, and how that compares with paying only the minimum. Got several cards? Switch tabs to compare the avalanche and snowball orders on one budget. Everything is worked out in your browser and remembered on this device only.
Minimum payment rule — used for the comparison below. Most issuers charge the greater of a flat floor or this month’s interest plus a slice of the balance. These defaults are illustrative; check your own statement and change them.
Paid off in
34months
2 yr 10 mo · done by July 2029
Total interest
$1,633
Total repaid
$6,633
Interest as % of balance
33%
Month 1 interest
$88
Month 1 goes to principal
$113
Final payment
$33
Your payment vs paying only the minimum
The minimum shrinks as the balance does, which is why the tail drags on.
Paying $200 instead of the minimum saves $6,074.54 in interest and gets you out 16 yr 2 mo sooner.
What another $25, 50 or 100 a month would do
| Monthly payment | Clear in | Total interest | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| $200 (now) | 2 yr 10 mo | $1,633 | — |
| $225 | 2 yr 5 mo | $1,388 | $246 |
| $250 | 2 yr 1 mo | $1,208 | $425 |
| $300 | 1 yr 8 mo | $963 | $670 |
| $400 | 1 yr 3 mo | $692 | $941 |
Every extra unit goes straight to principal, which is why small increases move the payoff date so much more than they look like they should.
Month-by-month payoff schedule (34 months)
Monthly compounding, no fees. Real cards compound daily and add late, cash-advance and annual fees, so treat these figures as a slightly optimistic estimate. Saved on this device only — nothing is uploaded. General information, not financial advice.
TL;DR
A credit card payoff comes down to one subtraction repeated every month: your payment minus this month’s interest is the only part that touches the debt. The minimum due is engineered to make that number small and to shrink it further as the balance falls, which is why minimum-only repayment on an illustrative 5,000 balance runs to 19 yr at a 21% APR. Fix the payment instead of letting it float, and pay the highest-rate card first when you have more than one. Both of those are what this page measures. Figures are illustrative and monthly-compounded, so a real statement will be a little worse.
Where your payment actually goes
Credit card debt feels complicated because the number on the statement never seems to move. The arithmetic behind it is not complicated at all. Each month the issuer works out interest on what you owe, adds it to the balance, and then subtracts whatever you paid. Only the difference — payment minus interest — comes off the debt. That difference is called the principal portion, and in the early months of a large balance it is startlingly small.
interest = opening balance × monthly rate
principal = payment − interest
new balance = opening balance − principal
Put numbers on it. At an illustrative 21% APR the monthly rate is 21 ÷ 12 = 1.75% a month. On a 5,000 balance that is 88 of interest in month one. Pay 200 and only 113 reaches the debt. Pay 100 and the balance goes up. Nothing else about credit cards matters as much as that one comparison, and it is the first thing this calculator shows you.
The good news hides in the same equation. Because interest is charged on the balance and the balance is falling, every month that passes sends a slightly larger slice of the same payment to principal. Payoff is therefore not linear — it accelerates. The last six months of a three-year plan clear far more debt than the first six did, which is exactly why people who get past the demoralising first year usually finish.
The minimum-payment trap, in numbers
A minimum payment is usually set as the greater of a flat floor or this month’s interest plus a small slice of the balance — often around 1%. Written that way, it is designed to cover the interest and shave a sliver off the principal, and to get smaller every single month as the balance drops. Paying it is not a plan; it is the slowest legal way out.
