Credit Cards Payoff Calculator

How This Calculator Works

Credit cards charge interest daily but almost all issuers state it as an APR and compound it monthly on statements, so this calculator divides your APR by 12 to get a monthly rate and applies it to your remaining balance each month, the same simplified approach used by most online payoff calculators. Each month your fixed payment first covers that month's interest, and whatever is left over reduces the principal. We assume you stop adding new charges to the card — this is a payoff projection, not a budget for ongoing spending.

Why Your Payment Must Beat the Interest

If your monthly payment is less than or equal to the first month's interest charge, the balance will never shrink — it grows instead, which is how minimum payments trap people in debt for decades. The "minimum payment to ever pay it off" figure above is the smallest payment that results in a slowly declining balance; in practice you'll want to pay meaningfully more than that to clear the debt in a reasonable time.

Compare Payoff Strategies

If you're juggling several cards, try running each balance through this calculator individually to see which one accrues interest fastest, then direct extra payments there first (the avalanche method). For a broader view across multiple debts at once, including loans, the debt payoff calculator can help you sequence payments, and the debt consolidation calculator can show whether rolling balances into a single lower-rate loan would save you money.