easyMcalc

Repaid out of income, written off at the end of the termMethod checked 11 September 2026

Student loan calculator

An estimate for information only, not financial advice. How this is worked out

Your loan
The two countries run different schemes, not different rates on the same scheme, so the questions change with this field.
Plan 1 is a course started before September 2012, and every Northern Ireland loan. Plan 2 is England or Wales from September 2012, and Wales stayed on it after 2023. Plan 4 is Student Awards Agency Scotland, and Plan 5 is England from August 2023. A master's or doctoral loan is on the Postgraduate plan whatever year it started.
You repay a share of what you earn above £2,448 a month, which is £29,385 a year. Nothing below that is repaid at all. Repayment thresholds for this plan, 6 April 2026. Published by Student Loans Company, Repaying your student loan: how much you repay
Optional. This plan is written off 30 years after that April, and giving the year lets the page name it. Left empty, the projection runs the full term.
Left at nothing on purpose. The thresholds and the interest rate are held at today's published figures for the whole projection, so a pay rise here means income outrunning them for ever.

What this loan costs

Written off, never repaid £156,707.61

Monthly now
£42
Paid in all
£15,120
Interest charged
£126,827.61

Interest charged is larger than everything repaid, and that is not a contradiction: it was added to a balance that is cancelled rather than settled, so most of it is never paid by anyone.

Interest on Plan 2 depends on income, and at the income you entered it is 4.82% a year. The page holds that rate for the whole projection, though in reality it moves with your income and with the index every September.

Plan 2 interest by income, 1 September 2026. Published by Student Loans Company, How interest is calculated: Plan 2

Year by year

PeriodIncomeA monthPaid that yearInterestBalance
Year 1£35,000£42£504£2,206.29£46,702.29
Year 2£35,000£42£504£2,290.17£48,488.46
Year 3£35,000£42£504£2,378.18£50,362.64
Year 4£35,000£42£504£2,470.55£52,329.19
Year 5£35,000£42£504£2,567.45£54,392.64
Year 6£35,000£42£504£2,669.15£56,557.79
Year 7£35,000£42£504£2,775.83£58,829.62
Year 8£35,000£42£504£2,887.80£61,213.42
Year 9£35,000£42£504£3,005.25£63,714.67
Year 10£35,000£42£504£3,128.52£66,339.19
Year 11£35,000£42£504£3,257.86£69,093.05
Year 12£35,000£42£504£3,393.57£71,982.62
Year 13£35,000£42£504£3,535.95£75,014.57
Year 14£35,000£42£504£3,685.38£78,195.95
Year 15£35,000£42£504£3,842.16£81,534.11
Year 16£35,000£42£504£4,006.66£85,036.77
Year 17£35,000£42£504£4,179.28£88,712.05
Year 18£35,000£42£504£4,360.38£92,568.43
Year 19£35,000£42£504£4,550.42£96,614.85
Year 20£35,000£42£504£4,749.82£100,860.67
Year 21£35,000£42£504£4,959.05£105,315.72
Year 22£35,000£42£504£5,178.61£109,990.33
Year 23£35,000£42£504£5,408.95£114,895.28
Year 24£35,000£42£504£5,650.67£120,041.95
Year 25£35,000£42£504£5,904.27£125,442.22
Year 26£35,000£42£504£6,170.40£131,108.62
Year 27£35,000£42£504£6,449.64£137,054.26
Year 28£35,000£42£504£6,742.63£143,292.89
Year 29£35,000£42£504£7,050.06£149,838.95
Year 30£35,000£42£504£7,372.66£156,707.61

The table stops where the term does. What is left on the last row is what is written off.

A student loan is not a loan in the ordinary sense

Every other calculator on this site answers the same question: here is a balance and a rate, how long and how much. A government student loan does not fit that shape, and using an ordinary loan calculator on one produces a number that is not merely imprecise but about the wrong thing.

In the United Kingdom the repayment is a share of income above a threshold. It has nothing to do with the size of the balance. Two people with the same salary and wildly different debts pay exactly the same amount each month, and the only thing the balance decides is whether anything is left when the term runs out. That is why the figure at the top of this page for most Plan 2 and Plan 5 borrowers is not a payoff date but a write-off.