This table is computed by the same code the calculator above runs, on an illustrative 5,000 balance, with the minimum set to the greater of 25 or interest plus 1% of the balance. The right-hand columns show what happens if you instead fix the payment at 250 a month and never move it. The APRs are a spread for illustration, not a quote of anyone’s rate.
| APR | 1st min | Min only | Interest | At 250/mo | Interest saved |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9% | 87.5 | 16 yr 8 mo | 3,122 | 1 yr 10 mo | 2,685 |
| 12% | 100 | 17 yr 4 mo | 4,241 | 1 yr 11 mo | 3,635 |
| 15% | 112.5 | 17 yr 11 mo | 5,382 | 2 yr | 4,592 |
| 18% | 125 | 18 yr 6 mo | 6,539 | 2 yr | 5,549 |
| 21% | 137.5 | 19 yr | 7,708 | 2 yr 1 mo | 6,500 |
| 24% | 150 | 19 yr 6 mo | 8,887 | 2 yr 2 mo | 7,438 |
| 27% | 162.5 | 20 yr | 10,074 | 2 yr 3 mo | 8,357 |
| 30% | 175 | 20 yr 5 mo | 11,268 | 2 yr 5 mo | 9,250 |
Read the 21% row slowly. The first minimum payment is 137.5 — less than the 250 in the fixed column, so it feels affordable. Following it clears the card in 19 yr and costs 7,708 in interest, roughly 154% of the balance you originally spent. Fixing the payment at 250 instead finishes in 2 yr 1 mo for 1,208. Same debt, same card, one decision.
Notice too how little the APR changes the duration of minimum-only repayment compared with how much it changes the cost. That is the percent-of-balance rule at work: the timeline is driven mostly by how fast that 1% slice eats the principal, while the rate decides what you pay for the privilege.
Two ways to ask the question
Most people arrive with one of two questions, so the calculator answers both. “Set a payment” takes the amount you can genuinely afford and tells you the month you would be free and what the interest costs along the way. “Set a deadline” goes the other direction: name the month you want to be clear — before a wedding, a move, a mortgage application — and it solves for the payment that gets you there.
The deadline version uses the standard annuity formula, the same one behind every mortgage and loan payment:
where B = balance, r = monthly rate, n = months
That formula assumes perfectly unrounded arithmetic, so the tool then nudges the answer up by whole cents until the rounded, month-by-month simulation really does finish on time. The difference is a cent or two, but it means the number on screen is a number that works rather than one that leaves you a stray 0.40 short in the final month. The same annuity maths drives the loan calculator and the EMI calculator if you are weighing a fixed-term loan against the card.
Why a small increase moves the date so much
Because interest is charged on the balance and every extra unit you pay goes entirely to principal, adding a modest amount to the payment has a wildly disproportionate effect. Here is the same illustrative 5,000 balance at an illustrative 21% APR, at seven different monthly payments.
| Monthly payment | Clear in | Total interest | Total repaid |
|---|---|---|---|
| 125 | 5 yr 10 mo | 3,675 | 8,675 |
| 150 | 4 yr 3 mo | 2,570 | 7,570 |
| 200 | 2 yr 10 mo | 1,633 | 6,633 |
| 250 | 2 yr 1 mo | 1,208 | 6,208 |
| 300 | 1 yr 8 mo | 963 | 5,963 |
| 400 | 1 yr 3 mo | 692 | 5,692 |
| 500 | 1 yr | 545 | 5,545 |
Going from 125 to 200 a month — an extra 75 — cuts the timeline from 5 yr 10 mo to 2 yr 10 mo and saves 2,042 in interest. You are not paying 75 more; you are paying 75 more for far fewer months, which is why the total repaid column falls even as the monthly figure rises.
Avalanche or snowball, when you have more than one card
With several cards the method is always the same: pay every minimum so nothing goes delinquent, then throw the entire remaining budget at one card until it dies. The only question is which card. The avalanche attacks the highest APR first. The snowball attacks the smallest balance first.
The avalanche always wins on arithmetic, and it is worth understanding why rather than taking it on faith. Your total budget each month is fixed. Total interest charged that month is the sum of each balance times its own rate. Since total principal repaid equals budget minus total interest, the way to repay more principal is to make next month’s interest smaller — and every unit of principal buys the most interest reduction when it is aimed at the highest rate. Order the cards any other way and you pay more. The second tab of the calculator runs both orders month by month on your real numbers and shows the gap in currency.
