Student loan calculator
The months between leaving study and the first payment change what you owe. Set the grace period and how interest is treated during it.
Check your loan agreement. The three arrangements cost different amounts.
The balance when you leave study.
Counted from the first payment, not from the day you left study.
Months between leaving study and the first payment falling due.
Results
Monthly payment
$375.32
Starting 6 months after you leave study.
- Interest during the grace period
- $1,054.19
- Added to the balance before repayment starts
- Balance when repayment starts
- $33,054
- Payments
- 120 (10 years)
- Interest over the repayment term
- $11,984.65
- Interest altogether
- $13,038.83
- Grace period and repayment together
- Total repaid
- $45,039
- Over 10 years 6 months from leaving study
Capitalised interest becomes principal, so you pay interest on it for the rest of the loan. Paying it off before repayment starts avoids that, which is what the second option shows.
Assumptions
- The rate is annual and fixed. It is divided by twelve to reach a monthly rate, for the grace period and the repayment term alike.
- Capitalised interest compounds monthly during the grace period and joins the balance once, when repayment begins.
- Payments are equal and monthly. Income driven plans, where the payment tracks your earnings and can be smaller than the interest, are not modelled.
- Forgiveness, cancellation, repayment assistance and interest relief programmes are not applied. Any of them changes the result substantially.
- Government student loans in Canada and the United States are made up of separate pieces that can carry different rates. Run each piece on its own if the rates differ.
- No fee is charged for early repayment, and any payment above the scheduled amount is outside what this page shows.
Sources
- Repay your student loan, Government of Canada, checked 30 August 2026
- Student loan repayment plans, Federal Student Aid, United States Department of Education, checked 30 August 2026
Interest rates on government student loans are set by legislation and change from year to year, so the rate is yours to enter from your own loan statement.
How this works
A student loan behaves like any other instalment loan once repayment starts. What makes it different is the gap before that, the grace period, which typically runs six months from the day you stop studying full time. Whether that gap is free depends on the loan.
Three arrangements are common. Interest may be charged and added to the balance, which is called capitalisation, and it is the expensive one: the interest becomes principal, so you then pay interest on the interest for the whole repayment term. Interest may be charged but payable as it accrues, so the balance stays flat if you keep up. Or it may not be charged at all, which is how a subsidised loan works and how the federal portion of a Canada Student Loan has been treated since interest on it was removed.
The size of the effect scales with the balance and the rate. On a thirty thousand dollar balance at six percent, six months of capitalised interest adds roughly nine hundred dollars, and that nine hundred goes on to earn interest for another decade. Paying it during the grace period, if you can, removes both the addition and everything it would have earned.
Term length works the same way as any other loan: a longer term lowers the monthly payment and raises the interest. Where student loans differ is that many borrowers can move between repayment plans later, so the term chosen at the start is rarely permanent. Run a couple of lengths here to see the range before you pick one.