Free Mortgage Calculator – Monthly Payment, Interest & Amortization

A Refinancing can lower your rate by even half a percent and save you tens of thousands. Try this: plug your current loan into our calculator, note the total interest. Then run the same loan at a lower rate. On a $300k loan, dropping from 6% to 5.5% saves about $30,000 over 30 years. But watch out for closing costs, usually 2-5% of the loan. If those cost $10,000, calculate your monthly savings and divide. If you break even in 3 years and stay put, you win. Our amortization schedule shows your breakeven month.

A Use the bank's pre-approval as your ceiling, not your target. Our calculator shows raw principal and interest, but lenders include debt-to-income ratios, credit scores, and local tax rates. On a $350,000 loan at 6.5%, our tool might say $2,212 monthly. The bank could approve you for $2,800. Don't stretch that far. A good rule: keep your total housing costs under 28% of gross income. Try backing into that number by adjusting the loan amount downward until the payment fits comfortably.

A Absolutely for the basic math—principal and interest work the same for any loan type. The catch comes with FHA's mandatory mortgage insurance premium (MIP) or VA's funding fee. Our calculator doesn't add those automatically. For an FHA loan at 3.5% down, expect roughly 0.55% of the loan amount added yearly for MIP. VA funding fee runs about 2.3% of the loan for first-time users. Run our numbers, then layer those costs on top. Your lender's final quote will confirm the real total.

A Probably not. For a $300,000 loan at 6.5%, a 30-year fixed gives you roughly $1,896 monthly. But over 5 years, you'd pay about $96,500 in interest and only $8,600 toward principal. A 5/1 ARM might start at 5.5%, saving $180 monthly initially. Use our calculator to compare both scenarios. Check the amortization schedule's year-5 balance. If you're selling before the rate adjusts, an ARM could save thousands.

A That's not a balloon payment—it's the final month's remaining balance. With fixed payment, your last installment often differs slightly because rounding monthly payments leaves a few dollars of principal unamortized. Our calculator adjusts the final line to clear the debt precisely. If you're seeing a much larger number, you might have entered a negative amortization scenario or an interest rate change mid-term. Try resetting to a standard 30-year fixed at 6%, and the schedule will show a clean $0.00 at the end. That final small payment is just math catching up.

A Run both terms side by side. For a $300,000 loan at 6%, the 30-year payment lands around $1,799 with total interest near $347,000. Switch to 15 years at the same rate, and the payment jumps to about $2,532, but total interest drops to $155,000. That's a $192,000 difference for an extra $733 each month. The amortization schedule shows you building equity fast—you'll owe roughly $170,000 less by year five. If your budget can handle the stretch, you're buying a house you'll actually own someday. Check the loan-to-income ratio first.

A Our calculator doesn't include taxes or insurance by default, so you're seeing pure principal and interest. That's fine for comparing loan offers, but your real escrow payment will run higher. A $250,000 home in Texas might carry $4,200 yearly in property taxes plus $1,500 in insurance. Add those together, divide by 12, and tack on about $475 to the monthly figure. Use the 'taxes & insurance' field if you want the truer total. Lenders always quote with escrow included, so match their format before you compare.

A Your data stays entirely in your browser. We never collect or store your income, loan balances, or credit scores on external servers. Type $500,000 or $50,000 into the fields, and the calculations run locally on your own device. Privacy matters when planning finances. Close the tab, and your numbers vanish immediately. You can test this by disconnecting your internet after the page loads; the calculator still functions offline without sending a single byte.

A Your principal and interest payment stays locked, but your actual bank withdrawal changes if you bundle escrow. Property taxes rise and insurance premiums climb almost yearly. On a $2,000 baseline payment, a local tax bump might push next year's bill up by $50 monthly. Our calculator shows the core loan cost, so always budget a cushion for rising local assessments. Lenders reanalyze escrow accounts every twelve months. Expect adjustments.

A Your official lender document includes fees like origination charges and upfront insurance premiums that our calculator isolates from the core financing. For a $320,000 purchase, a bank might roll $4,500 in closing costs directly into the loan balance. Our tool starts fresh with the exact principal you input unless you manually adjust that top figure. Check your loan estimate page two to see what got bundled together. Add those extra amounts into the initial loan field to match their exact monthly payment.