Student Loan Refinance Calculator

Identify federal loans before comparing offers

Refinancing a federal student loan into a private loan gives up federal benefits and protections, and the change cannot be reversed back into the original federal loan. The CFPB's consolidation and refinancing guidance explains this distinction. A lower private rate is not enough, by itself, to determine whether that tradeoff makes sense.

Federal Direct Consolidation and private refinancing are separate processes. This calculator does not determine eligibility for federal plans or forgiveness and does not recommend exchanging those features for a modeled interest saving. If loan type is unclear, check the account records before using the result to make a decision.

Continue with FHA Loan Calculator or Student Loan Grace-Period Interest Calculator for the next calculation.

Enter each existing loan separately

For each loan, provide the current payoff or principal balance, annual note rate, remaining months and loan type. Use a current payoff quote when assessing an actual refinance. Include accrued interest only once; do not add it separately if it is already in the quote.

The baseline assumes fixed-rate amortizing repayment. If your actual payment follows income-based rules, a temporary reduction, deferment or forbearance, a standard fixed-payment schedule will not represent that path. The tool should flag that mismatch instead of producing a misleading lifetime saving.

For the proposed private loan, enter the quoted note rate, term and any mandatory fees. Identify fixed versus variable pricing. A variable-rate comparison based on today's rate is a constant-rate scenario, not a forecast of future payments.

How remaining cost is compared

The calculator builds a separate monthly schedule for each existing loan, then adds their payments and interest. This preserves different rates and payoff dates. A balance-weighted average rate can summarize the loans, but it does not replace the individual schedules when terms differ.

The replacement loan starts with the amount needed to discharge the selected loans, plus any financed charges. Its payment is calculated from the new principal, rate and term. Cash charges are added separately to the new path's total cost.

Compare future costs from today. Past payments and interest are not savings the refinance can recover. Use the Amortization Calculator if you want to inspect the balance and interest allocation behind one fixed-payment scenario.

Worked example: term extension can reverse the saving

Assume one private student loan has a $30,000 balance at 7%, with ten years remaining. Its modeled payment is $348.33 and remaining interest is $11,799.05. These are illustrative assumptions, not current offers.

A fee-free fixed-rate refinance at 5.5% over the same ten years has a $325.58 payment. Remaining interest is $9,069.46, saving approximately $22.75 per month and $2,729.59 in total interest.

Now extend the new 5.5% loan to fifteen years. Payment falls further, to $245.13, but interest rises to $14,122.51. That is $2,323.45 more interest than keeping the original ten-year loan, despite the lower rate.

The smaller payment may still matter to a household budget, but it is payment relief with a different cost and payoff date. The example involves a private loan and does not assign a dollar value to federal protections.

Review features the arithmetic cannot price

Compare hardship arrangements, cosigner obligations, death or disability provisions, variable-rate terms and payment flexibility in the actual agreements. The CFPB's repayment-options resource emphasizes the different options attached to federal and private borrowing.

You can also test paying extra on existing fixed-rate loans using the Debt Payoff Planner. Keeping an existing agreement and changing your payment can have different consequences from replacing the debt.

The estimate excludes future income changes, tax benefits, forgiveness outcomes, payment pauses and future interest-rate changes unless a separate, explicitly supported model includes them. It does not predict approval or a cosigner's eligibility.

Frequently asked questions