Enter your real balances, rates and minimum payments. See the exact month you are debt-free under each method — and what picking the wrong one costs you in interest.
One row per debt. Everything you type stays in your browser — nothing is sent to us.
On top of $490 in minimums — $690 a month in total. Every spare unit goes to whichever debt the method puts first.
Your two plans
Smallest balance first — quick wins, more momentum.
Debt-free by
September 2029
37 monthly payments — 3 years 1 month
Highest rate first — the mathematically cheapest order.
Debt-free by
August 2029
36 monthly payments — 3 years
The avalanche saves you $715 in interest and clears your debts 1 month sooner.
The trade-off: your first debt disappears after 11 months on the snowball, versus 1 year 9 months on the avalanche.
What the extra payment is doing
$200 a month gets you out 1 year 10 months sooner and saves $3,916 in interest.
The link encodes your debts only — nothing is stored on our servers.
Each month interest is added first, then every minimum is paid, then the extra lands on the focus debt. When a debt clears, its payment rolls onto the next one in the order.
Every spare unit goes to number 1 until it is gone, then to number 2. The dates are when each balance reaches zero.
Student loan
$3,000 · 4.5% APR
July 2027
Credit card
$6,000 · 22.9% APR
October 2028
Car loan
$12,000 · 7.5% APR
September 2029
Credit card
$6,000 · 22.9% APR
May 2028
Car loan
$12,000 · 7.5% APR
July 2029
Student loan
$3,000 · 4.5% APR
August 2029
Five minutes, no signup, nothing stored. The page opens on a realistic three-debt household, so you can see the shape of the answer before you type a single number of your own.
List every debt you owe
Add one row per debt: credit card, car loan, student loan, overdraft, the money you owe a family member. Leave your mortgage out unless you are deliberately attacking it — a 3% mortgage sitting next to a 23% card distorts the whole picture.
Enter the balance, the rate and the minimum
Take the balance from your latest statement, the interest rate it charges, and the minimum payment your lender demands each month. If your minimum is a percentage of the balance, enter this month's amount — it is close enough for planning.
Set the extra payment you can really afford
Drag the slider to whatever you can genuinely add on top of the minimums every month. That single number is the engine of the whole plan: with nothing extra, both methods finish on almost the same day.
Compare the two debt-free dates
The snowball card and the avalanche card each show the month you would be debt-free, the interest that method costs you, and which debt disappears first. The gap between the two cards is what the choice is actually worth.
Pick the method you will still be following in a year
Take the payoff order into your own budget, or copy the share link so you can come back to the same plan later. The best method is not the cheapest on paper — it is the one you finish.
The order you pay matters less than most people expect. These are the levers that actually move your debt-free date.
The extra payment matters more than the method. On most real debt lists the snowball and the avalanche finish within a month or two of each other, while doubling the extra payment can cut a year off. Find the money first, argue about the order second.
Order by rate when the spread is wide. If one debt charges 22% and another 4%, the avalanche's saving is real money. When every rate sits within a few points of the others, take the snowball's momentum instead — you are giving up almost nothing.
Never miss a minimum to fund the extra. A missed payment costs a fee, often triggers a penalty rate, and leaves a mark on your credit file that outlives any interest you saved. Minimums first, always; the extra is what is left after them.
Roll every freed payment forward. When a debt clears, its minimum should join the extra and land on the next debt. That rollover is why both methods accelerate instead of plodding — and why quietly absorbing the freed cash back into your spending resets your progress.
Watch for a minimum that does not cover the interest. If the monthly interest is larger than the payment, the balance grows even in a month you paid. This calculator flags it — treat it as an emergency to fix, not a plan to run.
Deal with the cause before the balance. If the card refills every month, a payoff plan is a treadmill. Pair the plan with a budget that leaves the extra payment intact — that is the part no calculator can do for you.