In the United States the plan you are on decides almost everything. A fixed payment over a term set by the balance behaves like a normal loan. The income-based plan does not: its payment comes from a band of income, and interest that the payment fails to cover is not charged at all.

Why the balance can grow and it may not matter

On a United Kingdom plan with a large balance and an ordinary salary, the interest each month is larger than the repayment. The balance rises for years, sometimes for the whole term. Borrowers find this alarming and the alarm is misplaced: the amount repaid is decided entirely by income, and a balance that grows changes nothing except the size of the number eventually cancelled.

The practical consequence runs the other way from what people expect. Voluntary overpayments on a loan heading for write-off are money handed over for nothing, because the alternative was never paying it. The exception is the borrower who will clear the balance anyway, and the projection on this page is what tells the two apart. Look at whether the last row of the table reaches zero.

The newer American plan removes this problem by statute. Interest a payment does not cover is not charged, so the balance never rises, and a month whose payment barely touches the principal still takes a fixed amount off it. A borrower used to the plans this one replaced, where unpaid interest piled up and was capitalised, should read that twice.

Where the numbers come from

Everything except your own figures is read from the publication that sets it. The American rates come from the Department of Education's annual notice in the Federal Register, which is the document that announces them rather than a summary of one, and it reprints every year back to 2013. That is why this page asks which year your loan was first paid out: almost nobody remembers their rate and almost everybody remembers the year.

The United Kingdom thresholds and rates come from the Student Loans Company's own guidance on gov.uk. The repayment percentages, the write-off terms and the American statutory formulas are in the source list at the foot of the page, each pointing at the regulation or the guidance rather than at an article about it.

Common questions

Why is the pay rise field set to nothing?

Because the thresholds and the interest rate are held at today's published figures for the whole projection, and they do not stay still in reality: the thresholds change every April and the rate every September, both following indices nobody can forecast. Holding all three still reads the answer in today's money. Entering a pay rise while the threshold stays put assumes your income outruns it for ever, which is not what has happened historically, and the projection will flatter you.

My Plan 1 loan was taken out before 2006. Is the write-off right?

No, and the page will not pretend otherwise. A Plan 1 loan first paid before September 2006 is written off when you turn sixty-five rather than after twenty-five years, and an older Plan 4 loan has a similar rule. Both need your age and this page does not ask for it, so both fall outside what is modelled here.

Which American plan am I actually on?

The law changed in 2025 and the regulations implementing it took effect in July 2026. The older income-driven plans are closing to new borrowers and the income-contingent plan ends in 2028. This page models the two plans that remain rather than the ones being wound down, because a calculator for a plan with a closing date is maintenance with nothing at the end of it. Your servicer can tell you which plan your loans are on today.

Does this include the fee taken off my loan?

No. An American loan has a fee deducted from what reaches the school, so you owe more than you received. It does not get added to the balance later, and this page starts from the balance you enter, which already reflects it. The full list of what is left out is under the method note.

Is anything I type stored?

No. The calculation happens on the server as part of rendering the page, nothing is written down, and the access log for this site drops the query string precisely so that the numbers you enter are never recorded.

Sources

Every rate, threshold and deadline on this page comes from the publication that sets it.

How this is worked out

The repayment is a share of your income above the published monthly threshold, nine per cent on Plans 1, 2, 4 and 5 and six per cent on a Postgraduate Loan, rounded down to a whole pound the way payroll rounds it. Interest is added monthly, which is what the Student Loans Company says it does. The threshold and the rate are held at today's published figures for the whole projection, because uprating either would mean forecasting an index. Anything still owed when the term ends is written off.

Your own account with the lender is what governs, and a projection running decades ahead is a description of today's rules rather than a forecast.

What the projection leaves out:

  • Loan fees, which come out of what is paid to the school rather than being added to the balance
  • Deferment, forbearance and any other break in repayment, including time spent studying
  • Public service loan forgiveness and every other forgiveness programme
  • Consolidating loans, which changes the rate and restarts the clock
  • Tax on a balance that is cancelled or forgiven
  • Holding more than one United Kingdom plan at once, which has rules of its own for splitting a single deduction
  • Voluntary overpayments, which on a plan due to be written off are often money thrown away
  • Inflation. Every figure is in today's money at today's face value, and over forty years that is a large thing to leave out