Student loan refinance calculator
Most calculators only tell you what you save. This one also works out what you give up, and says so plainly when refinancing would be a mistake.
Estimates, not financial advice. Check anything that matters with your loan servicer before you act.
Why this calculator asks more questions than the others
A refinance calculator that asks only for your balance, your rate and your new rate can produce exactly one kind of answer: a savings figure. It has no way to produce any other kind, because it never collected the information that would be needed.
That is not a small omission. Whether refinancing is sensible depends almost entirely on facts those calculators do not ask for: what kind of loans you hold, when they were disbursed, who you work for, what your income is, and how many qualifying payments you have already made. A public service employee forty payments into forgiveness and a private-sector earner with only private loans are in completely different situations, and a tool that cannot tell them apart will give them the same answer.
What refinancing permanently ends
Refinancing is the one student loan decision that cannot be reversed. Choosing the wrong repayment plan is recoverable. Missing a certification is recoverable. Spending years in the wrong job for forgiveness is recoverable. Converting a federal loan into a private one is not: there is no mechanism to return, at any price.
What ends the day it completes:
- Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Private loans cannot qualify, and prior qualifying payments do not transfer.
- Income-driven repayment. A federal payment can be recalculated against your income for the life of the loan, in either direction. A private payment is fixed by contract.
- Deferment and forbearance as entitlements. Unemployment and economic hardship deferment are statutory. Private hardship programmes are lender policy, usually capped at a few months, and can be withdrawn.
- Death and disability discharge. Federal loans are cancelled on the death of the borrower and can be discharged on total and permanent disability. Private lenders vary, and terms can change.
How this student loan refinance calculator works
You enter six figures about the loan you hold and the offer you are weighing: what you pay a month now, the balance left, your current interest rate, how long it has left to run, and the rate and term you have been quoted. That is the same set a lender's calculator collects, and on its own it produces the same answer, a new monthly payment and a difference.
Two further questions turn that into something you can act on. Your annual income determines what an income-driven federal payment would be and whether forgiveness is realistically in reach. Your employer determines whether Public Service Loan Forgiveness applies at all. With those, the tool runs up to four paths beside each other: staying on your current plan, moving to the best federal plan you qualify for, refinancing everything privately, and, where you hold both kinds, refinancing only your private loans while leaving the federal ones untouched. Every column carries a cost in today's money alongside its nominal total, because a dollar of interest saved next year and a balance forgiven in year twenty are not the same dollar.
Nothing is transmitted anywhere. The calculation runs entirely in your browser, there is no account and no sign-up, and your figures are never sent to a server or passed to a lender.
Using a student loan refinance calculator for multiple loans
Most borrowers do not hold one loan. They hold a subsidised loan, an unsubsidised loan, perhaps a grad PLUS loan, and often a private loan on top, at four different rates. A student loan refinance calculator that accepts a single balance and a single rate makes you average them by hand before you begin, and averaging hides the fact that matters most: which of those loans are federal.
This tool takes a total balance and a weighted average rate, which is what a refinance offer is actually written against, then asks how much of that total is private. That split is the whole game. It is what makes the fourth path possible, and that path is frequently the one with the lowest projected cost: refinance the private balance, where nothing is at stake, and leave the federal balance federal.
If your loans are already private
Then this is an ordinary rate comparison, and the tool says so rather than manufacturing a warning. There is no forgiveness to forfeit, no income-driven payment to lose and no deferment entitlement at risk, so the question reduces to total cost across the full term. A private student loan refinance calculator still has to get that comparison right, and the trap is the term. An offer that lowers your monthly payment by stretching eight remaining years into fifteen frequently costs more in total than the loan it replaces. This tool compares the loans you already hold against the offer and reports plainly when the offer is the more expensive of the two, including when a lower monthly payment is the reason it looks attractive.
How this compares to a lender's calculator
Lender and comparison-site calculators are competent at the arithmetic they perform. The limitation is what they collect. A calculator built to produce a quote has no reason to ask who employs you, and it cannot price something it never asked about, so forgiveness enters those projections at zero by default. That is not a bug in their arithmetic. It is a consequence of the inputs, and it points one way.
It is also worth knowing that several lenders people still search for have left this market altogether. Wells Fargo stopped accepting new private student loan applications on 28 January 2021 and sold its portfolio. Discover stopped accepting student loan refinance applications on 1 February 2024 and sold its book. First Republic was placed in FDIC receivership on 1 May 2023, its assets went to JPMorgan Chase, and its refinance programme is closed. If you came looking for one of those calculators, the product behind it is no longer offered, and a figure from an archived page will not reflect a rate anyone can quote you today.
The 2026 rules this tool is built on
Federal student loan law changed substantially in 2025 and 2026, and a great deal of the advice still circulating predates it. The SAVE plan was vacated and is gone. The Repayment Assistance Plan took effect on 1 July 2026 and works unlike any previous income-driven plan. PAYE and ICR are closed to new enrolment and terminate in 2028. Loans disbursed on or after 1 July 2026 use a longer Tiered Standard plan rather than the familiar ten-year Standard plan. Income-driven forgiveness became federally taxable on 1 January 2026.