Test a consolidation offer here first. Enter your debts as they are and note the total interest, then model the consolidated loan as a single row with its real rate and fees. If it does not beat the number you just saw, it is not a better deal.
Want this to update itself as you pay? Track every debt in the free app →
Deeper guides on our blog that build on the topics in this tool.
A household with a $6,000 credit card at 22.9%, a $12,000 car loan at 7.5% and a $3,000 student loan at 4.5% — minimum payments of $150, $260 and $80, plus $200 extra every month.
| What you compare | Snowball | Avalanche |
|---|---|---|
| Where the extra goes first | Student loan — $3,000, the smallest | Credit card — 22.9%, the priciest |
| First debt gone | Month 11 | Month 21 |
| Debt-free in | 37 months | 36 months |
| Total interest paid | $3,967 | $3,252 |
| Difference | — | $715 less interest, one month sooner |
Figures produced by this calculator and rounded to whole dollars. Your own gap depends on how far apart your rates are: the wider the spread, the more the avalanche is worth.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Debt snowball | Paying your debts smallest balance first, whatever their interest rates. Each cleared debt frees its payment for the next one, so the plan gathers pace — and every win is a visible one. |
| Debt avalanche | Paying your debts highest interest rate first, whatever their balances. It is always the cheapest possible order, because every spare unit goes where interest is accruing fastest. |
| APR | The annual percentage rate your lender charges. Divided by twelve it is the interest added to your balance each month, so 22.9% APR is roughly 1.9% of the balance every month. |
| Minimum payment | The smallest amount your lender will accept this month without a penalty. On credit cards it is often set barely above the interest, which is exactly why minimum-only repayment can take decades. |
| Extra payment | Whatever you can pay on top of all your minimums. In both methods it goes entirely to one debt — the focus debt — instead of being spread thinly across all of them. |
| Rollover | When a debt clears, its minimum payment joins the extra and lands on the next debt in the order. Rollover is the mechanic that makes both methods accelerate rather than plod. |
| Debt-free date | The month your last balance reaches zero if you keep paying the plan. It is the number worth putting on the fridge — a date motivates in a way a percentage never does. |
| Negative amortization | When your payment is smaller than the interest being charged, so the balance grows in a month you actually paid. Any debt in that state has to be fixed before a payoff plan means anything. |
| Principal | The amount you originally borrowed, as opposed to the interest charged on it. Only the part of a payment above the interest touches the principal, which is why a small extra payment has an outsized effect. |
The avalanche is always better on paper and the snowball is often better in practice. Paying the highest interest rate first is mathematically optimal — no ordering can beat it — but the gap is usually smaller than people expect: on typical household debt lists it is a few hundred dollars and a month or two. The snowball clears a whole debt sooner, which is the single strongest predictor of whether someone keeps going. Run your own numbers above: if the avalanche saves you a trivial amount, take the momentum; if it saves you thousands, take the math.
The avalanche is faster or tied, never slower, because less of your money is consumed by interest. In practice the difference is usually one to three months on a three-to-five year plan, and it grows with the spread between your rates. If all your debts charge a similar rate, both methods finish in the same month and the choice is purely psychological. The calculator above shows both dates side by side, so you can see the real gap rather than a rule of thumb.
It depends almost entirely on how far apart your interest rates are. On the worked example on this page — a 22.9% card, a 7.5% car loan and a 4.5% student loan — the avalanche saves about $715 in interest and one month over roughly three years. Add a 29% store card to the same list and the saving grows sharply; make every rate similar and it shrinks to nothing. Enter your own debts to see the number for your situation instead of an average.
You list your debts from the smallest balance to the largest, ignoring interest rates entirely. You pay the minimum on everything, then throw every spare unit of money at the smallest balance until it is gone. Its freed-up minimum then joins your extra payment and attacks the next-smallest debt, and so on — the payment 'snowball' grows with each debt you clear. It is the method Dave Ramsey popularized, and its whole design is about giving you a visible win early.
