Student Loan Repayment Calculator

You repay a fixed percentage - 9% for Plan 1, 2, 4 and 5, or 6% for a Postgraduate Loan - of whatever you earn above your plan's income threshold, not a percentage of what you owe. Someone with a £50,000 balance and someone with a £5,000 balance on the same plan and income repay exactly the same amount each month; the balance only affects how many years of repayments it takes to clear the loan (or whether it's written off first).

Plan 1: £26,900 a year. Plan 2: £29,385. Plan 4 (Scotland): £33,795. Plan 5: £25,000. Postgraduate Loan: £21,000. You repay 9% (6% for Postgraduate) of your income above whichever threshold applies to your plan - nothing at all if you earn below it.

It depends mainly on where you applied for student finance and when you started your course. Plan 1 covers English and Welsh students who started before September 2012, and every Northern Irish student regardless of when they started. Plan 2 covers English and Welsh undergraduates who started between September 2012 and July 2023. Plan 5 covers English undergraduates starting from August 2023 onwards. Plan 4 covers every Scottish student. A Postgraduate Loan is separate and sits alongside whichever undergraduate plan you also have, if you took one out for a master's or doctoral course. Sign in to your online student finance account if you're not sure which plan you're on.

Plan 1, Plan 4 and Plan 5 currently charge a flat 4.1%. A Postgraduate Loan charges RPI plus 3%, which is 7.1%, capped at 6% until 31 August 2027. Plan 2 is different: it uses a Variable Interest Rate that scales with your income, from 4.1% at or below £29,385 a year up to 7.1% at or above £52,885, sliding in between, though the 6% cap applies from about £44,270 upwards. Interest is added to your balance every day, even in months you don't earn enough to make a repayment.

Plan 1: 25 years after the April you were first due to start repaying. Plan 2: 30 years. Plan 4: 30 years. Plan 5: 40 years. Postgraduate Loan: 30 years. Whatever balance remains at that point, including any interest, is cancelled - you don't need to do anything, and it isn't treated as taxable income.

No. Your repayment is based purely on your income and your plan's threshold and rate - the size of your outstanding balance has no effect on how much comes out of your pay each month. It only affects whether you're likely to clear the loan before it's written off, and how much interest accrues along the way.

For many graduates, no - if you're on track to have some or all of your loan written off before the standard repayment term ends, extra voluntary repayments just reduce a balance that would have been cancelled anyway, effectively at 0% return. It can make sense if you're a high earner clearing the loan well within the write-off period (since every pound of interest avoided is a real saving), or if it gives you peace of mind. Run the numbers in this calculator first to see whether you're projected to repay in full or have some written off. For the full sum, including a break-even table and a £55,000 worked example, read should you overpay your Plan 2 student loan?

It doesn't appear on your credit file and doesn't directly affect your credit score. Mortgage lenders do typically ask about it as part of affordability checks, though, since your monthly repayment reduces your disposable income in the same way any other regular deduction does - it's treated as a factor in the assessment, not as a mark against your credit history.

You still have to repay it. You need to tell the Student Loans Company you're moving, and your repayment threshold and rate switch to an overseas equivalent based on the country you're living in, since your UK income tax and PAYE details are no longer available to calculate it automatically. Repayments are usually made by direct debit instead of automatically through payroll.

Yes - commonly an undergraduate plan (1, 2, 4 or 5) alongside a Postgraduate Loan from a separate course. You'll still only see a single deduction on your payslip, but it's split between your loans behind the scenes, with a cap on how much goes towards the plan with the lower threshold. This calculator models one loan at a time; if you have two, run it once for each, since they have separate balances, interest rates and write-off dates.

Because a multi-year projection depends on assumptions this calculator can't know for certain - mainly how your income changes over time, and the fact that real repayment thresholds and interest rates are reviewed and typically increase most years, while this projection holds 2026/27's figures constant throughout. Treat the year-by-year figures as an illustration of the shape of your repayment (broadly, whether you're on track to clear the loan or have some written off), not a precise forecast.