Credit Card Payoff Calculator

Enter your card balance, the APR from your statement and the fixed amount you can pay each month, and the calculator returns how many months the debt will last, the total interest handed over along the way and the total paid. Flip the mode to ask the reverse question: choose a deadline in months and it computes the payment that meets it. Read the months figure as a count of monthly payments from today, with the final one usually smaller than the rest, and read total interest as the price of carrying the balance rather than clearing it. The two modes are one formula solved in opposite directions.

How the payoff math works

A card balance under a fixed payment behaves like any amortizing loan. With B the balance, P the monthly payment and i the monthly rate — the APR divided by 1,200, so 22 percent becomes 0.018333 — the number of months to reach zero is:

N = −ln(1 − i × B ÷ P) ÷ ln(1 + i)

The formula is only meaningful when P exceeds i × B, the first month's interest; at or below that line the balance never falls, and the calculator says so instead of returning a number. Solving the same relationship for the payment that clears the balance in a chosen number of months gives:

P = i × B ÷ (1 − (1 + i)^−N)

At an APR of exactly zero both collapse to straight division: N = B ÷ P and P = B ÷ N. The headline months figure is rounded up to a whole month, because an answer of 33.75 means the debt survives into a 34th month. The interest and total-paid figures are not read off the closed formula, though: the calculator walks the schedule month by month, charging interest on the running balance and treating the last payment as a partial one, so the totals match what the plan actually costs.

The defaults, worked by hand

Take the defaults: a 5,000 balance at 22 percent APR and a 200 monthly payment. The monthly rate is 22 ÷ 1,200 = 0.018333, so the first month's interest is 5,000 × 0.018333 = 91.67 — nearly half the payment is consumed before the balance moves. The ratio i × B ÷ P is 91.667 ÷ 200 = 0.458333, one minus that is 0.541667, and −ln(0.541667) ÷ ln(1.018333) = 0.613104 ÷ 0.018167 = 33.75 months. Concretely that is 33 full payments of 200 and a final payment of 149.88 in month 34, for 6,749.88 paid in all, of which 1,749.88 is interest.

Now run the other mode on the same card with a 36-month deadline. (1.018333) raised to the power −36 comes to 0.51995, leaving 0.48005 under the fraction, and 91.667 ÷ 0.48005 = 190.95 a month. Thirty-six such payments total 6,874.28, with 1,874.28 of interest. That 36-month horizon is not arbitrary: it is the payoff figure US card statements are required to quote.

From the First Supper to revolving credit

The debt this page measures is a recent invention. As Diners Club tells it, in 1949 a businessman named Frank McNamara finished a client dinner in Manhattan and realized he had forgotten his wallet. He returned to the same restaurant, Major's Cabin Grill, in February 1950 with his attorney Ralph Schneider and settled the bill with a small cardboard card, an event the company's own history calls the First Supper. The company the two founded that year issued the world's first multipurpose charge card — good across many merchants rather than at a single store, unlike the store accounts and charge plates that came before it — and it had 20,000 members by the end of 1950 and 42,000 by the end of 1951. A Diners Club bill, however, was due in full every month. It was a charge card, and carrying a balance, the situation this calculator exists for, was not part of the arrangement.

Revolving credit arrived in September 1958, when Bank of America launched BankAmericard by mailing roughly 60,000 unsolicited cards to households in Fresno, California — the stunt remembered as the Fresno Drop. BankAmericard is widely credited as the first successful mass-market credit card to offer revolving credit, letting a cardholder pay part of the bill and roll the remainder forward at interest. The experiment nearly sank: by the journalist Joe Nocera's account in A Piece of the Action, about 22 percent of accounts went delinquent against the roughly 4 percent the bank had planned for, and with advertising and overhead counted the launch lost something like 20 million dollars. The bank stayed with the program, began licensing it to banks outside California in 1966, and in 1976 BankAmericard and its licensees united under a new name: Visa. Two years later the Supreme Court's Marquette decision let a nationally chartered bank export its home state's interest rate rules nationwide; issuers moved their card operations to states without usury caps, South Dakota and Delaware among them, and card APRs have floated free of state limits since.

The minimum payment trap

Issuers set their own minimum payments, and according to Experian the common designs are a flat percentage of the balance, often 2 to 4 percent, or roughly 1 percent of the balance plus that month's interest and fees, with a dollar floor of about 25 to 35. Those formulas keep the account current; they are not built to retire the debt. Consider a 3,000 balance at 24 percent APR with a minimum of 1 percent of the balance plus interest and a 25 floor. In the first month the interest is 3,000 × 0.02 = 60, the minimum is 30 + 60 = 90, and the balance falls by just 30. Because the minimum shrinks along with the balance, the payments decay as the debt does, and iterating the schedule to the end takes 183 months — 15 years and 3 months — for 7,886.91 paid in total, of which 4,886.91 is interest, more than 1.6 times the original balance.