You list your debts from the highest interest rate to the lowest, ignoring balances entirely. You pay the minimum on everything, then send every spare unit to the most expensive debt until it is cleared, then the next most expensive. Because your extra money is always attacking the balance that grows fastest, the avalanche mathematically minimises both the interest you pay and the time you spend in debt. It is sometimes called debt stacking.
Then neither method applies yet, and this calculator will tell you so: if a payment is smaller than the interest being charged, that balance grows every month and the plan never ends. That is a cash-flow problem, not an ordering problem. Contact your lenders before you miss a payment — hardship plans, reduced-interest arrangements and payment holidays exist and are far cheaper than default — and speak to a non-profit debt advice service in your country. Come back to the sequencing question once every minimum is genuinely covered.
Because his argument is behavioural, not arithmetical: 'personal finance is 80% behaviour'. Clearing a whole debt early gives you proof the plan works, and people who see that proof are more likely to keep going for the two or three years a payoff plan takes. Research on consumer debt repayment has repeatedly found that closing accounts early is associated with better persistence. The counter-argument is equally simple: if the avalanche saves you thousands, that is real money you are paying for motivation you may not need.
Usually not while you still have consumer debt. A mortgage is typically your cheapest borrowing and your largest balance, so it sits at the bottom of an avalanche list and would swallow a snowball whole. Clear the cards, car loans and personal loans first, then decide separately whether to overpay the mortgage or invest the difference — that is a different question with a different answer. Leave it out of this calculator unless everything else is gone.
From your budget, not from optimism. The reliable sources are a cancelled subscription, a renegotiated bill, a lower grocery spend, and any income above your normal salary — a bonus, a tax refund, overtime, a side income. Pick a number you can hit in a bad month rather than a good one: the calculator assumes you pay the same extra every single month, and a plan built on your best month quietly fails in your worst. If in doubt, set the slider lower and treat anything above it as a bonus.
Yes — always, on every debt, every month. Both methods are built on top of the minimums, not instead of them. The extra payment goes to exactly one debt at a time, but every other balance keeps receiving its minimum so you avoid fees, penalty rates and credit-file damage. When the focus debt clears, its minimum is added to the extra and the whole amount moves to the next debt in the order. That rollover is what this calculator models month by month.
Compare the interest rate to the return you realistically expect. Paying off a 22% credit card is a guaranteed, tax-free 22% return, which no investment can promise — clear it first, every time. Below roughly 6-7% the answer stops being obvious, and a low fixed-rate student loan or car loan can reasonably be paid at the minimum while you invest the difference. Two things come before both: any employer pension match you are leaving on the table, and a small emergency fund so the next surprise does not go back on the card.
It can be, but only if the new rate and fees genuinely beat what you are paying now — and only if the freed-up cards stay unused. Model it honestly: note the total interest this calculator gives you today, then enter the consolidated loan as a single row with its real rate, and add any arrangement or transfer fee to the balance. Watch the expiry date on a 0% offer too: a promotional rate that reverts to 25% before you have cleared the balance can cost more than doing nothing.
Yes. The math of debt payoff is identical everywhere: interest accrues monthly, minimums are paid, and whatever is left attacks one balance. Switch the display currency to EUR, CZK, GBP or any of the other supported codes and the calculator works the same way — which is the main thing US-only tools cannot do. Enter the rate your lender quotes; in markets where the headline figure includes fees, use that figure and the result already accounts for them.
This calculator models fixed monthly payments against fixed interest rates. It does not model fees, penalty rates, promotional 0% periods that expire, variable rates, or the tax treatment of interest, and it assumes you never add to a balance while you are paying it down. Everything you type stays in your browser — nothing is sent to us or stored on our servers. Treat your debt-free date as a well-reasoned target to pressure-test, and speak to a qualified adviser or a non-profit debt counselling service before restructuring debt you are struggling with.
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