Auto Loan Calculator
How do I use the auto loan calculator?
Nothing could be easier.
An easy-to-use car loan calculator with a printable payment schedule. Optionally considers taxes, amount down, trade-in, and maintenance. APR calculation. Also:
- Insurance, registration & fees
- Export to XLSX/DOCX files
- Impact of extra payments
Learn all the details about the cost of car ownership.
- Click clear and enter values for:
- Amount of Loan
- Number of Payments
- Annual Interest Rate
- Optionally set the dates.
- Leave Loan Payment Amount set to 0.
- Click "Calc", or
- "Payment Schedule" for a detailed payment report
- Finito!
Auto Loan Payment Schedule
A car loan schedule will calculate the payment amount and also show you the breakdown between principal and interest and possibly other fees and charges. Note, with nearly all calculators on this site; you may use the "Payment Schedule" button or a "Print Preview" button in place of the "Calc" button. More below
Information
Recent changes and enhancements — Nov. 2023
- Export auto loan schedule's data to Excel/xlsx file. Click on "Print Preview" then "Continue" or "Skip" past the title page.
- Save auto loan schedule's data to Word/docx file. Saving to a .docx gives you the opportunity to alter the style of the schedule, to add notes, or incorporate the schedule into a report.
VERY IMPORTANT - You must enter a 0 if you want a value calculated. A few users have wondered why this is. They want to know why the calculator does not just recalculate the last calculation if they change one of the inputs such as the amount of the loan.
| Cheat Sheet | ||
|---|---|---|
| Years | Biweekly | Monthly |
| 4 | 104 | 48 |
| 5 | 130 | 60 |
| 6 | 156 | 72 |
| 10 | 260 | 120 |
| 15 | 390 | 180 |
| 20 | 520 | 240 |
| 25 | 650 | 300 |
| 30 | 780 | 360 |
The calculator operates this way so you can create a payment schedule using whatever inputs you want to use. This behavior is a feature! By not automatically recalculating a payment, this calculator lets those users that do not have a "typical" auto loan create a custom schedule.
ABOUT DATES - This calculator now allows irregular length first periods. That is, the calculator calculates the exact amount of interest due even when the initial period is shorter or longer than the other scheduled periods. This will result in payment amounts as well as interest charges that do not match other calculators. If you want to match other calculators, then set the "Loan Date" and "1st Payment Date" so that the time between them equals one full period as set in "Payment Frequency." Example: If the "Loan Date" is May 15th and the "Payment Frequency" is "Monthly," then the "1st Payment Date" should be set to June 15th, that is IF you want a conventional interest calculation. See the end of the "Help" text for some more details.
Of course, you can always leave the dates set as they are when the calculator loads.
Auto Loan Amortization with a Difference
Don't let this page's introduction mislead you.
When designing this auto loan amortization calculator, my objective was to create a calculator that would give you, the user, the ability to estimate the total cost of ownership.
The car financing is only part of the story: Economics of Car Use
To get a complete picture, one has to also consider:
- sales tax
- insurance premiums
- maintenance
- periodic registration fees
- loan application fees
This calculator will account for all these potential costs. (More about the economics of car use.)
What questions will an auto loan calculator answer for me?
- What price car can I afford?
- How much will my car payment be?
- What car loan rate do I need?
- How much to put down on a car?
- How many months to finance a car?
- How much will extra payments save in interest?
This auto loan calculator is not limited to solving car loan problems, of course. It can be a useful tool whenever money is borrowed to purchase an item requiring a down payment.
Steven says:
I love the Auto Loan Calculator! However when I enter the URL it takes me to the comment page instead of the calculator. I have even tried copying and pasting the Specialized URL link directly to my desktop, but the link will intermittently return me to the calculator, but usually the discussion instead. Could you send me a download of the calculator program for my PC? Thank you in advance for your time.
Karl says:
Hello, AccurateCalculators.com is back up and running. I’m sorry for the problems you experienced. An automatically applied update went wrong and it eventually brought down the entier site on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I could not figure out the problem and get it fixed until late Tuesday (eastern time USA). Thank you for reporting the problem.
Lisa says:
I am wanting to use auto loan calculator. I see where I can put our processing fee. When I add the fee, it puts -$ amount under one of the following, trade-in, down pmt. Am I doing something wrong. Thank you for this calculator.