That arithmetic is why the Credit CARD Act of 2009 requires every US card statement to carry a warning that "Making only the minimum payment will increase the amount of interest you pay and the time it takes to repay your balance," alongside the number of months payoff would take at the minimum, the payment that would clear the balance in 36 months, and a toll-free number for credit counseling services. Minimum formulas vary by issuer, so the example above is illustrative rather than universal; the disclosure rules in Regulation Z work from the minimum payment formula that actually governs each account.

Reading your result against the averages

Per the Federal Reserve's August 2026 G.19 consumer credit release, the preliminary average APR on card accounts assessed interest for the second quarter of 2026 was 22.15 percent, with the average across all accounts at 20.94 percent, which is why 22 is the default here. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's household debt report put US card balances at 1.26 trillion dollars in the same quarter, so the default scenario is not an edge case but something close to the national situation in miniature. Two practical readings follow from the formula. First, when the payment sits close to the monthly interest, each extra dollar of payment goes entirely to principal, so small raises buy outsized cuts in payoff time; moving from 100 to 120 a month shortens the schedule far more than moving from 300 to 320 does. Second, with several cards, the CFPB's guidance on reducing debt is to clear the highest interest rate debt as quickly as possible, because it is costing you the most — running this calculator once per card makes that cost visible.

Assumptions and accuracy

The monthly rate here is the APR divided by 12, the convention nearly every payoff calculator uses. Real card interest rarely works quite that way: as Wikipedia's article on credit card interest notes, most US cards are quoted as a nominal APR compounded daily, so the issuer applies a daily rate to the average daily balance and the statement figure drifts a little from this model. Treat every result as a close estimate, not a to-the-penny forecast. The schedule also assumes the account is frozen — no new purchases, no annual or late fees, and a rate that never changes — so any new spending or charge lengthens the real payoff beyond what is shown. The months headline is the exact answer rounded up to a whole month with a smaller final payment, and the interest total comes from the month-by-month schedule rather than the closed formula. This page is an educational tool, not credit counseling or financial advice.

Results are estimates from the fixed-payment amortization model and exclude new purchases, fees and rate changes, so confirm exact figures with your card issuer. See the site disclaimer.

Frequently asked questions

Why does paying only the minimum on a credit card take so long?

Minimum payments are sized to keep the account current, not to retire the debt. According to Experian they typically run from a flat percentage of the balance, often 2 to 4 percent, down to about 1 percent plus interest and fees, with a floor around 25 to 35 dollars. On a 3,000 balance at 24 percent APR, a minimum of 1 percent plus interest starts at 90, of which 60 is interest, and iterating that schedule takes 183 months and 4,886.91 in interest. The CARD Act minimum payment warning exists because of this pattern.

What should I pay to clear my credit card in 3 years?

Switch to the required-payment mode and enter 36 as the target. The payment is the monthly rate times the balance divided by one minus (1 plus the rate) raised to the power minus 36. For a 5,000 balance at 22 percent APR that comes to 190.95 a month and 6,874.28 in total. It is the same 36-month figure US issuers must print on every statement under the CARD Act of 2009.

What is the average credit card APR right now?

Per the Federal Reserve's G.19 consumer credit release of August 2026, the preliminary average APR on card accounts assessed interest for the second quarter of 2026 was 22.15 percent, and the average across all accounts was 20.94 percent. Those figures shift with each release, which is why this calculator defaults to 22 percent rather than promising a current market rate.

Is a credit card payoff calculator accurate to the penny?

No. It follows the standard convention of dividing the APR by 12 to get a monthly rate, while most US cards compound daily on the average daily balance, and it assumes no new purchases, no fees and a rate that never changes. Treat the months and interest figures as close estimates for planning and comparison, not as a prediction of the exact numbers on your statement.

Does a 0 percent intro APR change how fast I pay off the balance?

Yes. While the promotional rate is genuinely zero, every dollar of the payment reduces principal, and the months to payoff are simply the balance divided by the payment. Enter 0 as the APR to model the promotional period. Deferred-interest promotions work differently from true 0 percent offers, so check which kind your card carries before relying on that arithmetic.

Which credit card should I pay off first if I have several?

The CFPB's guidance on reducing debt is to pay off the highest interest rate debt as quickly as possible, because it is costing you the most. Running this calculator once per card, each with its own balance and APR, shows what every rate is costing you in months and in interest, and makes the case for aiming extra money at the most expensive balance.