Credit Card Calculator
See how long a credit card balance takes to clear and what the interest really costs.
About Credit Card Calculator
Credit cards compound interest monthly on the outstanding balance. A fixed monthly payment lets you forecast an exact payoff date using the NPER formula. Minimum payments are more insidious: because they're calculated as a percentage of the shrinking balance, each payment is smaller than the last — a $5,000 balance at 23% APR with a 2% minimum takes over 30 years to clear and costs more in interest than the original balance.
Formulas
Monthly interest accrued
Monthly interest = Balance × (APR / 12)
- B
- Current balance
- APR
- Annual percentage rate as decimal
Fixed payment payoff periods
n = −ln(1 − Balance × r / Payment) / ln(1 + r)
- n
- Number of months
- r
- Monthly rate
- P
- Fixed monthly payment
Worked example
With the default values below, Credit Card Calculator returns Months to Pay Off of 54. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.
Inputs used
- Current Balanceaccepts 1–500,000 $
- 5,000 $
- Annual Percentage Rate (APR)accepts 0–100 %
- 22.99 %
- Payment Strategyone of Fixed Monthly Payment, Minimum Payment (% of balance)
- Fixed Monthly Payment
- Monthly Paymentaccepts 1–500,000 $
- 150 $
- Minimum Payment (% of Balance)accepts 0.5–20 %
- 2 %
- Minimum Payment Flooraccepts 0–1,000 $
- 25 $
Results
- Months to Pay Off
- 54
- Total Interest Paid
- $3,044.95
- Total Amount Paid
- $8,044.95
- First Month's Interest
- $95.79
Step by step
- 1Monthly interest rate= 1.9158%
- 2First month's interest= $95.79
- 3Number of payments (nper)= 53.63 months
- 4Total interest paid= $3,044.95
Assumptions and limits
- The result is derived only from the 6 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
- In particular, this calculator does not take inflation or tax into account.
- Figures are rounded for display to 2 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.
- This is an estimate for general information and not professional financial, tax or legal advice. See the full disclaimer for the limits that apply to this kind of calculator.
How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do minimum payments barely make a dent?
Minimum payments are typically 1–3% of the balance. At a 22% APR, roughly 22%/12 ≈ 1.83% of the balance accrues as interest each month. A 2% minimum payment leaves only 0.17% going to principal — the debt shrinks at a crawl while interest compounds.
What's a realistic minimum payment percentage?
Most US issuers use 1–2% of the balance plus any fees and interest, or a fixed floor (often $25–35), whichever is greater. Some cards use a flat 1% of balance plus the month's interest, which is equivalent to paying interest-only plus a tiny sliver of principal.
Does this account for new charges on the card?
No — this calculator assumes no new purchases are added to the balance. In practice, continuing to use the card while paying it down is like filling a bucket while it drains.