The snowball’s defence is behavioural, not mathematical. Closing an account early is a visible win, one fewer statement and one fewer minimum to remember, and people who get that win early are measurably more likely to keep going. If the gap the calculator shows is small relative to the balances — and with similar rates it often is — take the snowball and keep your motivation. If the gap is large, it is usually because one card is both expensive and big, and that card deserves to go first.
Why your statement will not match to the penny
This calculator uses the standard monthly model: interest once a month on the opening balance. Most real issuers compound daily on an average daily balance, which produces slightly more interest over a year than the same nominal APR applied monthly. So treat every figure here as an estimate that errs on the optimistic side.
- Daily compounding adds a little to the total that monthly compounding does not capture.
- Fees — annual, late, over-limit, cash advance, foreign transaction — are not modelled at all.
- Multiple APRs on one card are common: purchases, cash advances and balance transfers often carry different rates on the same account. Enter them as separate cards on the second tab if the split matters.
- New spending is assumed to be zero. A payoff plan on a card you are still using is not a payoff plan.
- Promotional and penalty rates change over time; this model holds the APR constant for the whole schedule.
None of that changes the decisions the calculator is there to inform: pay more than the minimum, fix the amount, and aim it at the most expensive balance. Those hold regardless of the compounding convention. If a card payoff is competing with building a cash buffer, the emergency fund calculator is the other half of that conversation.
Frequently asked questions
How long will it take to pay off my credit card?
It depends on three numbers and nothing else: the balance, the APR, and the amount you pay each month. Enter those at the top of this page and the calculator simulates the account month by month until the balance reaches zero, then reports the number of months, the calendar month you would finish in, and the total interest. As a rough feel, an illustrative 5,000 at a 21% APR takes 2 yr 10 mo at 200 a month and 1 yr 8 mo at 300 a month.
Why does paying only the minimum take so many years?
Because the minimum is calculated as this month’s interest plus a small percentage of the balance, so it falls every time the balance does. The slice going to principal shrinks in step with the debt, which stretches the tail out for years. On the illustrative example in the table above, minimum-only repayment of a 5,000 balance at a 21% APR runs to 19 yr and costs 7,708 in interest. Fixing the payment at a constant amount is what breaks the pattern.
Should I pay off the highest interest card or the smallest balance first?
Highest interest first — the avalanche — always costs less, because your monthly budget is fixed and aiming principal at the most expensive balance reduces next month’s interest the most. Smallest balance first — the snowball — costs a little more but closes an account sooner, which many people find easier to sustain. Use the second tab of this calculator to see the actual gap on your cards; when it is small, the method you will actually finish is the better method.
What happens if my payment is less than the interest?
The balance grows instead of falling, and it will keep growing indefinitely — there is no payoff date at all, not even a distant one. This calculator detects that case and says so explicitly rather than showing an enormous number of months, and it tells you the exact monthly interest you have to beat before any of your payment starts touching the debt. If you are in that position, the priority is not optimising a strategy; it is raising the payment above the interest line or speaking to the issuer about hardship options.
Will these numbers match what my card issuer charges?
Closely, but not to the penny. This tool applies interest once a month to the opening balance; most issuers compound daily on an average daily balance, which produces slightly more interest for the same nominal APR. Fees of any kind, new purchases, promotional rates expiring and separate APRs for cash advances are not modelled. Treat the output as a well-founded estimate that is a little optimistic rather than as a statement of account.
Is my balance and APR data sent anywhere?
No. Every calculation runs in your browser, and the figures you type are kept in this device’s local storage so they are still there next time. Nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and the CSV download of the payoff schedule is assembled in the page itself rather than fetched from a server. That also means it will not sync to another device, and there is a Clear my data button for shared computers.
Every rate and balance used in the examples on this page is illustrative and chosen to show the shape of the arithmetic — none of them is a quote of any current market or product rate. This calculator provides general information about how credit card interest works and is not personal financial advice, a recommendation of any lender or product, or a substitute for the terms in your own cardholder agreement.