Credit Card Payoff Calculator — With Multiple Cards

Credit card interest is charged monthly on whatever balance you're carrying, and unlike an installment loan, there's no fixed schedule telling you exactly when you'll be debt free — that depends entirely on how much you pay each month relative to how fast interest is accruing. Pay just the minimum and a card can take decades and cost more in interest than the original purchase; pay aggressively and the same balance can be gone in under a year.

This calculator is built specifically around the credit card use case: one or more revolving balances, each with its own APR, and a single combined monthly budget you're willing to commit across all of them. It applies that budget the way a disciplined payer would — sending the full amount to the highest-interest-rate card first, since that's the card costing you the most per dollar of unpaid balance, and rolling any remaining budget to the next card once one is cleared.

If you're managing several types of debt beyond just credit cards — an auto loan, a personal loan, a mix of balances with different minimum payments you want to track individually — the broader debt payoff calculator is the more complete tool, since it lets you compare the avalanche strategy against the debt snowball method across a mixed portfolio. This page trades some of that flexibility for simplicity when your situation is purely about credit cards.

The calculator opens with a single card row filled in as an example.

Each Card Row

Enter a name for the card (so it's identifiable in the results), its current balance, and its APR — the annual percentage rate printed on your statement. Click "Add Card" to add another row if you're carrying balances on more than one card; there's no limit to how many you can add.

Total Monthly Payment Budget

This is the single combined amount you plan to pay across all of your cards every month — not a per-card figure. The calculator decides how to split it between cards itself, always sending the maximum possible amount to the highest-APR card first.

Reading the Results

You'll get Months to Pay Off All Cards and Total Interest Paid across every card combined. If you entered more than one card, a payoff-order list also shows which card clears first and in which month, so you can see the avalanche logic play out.

Because interest compounds monthly on a shrinking balance and payment allocation shifts the moment any card is paid off, this can't be solved with one static formula — it's simulated month by month, capped at 600 months (50 years) as a safety bound:

1. Interest accrues on every card.Each card with a balance above zero adds one month's interest: balance × (APR ÷ 12).

2. The full monthly budget is applied to the highest-APR card first. Whatever balance that card needs, up to the full budget, gets paid toward it.

3. Leftover budget rolls to the next card.If the top-priority card's remaining balance is smaller than the full budget, the leftover amount continues down the list to the next-highest-APR card in the same month, and so on until either the budget or the cards run out.

This repeats every month until every card reaches zero, or until the 600-month cap is hit — at which point the calculator flags that your budget isn't enough to clear these balances within 50 years and asks you to increase it.

Example 1: A Single Card (the Calculator's Default)

You owe $3,000 on a store card at 24% APR and commit $300 per month. Interest accrues each month on the shrinking balance, and the full $300 goes straight to that one card every time. The result: paid off in 12 months, with $381.10 in total interest along the way.

Now suppose you could only manage $150 per month instead. The payoff stretches to 26 months — more than double — and total interest rises to $869.62, more than double as well. Doubling your monthly budget on a high-APR card doesn't just cut the time roughly in half; because you spend far fewer months accruing interest at all, it cuts the total interest cost by well over half too.

Example 2: Two Cards With Different Rates

Now say you have a Visa with a $4,000 balance at 22% APR and a store card with a $1,500 balance at 27% APR, and you commit $400 per month across both. Even though the store card has the smaller balance, it also carries the higher rate, so the calculator sends it the priority treatment: it's paid off first, by month 4. From there, the full $400 rolls onto the Visa balance every month until it's cleared at month 17. Total interest paid across both cards: $915.89.

Notice that the store card — the smaller of the two balances — happened to also be the higher-rate card in this example, so it got prioritized for both reasons at once. That won't always line up; when a card's balance and its rate point in different directions (small balance, low rate, for instance), the avalanche method here will still always follow the rate, not the balance.

Make Sure Your Budget Covers Real Minimums

This calculator assumes your Total Monthly Payment Budget is large enough to at least cover the actual minimum payments your card issuers require across all cards combined. If it isn't, you risk late fees and credit score damage that this simplified model doesn't capture — check your statements first.

A Balance Transfer Can Change the Math Entirely

If your highest-APR card qualifies for a promotional 0% balance transfer offer, moving it there can eliminate its interest cost for the length of the promo — which is often a bigger lever than any budget increase. Run the numbers through our balance transfer calculator before committing.

Never Paying Only the Minimum Matters More Than the Order

If you're currently only making minimum payments, see our dedicated credit card minimum payment calculator first — it shows just how slow and expensive minimum-only payments really are, and in some cases can even reveal that a balance would never pay off at all at your current minimum payment formula.

This Assumes a Constant, Uninterrupted Budget

Real months bring unexpected expenses. Treat the results as a best-case roadmap assuming you can consistently commit the entered budget every month, and revisit the calculator whenever your finances change.

All content on this page is educational and does not constitute financial advice. Actual interest charges depend on your card issuer's exact calculation method (average daily balance, billing cycle timing, and fees are not modeled here). For personalized guidance, consult a certified financial planner or a nonprofit credit counselor.