Income-Driven Repayment Calculator
Income-Driven Repayment Calculator
IBR, PAYE and ICR payments from your income, family size and loan balance.
IBR, PAYE and ICR payments from your income, family size and loan balance.
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Professional Financial Tools
8/25/2026
Blend the rates across your loans. 2026-27 Direct rates: undergrad 6.52%, grad 8.07%, PLUS 9.07%.
You, your spouse, and any dependents. A larger family size raises your poverty-line deduction and lowers your payment.
The share of the federal poverty guideline protected from your payment calculation.
10% of your $22,540 discretionary income, divided by 12.
Your AGI of $55,000 minus 150% of the 2026 federal poverty guideline for a household of 2 ($21,640), which protects $32,460.
What you would pay on the standard plan. If this is lower than your IDR payment, the standard plan is cheaper.
Any remaining balance is forgiven at the end of the repayment term. Forgiveness under PSLF is tax-free; forgiveness under other IDR plans may be taxable income depending on the law in force that year.
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Open calculatorIncome-driven repayment plans are usually described as "a percentage of your income," which is close enough to be misleading. Your payment is actually a percentage of your discretionary income — income above a protected floor tied to the federal poverty guideline for your household size — and that payment is capped at what you'd pay on a standard 10-year plan. Two households with the same salary can owe very different IDR payments if their family size differs.
This calculator runs the actual formula, then projects it forward year by year to your forgiveness horizon — including the uncomfortable possibility that your balance grows before it's forgiven, which is a real and common outcome on these plans, not a bug.
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Worked example, matching this calculator's defaults — $45,000 balance, 6.52% rate (2026-27 undergraduate Direct rate), $55,000 AGI, household of 2, 10% plan, 150% poverty-line protection:
At this income the IDR payment is well below the standard plan — the more common case for borrowers with moderate income relative to their loan balance. The gap narrows or disappears entirely as income rises, which is the next section.
The 10-year standard payment isn't just a comparison point — it's a hard ceiling on income-driven payments. As your income rises (this calculator lets you set an assumed annual growth rate), your percentage-of-discretionary-income payment rises too, until it hits that ceiling. Once it does, an income-driven plan stops saving you anything month to month, though it may still lead to forgiveness of any remaining balance at the end of the term.
At the defaults, amortizing the $45,000 balance over 20 years at $187.83/month (recalculated annually as income grows 3%/year) pays it down to a forgiven balance of $14,204.57, having paid $82,605.86 in total over the period. Whether your own numbers show a shrinking balance like this or a growing one depends entirely on whether your monthly payment covers the interest accruing — when it doesn't, the balance climbs even while you make every payment on time. That's not a sign anything went wrong; it's the mechanism these plans use to keep payments affordable in the low-income years, with the shortfall made up by eventual forgiveness.
Forgiveness under Public Service Loan Forgiveness is tax-free. Forgiveness under other income-driven plans may be treated as taxable income in the year it's forgiven, depending on the law in force at that time — a detail worth checking with a tax professional as your forgiveness date approaches, since federal treatment of IDR forgiveness has changed before and could change again.
Your payment is a percentage of discretionary income, which is your adjusted gross income minus a multiple of the federal poverty guideline for your household size and state. The result is capped at what a standard 10-year plan would charge, which is why very high earners see their IDR payment converge on the standard amount.
Adjusted gross income minus a multiple of the federal poverty guideline for your family size and state of residence. Because the poverty guideline scales with household size, a larger household produces a lower discretionary income and therefore a lower monthly payment at the same salary.
Income-driven plans cap the payment at the standard 10-year amount. Once your income is high enough that the percentage-of-discretionary-income formula would exceed that cap, the cap binds and the two payments match — at which point the plan offers no monthly savings.
It depends on the plan and on how you file. Filing separately generally excludes spousal income from the calculation on most plans, but it also forfeits certain tax benefits. The comparison is worth running both ways before choosing a filing status.