Credit Card Payoff Calculator

What actually decides your payoff date

Three numbers set the whole plan: the balance, the APR, and the fixed amount you send every month. The balance is history and the APR is your issuer's decision, so the payment is the only one of the three you can change this month. That is why raising it moves the date so far. On a $6,000 balance at 22.8% APR, $200 a month takes 45 months and costs $2,968.29 in interest, while $250 a month clears it in 33 months for $2,087.05. The extra $50 buys back a full year.

The APR is the number people misread most often. The rate printed at the top of your statement is the purchase APR, and it is not the rate on a balance transfer, a promotional offer or a cash advance. If your card carries more than one rate, put each balance through this calculator on its own. An average hides the worst rate, and the worst rate is the one doing the damage. If a balance really is sitting at 0% for a promotional period, use the 0% chip: with no interest accruing, the payoff becomes plain division.

This page assumes no new charges on the card, and so does every other payoff calculator. Keep spending on it while you pay it down and the real date moves out by however much you spend, which is the quiet way a good plan stops being true.

The minimum payment is designed to be slow

A minimum payment is typically 1% to 3% of the balance plus the interest and fees for that period, subject to a floor of roughly $25 to $35. Because it is a percentage, it falls every month as the balance falls. The payment shrinks in step with the debt, the last stretch crawls, and the payoff date keeps sliding away from you. A fixed payment does the opposite: hold it flat while the balance drops and a larger slice of it goes to principal every single month.

The CARD Act of 2009 left you a neutral reference point for this. Every periodic statement carries a minimum payment warning box, and part of that box is the monthly payment that would clear your balance in 36 months. Nobody at the bank is telling you to aim for that figure, but it makes a decent floor. Pay less than it and your plan is slower than the one printed on your own statement. What that slowness costs is not small in aggregate. The CFPB's 2025 report on the consumer credit card market put interest assessed to US cardholders at $160 billion in 2024.

What an extra payment buys, in months and in dollars

Extra money behaves differently from your regular payment. The regular payment covers this month's interest first, and only what is left touches the principal. An extra payment has no interest to cover, so all of it hits principal, and principal removed today never accrues interest again for the rest of the plan. That is why a small addition does more than its size suggests. On a $6,000 balance at 22.8% APR, paying $200 a month:

• Extra $25 a month: 38 months instead of 45, and $521.25 less interest.
• Extra $50 a month: 33 months instead of 45, and $881.24 less interest.
• Extra $100 a month: 26 months instead of 45, and $1,348.19 less interest.
• Extra $200 a month: 18 months instead of 45, and $1,838.26 less interest.

The target block inverts the question. Instead of asking what a payment gets you, it asks what a deadline costs. On that same balance, finishing in 12 months takes $563.88 a month and $766.54 of interest, 24 months takes $313.65 and $1,527.41, and the 36-month figure your statement quotes is $231.64 and $2,338.67. Put all three next to your current plan and the decision usually makes itself. The middle row tends to be closer to affordable than it looks.

Two follow-up questions have their own tools. If you are paid every two weeks, the biweekly paycheck budget calculator shows where a fixed monthly payment comes from, including the two extra paychecks a year that make an obvious source for the extra amount. If the answer to "where do I find another $50 a month" is not obvious, a subscription cost audit is usually the fastest place to find it. And if your income moves month to month, size the payment with the irregular income budget calculator first, because a fixed card payment only works if it survives your worst month.

Turning the number into a plan you will actually follow

A payoff date is a forecast until something holds you to it. The mechanics are simple enough: set a standing transfer for the payment amount, dated for the day after payday and not the day before the bill is due, and park the card for the duration. The part people drop is the tracking, because a plan you cannot see is a plan you stop believing in around month four.

In Budget44 a credit card is a liability account, so the balance you typed above is the balance the app already carries. New spending on the card posts as a charge and raises what you owe, each payoff posts as a payment and lowers it, and those two transaction types keep the account honest without any guesswork. Set the payoff amount as a recurring monthly bill and it lands on the calendar as a projected transaction before it is due, so you see the month coming. The net worth screen does the motivating part: the liability shrinks month over month, and you can watch it go. All of it stays on the device, with no account and no bank login, and amounts are held as integer minor units so the totals match this page to the cent.