Calculate payoff time, required payments, or maximum balance for your credit card.
The APR on your card statement exists because of the Truth in Lending Act of 1968, which required lenders to state the cost of credit as one yearly percentage so offers could be compared. What that number hides is how hard it works month to month: on a $5,000 balance at 22.99%, the first month's interest alone is $95.79. This calculator turns an APR into a payoff date, a required payment or a maximum balance, depending on which of its three tabs you use.
The page divides APR by 12 to get a monthly rate r. Payoff Time mode loops month by month: interest = balance × r is added, then your payment is subtracted, until the balance reaches zero. Payment Needed uses the fixed-payment formula P = B × r × (1 + r)^n ÷ ((1 + r)^n − 1). Max Balance inverts it: B = P × (1 − (1 + r)^−n) ÷ r. At a 0% APR the formulas fall back to simple division.
Worked example with the defaults, $5,000 at 22.99% and $150 a month: r = 0.2299 ÷ 12 = 0.019158, so month-one interest is $95.79 and only $54.21 of the $150 reduces the balance. The loop ends after 54 months with $3,045.29 of interest. To finish in 36 months instead, the payment formula asks for $193.52 a month, with $1,966.81 of interest in total. A $150 payment over 36 months can retire a balance of at most $3,875.52.
Limits worth knowing. Most issuers accrue interest daily, not monthly; running the same example with daily accrual stretches payoff to 55 months and adds roughly $56 of interest, so read these results as a close estimate rather than a statement. The tool assumes no new purchases, no fees, one fixed APR with no promotional rate, and on-time payments. Also, the Total Paid row in Payoff Time mode is just payment × months, so it runs slightly above balance plus interest ($8,100 here against $8,045.29) because the real final payment is smaller.
Your payment is at or below one month of interest, so the balance would never shrink. On $5,000 at 22.99% that threshold is $95.79. Even $100 trims only $4.21 of principal in month one and takes 167 months, nearly 14 years, with $11,694.38 of interest.
It is a reference figure: the greater of $25 or 2% of the balance, which is $100 here. Issuers calculate minimums differently, so your statement is the authority. The payoff loop ignores that line and uses only the payment you type.
Since the Credit CARD Act of 2009, US statements show the payment that would clear the balance in 36 months. A gap usually comes from daily interest accrual, new purchases or fees inside your balance, or an APR that changed since the statement closed.
No. It reports the largest balance that a given payment would retire within the months you picked, at the APR you entered. It is handy for judging how big a balance transfer a budget can absorb.
Partly. Enter 0 as the APR to see the straight-line payment for the promotional window, then run a second pass with the leftover balance and the regular APR. Transfer fees, typically a few percent of the amount moved, are not included, so add them to the balance first.