Enter your balance and APR, then choose a fixed payment or a fixed timeframe to calculate how long payoff takes or what payment it requires.

How to Use the Credit Card Payoff Calculator

Enter the balance and APR, then choose Fixed Payment or Fixed Timeframe. Fixed Payment asks how long a specific monthly payment takes to clear the balance; Fixed Timeframe flips the question and solves for the payment a target number of months requires.

Both modes describe the same debt — they just start from opposite ends. Know what you can afford each month and want a timeline? Use Fixed Payment. Have a payoff date in mind and want to know what it costs? Use Fixed Timeframe.

Fixed Payment: Month-by-Month Simulation

This mode simulates the balance forward one month at a time — interest accrues on whatever's left, the payment is applied, repeat until zero, or 1,200 months, whichever comes first. If the payment doesn't clear that month's interest charge, the balance never shrinks, and the calculator flags the minimum payment needed instead of simulating forever.

Fixed Timeframe: Solving Backward

r = APR ÷ 100 ÷ 12
n = desired months
Payment = balance × r(1+r)ⁿ ÷ [(1+r)ⁿ − 1]
Total interest = Payment × n − balance

This is the standard loan-amortization formula run in reverse: instead of solving for time from a known payment, it solves for the payment from a known timeframe. The math is identical to a personal loan payment — credit card debt just doesn't usually get talked about that way.

Run the $5,000, 21% APR defaults in Fixed Payment mode with a $200 monthly payment and payoff takes a little under three years — about 34 months — with total interest landing somewhere around $1,800. Switch to Fixed Timeframe and ask for that same balance cleared in 24 months instead, and the required payment jumps to roughly $257: a faster payoff, at a noticeably bigger monthly bite.

The Minimum-Payment Trap

Card issuers set minimum payments low enough that they barely outpace interest on a large balance — sometimes only a few dollars above it. Switch to Fixed Payment mode and enter a minimum-sized payment against a large balance to see how many months, often years, that produces; it's usually a far longer timeline than most people assume from the minimum-due line on a statement.