Credit Card Payoff Calculator

This credit card payoff calculator plans your payoff three ways. Fixed Payment mode takes the amount you can pay each month (plus any extra payment) and shows the payoff date and total interest. Target Date mode works backwards — pick when you want the balance gone and it solves for the required monthly payment. Minimum Payments Only mode shows the trajectory issuers design for you, which is the one to avoid.

Every mode is benchmarked against the minimum-payment path so the cost of going slow is always visible, and the chart plots your balance against the minimum-only curve month by month — an amortization view of your payoff plan.

Your card details never leave your browser. Juggling several cards? The Debt Payoff Optimizer sequences multiple balances by snowball or avalanche, and the Debt Consolidation Calculator tests whether one fixed-rate loan beats paying the cards directly. To see how daily compounding builds your balance in the first place, use the Credit Card Interest Calculator.

The average card APR has hovered above 20% since 2023, per Federal Reserve G.19 data. Here's what a $6,000 balance at 22.9% looks like under each strategy:

• Minimum payments only (2% of balance, $25 floor, starting around $122/month): the payment shrinks as the balance shrinks, progress crawls, and the balance effectively never pays off on a human timescale — the simulation runs past 100 years with tens of thousands in interest. This is the minimum payment trap.
• Fixed $250/month: debt-free in 33 months (2 yr 9 mo) with $2,101 in total interest.
• Target: 24 months: required payment $314/month, total interest $1,535.

The gap between $250 and $314 a month is $64 — and it buys you nine fewer months in debt and about $566 less interest. That's the general shape of card payoff math: each extra dollar early in the schedule avoids compounding at 20%+, so modest payment increases produce outsized savings.

A typical issuer minimum is 1–3% of your statement balance with a $25–$35 floor. At a 22.9% APR, your balance accrues about 1.9% in interest every month — so a 2% minimum payment leaves roughly 0.1% of the balance going to principal. That's the entire mechanism of the trap: the payment is calibrated to cover interest plus a sliver.

This is why the CARD Act requires issuers to print a payoff disclosure on every statement showing how long minimums take, as described in the CFPB's minimum payment warning explainer. Any fixed payment — even the same dollar amount as your first minimum — beats the minimum schedule, because the minimum shrinks as the balance falls while a fixed payment keeps its full force to the end.