Credit Card Payoff Calculator

The question a card statement will not answer

A credit card statement tells you the minimum payment. It does not tell you what that minimum costs, and the difference between paying the minimum and paying a little more is measured in years. This calculator answers the two questions that matter: how many months until the balance is gone, and how much of what you pay is interest rather than debt.

A worked example: $5,000 at 19.99% APR

On a $5,000 balance at 19.99%, the first month’s interest is $5,000 × (0.1999 ÷ 12) = $83.29. That is the amount your payment has to beat before a single cent touches the debt.

Paying $250 a month clears it in 25 months, with $1,132.29 of interest — $6,132.29 paid in total. Paying $150 a month takes 50 months and $2,357.06 of interest. Paying $100 a month takes 109 months, just over nine years, and costs $5,830.34 in interest: more than the original balance.

Below that it collapses. At $84 a month the balance clears in 290 months — over 24 years — with $19,281.42 of interest on a $5,000 debt. At $83.29 or less, the payment never exceeds the interest and the balance never falls at all. Halving the payment does not double the payoff time; it multiplies it.

How the payoff is calculated

The monthly rate is the APR divided by twelve. Each month the calculator charges interest of balance × rate, applies the payment, subtracts the difference from the balance, and repeats until nothing is left. Total interest is the sum of every monthly charge.

Before any of that it checks one thing: if your payment is less than or equal to the first month’s interest, the balance grows rather than shrinks, and the tool says "never" instead of printing a number. If the payment clears the interest but by so little that the debt survives a hundred years, it says that too. Both are real outcomes, and both are more useful than an optimistic figure.

Where a real statement will differ

Card issuers calculate interest daily on the average daily balance, not once a month on the opening balance, so a real statement will differ from this by small amounts that accumulate over a long payoff. The direction depends on when in the cycle your payment lands.

The model also assumes a fixed APR, a fixed payment every month, no new spending on the card, and no fees. Each of those breaks in practice: promotional 0% periods expire, purchase and cash-advance balances carry different rates, and issuers in the US and UK apply payments above the minimum to the highest-rate balance first — which helps, but means a mixed-rate card does not behave like the single rate modelled here. Above all, new spending resets the arithmetic entirely.