Karl says:
Are you saying that you enter a fee in "Loan Fees or Charges" on the "Options" tab and it becomes part of the "down payment" or "trade-in value"? That should not be and it does not happen for me.
Please try again, and after you click calc, copy and paste to a reply to this comment, the text in the custom URL box found below the calculator. This will give me your inputs and settings so that I can test.
The only place you should see the fee is in the APR calculation results at the bottom of the schedule if you choose that option as well
Thanks.
Lisa Russell says:
Under loan fee and charges im wanting to put 100$ but when i do it does not calculate it into the total cost.
Karl says:
I see what you mean. I have to see what went wrong. I’ll try to release a fix over the weekend. Thanks for taking the time to let me know.
Karl says:
Lisa, the problem with the loan fee is fixed. If there is a fee, the calculator will show the customized schedule for auto loans which includes the fee amount. (It always was included on the front of the calculator itself in the total price calculation.)
You may have to perform a hard refresh of the page if you don’t see the change right away:
Depending on your operating system all you need to do is the following key combination:
Above, from Refresh Your Cache.
Thank you for reporting the bug. I’m curious, is this calculation a one off for you, or will you be using the calculator regularly, perhaps for business?
Shea says:
I have tried several different tools online including doing the calculation out by hand, but whenever I compare the monthly payment to the “truth-in-lending” forms for our different vehicles, the amount is always off by a small amount, typically around 30 cents or so. Any ideas why that might be? I just cannot figure it out.
Karl says:
Let me first say that this apr calculator on this site creates a printable truth-in-lending act disclosure statement that I have tested against every example in the U.S. Truth-in-Lending Act.
As to your question, I don’t know how to answer it. Are you saying the forms you are looking at calculated the payment amount and a loan calculator gives you a different result? That doesn’t really matter. What’s important is if you agree in the interest calculation. If you agree in the interest, the 30 cents or so difference will be accounted for by rounding the last payment amount. A loan payment amount itself can be any amount that the lender and borrower agree on. That’s why the calculators on this site allow users to enter a payment the the calculators will create payment schedules with the right interest amounts calculated. One observation, however, the loan that has a 30 cent higher payment will cost the borrower slightly less than the loan with the lower payment, assuming the interest gets calculated between the two loans using the same method. This is because the extra 30 cents will be used to reduce the principal balance which will lower the interest due in the next period.
Jeff Franklin says:
Hello,
When I am using the auto loan calculator I am wonder if when I use the “options” tab to enter Loan Fees if those fees are incurring interest at the interest rate selected for the loan. Where I’m from the lenders charge interest on these fees for the duration of the loan. I can see that these have an affect on the APR which makes sense. I just want to make sure the interest is correct and if not how do I make this calculator charge the interest on the fees as well.
Thanks
Karl says:
The loan fees are assumed to be an up-front charge and payable at the time the loan is taken out. Therefore, the fee is not added to the balance and it has no impact on the interest charges.
You can circumvent this behavior by adding the fee to the loan balance. After all, if you have to pay interest on the fee, then the fee must not have been paid, and therefore, it’s effectively part of the balance due.
Does that work for you?
JEFF says:
I can do that, however, the APR would not be accurate in that case. I need an option where these fees are subject to finance and allows the correct APR to be calculated on the loan. Right now the only real way to do this on your calculator would be to take the fees and calculate the interest over the term of the loan, then add the interest of the fees to the original fee amount and then place that in the Option/fee section.
Karl says:
Are you in the US? And are you speaking about the APR as defined by the Truth-in-Lending Act (Reg. Z)? If so, then in fact it would be accurate.
Please see APR Calculator for some background on the US APR calculation.
The APR calculation does not consider interest or principal (or fees) separately per se. The APR is an internal-rate-of-return calculation and at it’s core it take’s the loan amount and the amount that is paid until the loan is paid off. If there are fees that are paid off with the loan, then the fees are added to the loan balance. If the fees are not paid off with the loan, they are deducted from the loan amount. The borrower may borrow $36,000 for a car and there might be $500 in fees which are due the lender which are paid up front, then the lender, from an APR point of view, didn’t really lend the borrower $35,000, they lent them $34,500 because the borrower gave them $500 back. The APR calculation then looks at the total payments required by the lender to amortize the loan. Perhaps the payments total $43,200 (48×900) Those payments are what is use by the APR calculation. It doesn’t matter what part of the payment is interest.
