Compare repayment plans (Standard, IDR, PAYE, REPAYE) with forgiveness projections, total interest, and monthly payment charts.
Choosing a repayment plan is a 20-year arithmetic problem, and this tool does that arithmetic. Enter your loan balance, interest rate, income, and family size, and it projects the monthly payment, total interest, and end-of-term balance for the Standard plan and the income-driven plans (IDR, PAYE, REPAYE), including what gets forgiven and when. The result most people find surprising: the plan with the lowest monthly payment usually costs the most overall, because the balance accrues interest for roughly twice as long and the forgiven portion is treated as taxable income. Everything is computed locally in the browser; the figures you enter are not uploaded.
A concrete input and expected output from the current implementation.
Input
Balance $30,000, interest rate 5.0%, Standard plan
Expected output
Fixed payment of $318.20 per month for 120 months. Total paid $38,184, of which $8,184 is interest. The balance reaches $0 in month 120 and nothing is forgiven. The same $318.20 is the cap PAYE applies: any income-driven payment under PAYE is 10% of discretionary income but never more than this Standard amount, and any balance left after 240 qualifying payments is discharged.
Standard repayment is the amortization formula on a 10-year term: 30000 x (0.05/12) / (1 - (1 + 0.05/12)^-120) = $318.20, and 120 payments at that rate sum to $38,184. PAYE's cap is defined by law as the 10-year Standard payment, so the same figure anchors the comparison.
The Standard plan applies the amortization formula P x r / (1 - (1 + r)^-n) over 120 months, giving one fixed payment that repays the loan in full. The income-driven plans instead charge a share of discretionary income, defined as AGI minus 150% of the federal poverty guideline for your family size: 10% on PAYE and REPAYE, with PAYE capped at the 10-year Standard payment and REPAYE uncapped. Interest accrues daily on every plan.
Each income-driven plan is run out to its forgiveness point: PAYE discharges whatever remains after 240 qualifying payments (20 years), REPAYE after 20 years for undergraduate-only debt and 25 years if any graduate loans are present. The tool totals every payment, the interest accrued, and the balance that would be forgiven, then charts monthly payment and remaining balance over time so a lower payment today can be weighed against total cost. A qualifying payment is a month in which the required amount was paid while enrolled in the plan.
Because the balance amortizes more slowly. Interest accrues daily on the unpaid principal, so 240 payments of $250 accrue interest across twice as many days as 120 payments of $318. The income-driven plan wins on monthly cash flow, and it can win overall if the forgiven balance is discharged and its tax cost stays below the interest saved, but the lower payment alone always raises total interest.
On PAYE, only if you make 240 qualifying payments, recertify income every year, remain eligible, and the plan itself stays on the books. On REPAYE or SAVE, the honest answer is that no one can promise it today: SAVE is under court order, its accounts sit in forbearance, and those months do not count toward the 240. Treat the projection as a best case, not a guarantee.
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