Solve by a fixed monthly payment to see months and total interest, or work backward from a target payoff date to find the payment you need.
This page also runs in reverse — pick a payoff timeline instead of a payment amount, and it solves for the payment that gets there. On the same $5,000 balance at 22% APR, targeting a 24-month payoff needs a monthly payment of $259.39, for $1,225.38 in total interest and $6,225.38 paid overall. Compare that to the fixed-payment mode's own default — $200 a month clears the same balance in 34 months at $1,749.88 in interest — and $59.39 more a month buys back 10 months and saves $524.50 in interest.
Real card issuers compound against an average daily balance and post it once a month; this page applies APR ÷ 12 once per month instead. The two track closely for a balance that isn't changing dramatically day to day, but they're not identical — true daily compounding accrues slightly more interest than an equivalent monthly approximation at the same stated APR, since interest starts earning on itself sooner. Treat this page's numbers as a very close planning estimate, not the exact figure that will appear on a statement.
A payment that barely clears the interest charge leaves almost nothing for principal — but as rates rise or a balance grows, the interest charge itself grows too, shrinking that thin margin further until a payment that once worked stops covering interest at all. This page's warning for a too-low fixed payment is catching exactly that failure mode: not a slow payoff, but a balance that mathematically never reaches zero. For juggling several cards with different rates at once, the Debt Payoff Calculator compares snowball and avalanche strategies across all of them together.
Most card issuers actually compound interest daily against your average daily balance, then post it to your statement once a month. This tool uses a standard monthly-compounding approximation instead — APR ÷ 12 applied once per month to the current balance — which is very close to the real figure and much simpler to reason about for planning purposes.
This is the classic minimum-payment trap: if your payment only barely exceeds the interest charged that month, almost none of it goes toward the actual principal, so the balance shrinks extremely slowly even though you're paying on time every month. The "By Fixed Payment" mode above will flag this directly and tell you to increase your payment if it's too low to ever pay the balance down at all.
Yes — strongly recommended. Every dollar above the interest charged that month goes straight to principal, which compounds in your favor: a smaller balance means less interest the following month too, so increasing your payment shortens the payoff time by more than proportionally. For a full multi-card strategy that decides which balance to attack first, see the Debt Payoff Calculator.
This tool is built for one card at a time. If you're juggling several balances and want to compare snowball (smallest balance first) versus avalanche (highest rate first) strategies across all of them together, the Debt Payoff Calculator is the right tool for that comparison — see Debt Snowball vs. Avalanche for how the two strategies compare on a worked example. Wondering why your rate hasn't budged? Read why credit card rates are still near 21% in 2026.
Worked example: a $5,000 balance at 22% APR with a $200 fixed monthly payment starts with a first-month interest charge of 5,000 × (0.22 ÷ 12) ≈ $91.67, bringing the balance to roughly $4,891.67 after that first payment. Running that same $200 payment forward month by month takes 34 months (just under 3 years) to clear the balance completely, with $1,749.88 paid in total interest — over a third of the original $5,000 — for a total of $6,749.88 paid out. Bumping the payment up even a little cuts both numbers meaningfully, since more of each payment reaches principal sooner.
Want to understand where these numbers come from? See how credit card interest is actually calculated — the daily periodic rate, the grace period, and what the minimum payment really costs. Also see why card rates are still near 21% and snowball vs. avalanche. Choosing between a cashback card and a low-rate one? The Cash Back or Low Interest Calculator settles it — rewards lose to a lower APR the moment you carry a balance. The same ground is covered chapter by chapter in our book, From Paycheck to Portfolio. A fifth consecutive Fed hold means card APRs are not falling on their own — see the July decision. For the score side of the equation, what actually moves it.