Very interesting, right? This is why the APR calculation is good for consumer. The calculation is about what is borrowed, and what is paid? Simple.
Lizzet Gonzalez says:
That’s an amazing calculator but it would be incredible that it would be available as a widget for HTML Websites! Could it be possible?
Karl says:
Thank you. Glad that you think it’s amazing!
As to making it into a widget, I have so many projects lined up that must be completed first, even if I agreed to do that, it would be years away.
Jose Silva says:
Hi, I have installed the plugin in wordpress but I cannot find where it is. It doesn’t show up on the left sidebar.
Karl says:
There’s more to setting the calculator up than just installing it to your plugin folder. Did you see the documentation about the 3 methods you can use for getting it to display on your website? Which method did you use? Please send me the details.
Octavio Espinosa says:
Hi, congratulations, it is an amazing tool! I would like to know how I can translate it to Spanish. It would be great to have it in Spanish.
Thanks
Karl says:
Hi Octavio, thank you for your compliment. And thank you for offering to provide a Spanish translation. Presently, I’m preparing a major update to the website (mostly technical stuff that will allow me to make enhancements going forward). Can we discuss this early next year after I free up some time? If you have a website, can you provide a link to it please?
Logan says:
Hi Karl,
I’m using the Auto Loan Calculator. I’m trying to set the shortcode parameter of sc_currency=”??” to South African Rand. Which currency number is South African Rand or is there a list I can go to somewhere which contains the currencies and they’re respective numbers?
Thanx for the awesome plugin.
Kind regards
Logan
Karl says:
Hi,
You’re welcome.
The currency symbols are documented in the file “currency_and_date_conventions.txt” located in the plugin’s directory.
KENNETH T EMBRY says:
Do you have a calculator that performs the Calculation use the Rule of 78 where the the total interest paid during the term is added to the intial pincipal balance and interest is calculated on the higher initial balance..
Example:
Loan: $15,459.90
Interst: 22.9%
Term: 66 months
Pmyt: $414.70
Total Interest on Loan: $11,910.30
Total of PaymentsL $27,370.20
Amortization Schdule:
1st Pymt: -$414.70 $26,976.23
The loan interest for the term is added to the loan amount and the monthly loan payments are deducted against the total payments to be made over the loan term…
Hope that I am clear on what I am looking for…
Thank you in advance…
Karl says:
No, I don’t have such a calculator.
Brandon says:
Would you be able to explain how the “Long Period Interest Options?: Amortized” affects the Loan Payment amount? For example, if the first period is 45 days instead of a normal 1 month, how do those extra 15 days get applied to the payments, when the option selected is “Amortized”.
Karl says:
I’m not sure I understand what you are asking, but I’ll take a stab at answering.
If all periods are the same length (a calculator does not allow the user to set origination date and first payment date) the equation for payment amount will result in what most people call a "normal" payment. If the calculator allows for a longer initial period than the other period, the extra day’s interest can be collected on the origination date or the first payment date and the payment amount do will remain "normal."
The amortization option will increase the "normal" payment amount for all payments due by a small amount to cover the odd day’s interest.
Does this help?
Brandon says:
So my scenario is as follows…
Loan amount: 36,406.17
Term: 72 months
APR: 4.35%
Origination Date: 6/30/2017
First Payment: 8/14/2017
If the first payment date was a normal 1 month from origination, instead of 45 days, my payments would simply be $575.45. But since the first payment is 45 days from loan origination, I select Long Period Interest Option: Amortized… which gives me $576.45. And this matches what my actual loan contract states. My question is, the simple daily interest over those first (extra) 15 days in the first period comes to $65.08. So how does the calculated monthly payment value factor in that extra interest? I’m not doubting the calculation is correct, I’m sure it is, but I would like to understand how we arrive at $576.45, and specifically how that bit is calculated.
Karl says:
Sorry, I don’t dive into the equations. It takes several hundred lines of programming code to arrive at the result. It’s not the point of this site to discuss the math. If I did that, I would lose a lot of time that could be dedicated to making the site better for users.