Every one of those changes moves the answer, and several move it in the direction of staying federal. Each is cited to its regulation on the sources page, and every formula this tool uses is written out on the methodology page so you can check it yourself.
Common questions
Does refinancing federal student loans lose PSLF?
Yes, and permanently. Refinancing replaces federal loans with a new private loan. Private loans can never qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and qualifying payments already made cannot be transferred to the new loan or restored later.
Is income-driven forgiveness taxable?
Since 1 January 2026, yes at the federal level. The American Rescue Plan provision that excluded discharged student debt from gross income expired on 31 December 2025 and was not extended. PSLF forgiveness remains tax free, as do death and total and permanent disability discharges. State treatment varies.
Can I refinance some loans and keep the rest federal?
Yes. Refinancing is not all or nothing. Borrowers who hold both private and federal loans can refinance only the private ones and leave the federal loans untouched, which keeps every federal protection in place. This calculator models that as a separate path.
What is the Repayment Assistance Plan?
RAP is the income-driven repayment plan created by the 2025 reconciliation law and effective 1 July 2026. The payment is a percentage of the borrower’s entire adjusted gross income rather than of discretionary income, with no poverty-guideline deduction, less fifty dollars a month per dependent, and a ten dollar monthly minimum. Forgiveness comes after 360 qualifying payments over at least thirty years.
Can this student loan refinance calculator handle multiple loans?
Yes. Enter your total balance and the weighted average rate across your loans, which is what a refinance offer is written against, then say how much of that total is private. The tool models the federal and private portions separately, which is what lets it show the hybrid path: refinancing only the private balance and leaving the federal loans federal. That path frequently has the lowest projected cost and is the one a single-balance calculator cannot produce.
Is this a private student loan refinance calculator too?
Yes. Select Private for the loan type and the tool treats it as an ordinary rate comparison, because no federal protection is at stake. It compares the loans you already hold against the offer over the full term and says when the offer costs more in total, including the common case where a lower monthly payment is really a longer term. It will decline to call an offer favourable when the arithmetic does not support it.
How does this compare to a SoFi student loan refinance calculator, or one from NerdWallet or Bankrate?
Those tools compute the payment arithmetic correctly. The difference is the inputs. A calculator built around producing a quote does not ask who employs you or how many qualifying payments you have made, so Public Service Loan Forgiveness and income-driven forgiveness cannot be priced and enter the projection at zero. This calculator asks for those two facts and puts a present-value figure on what refinancing would forfeit, then compares that against the interest saved. It is not affiliated with any lender or comparison site.
Can I use this with a Navy Federal, Earnest or Citizens Bank student loan refinance calculator quote?
Yes. This calculator is lender-neutral: enter the rate and term you were actually quoted and it models that offer. Which lender made the offer does not change the arithmetic. What changes it is whether the loans being refinanced are federal. Terms do differ between lenders, some offering only a few fixed lengths and others a range up to twenty years, and that matters more than most people expect: a twenty year term at a lower rate can cost more in total than a ten year term at a higher one. This tool reports total cost rather than the monthly figure, and it does not publish any lender's current terms because they change faster than this page is reviewed. It is not affiliated with any lender.
What should a student loan refinance calculator comparison actually compare?
Most comparisons put your current loan next to one refinance offer, which is two columns when the decision can have four. This tool models staying on your current repayment plan, moving to the best federal plan you qualify for, refinancing everything privately, and, where you hold both federal and private loans, refinancing only the private ones while leaving the federal ones alone. The second and fourth columns are the ones usually missing, and the fourth frequently has the lowest projected cost. Every column carries a cost in today's money, so a dollar saved next year and a balance forgiven in year twenty are not counted as the same dollar.
Does this calculator check the conditions Dave Ramsey sets for refinancing?
Ramsey Solutions publishes four: refinance only for a lower interest rate, without extending the repayment period, keeping a fixed rate, and paying no fees. This tool checks the first three from the figures you enter. It compares total cost rather than the monthly payment, so an offer that lowers the payment by extending the term is reported as more expensive when it is. It flags a variable rate offer as a projection that holds a rate flat which will not stay flat. Fees it cannot see, because they are in your loan documents. On federal loans it also prices what the Ramsey guidance describes but does not quantify: the federal protections that refinancing ends permanently.
Which lenders no longer offer student loan refinancing?
Several that people still search for. Wells Fargo stopped accepting new private student loan applications on 28 January 2021 and sold its portfolio. Discover stopped accepting student loan refinance applications on 1 February 2024 and sold its book. First Republic was placed in FDIC receivership on 1 May 2023 and its assets were acquired by JPMorgan Chase; its refinance programme is closed. If you are looking for one of those calculators, the product behind it is no longer sold, so any figure it produced is not a rate available today.