Balance transfer calculator

Only if three things are true: the saving after the fee is worth the effort, you can realistically make the payment that clears the balance before the 0% period ends, and you will not run the old card back up. The calculator answers the first two from your own figures. The third decides most outcomes and no calculator can measure it for you.

Pay it down faster either way. A transfer is worth doing on top of that, not instead of it. Put your real payment into the calculator and it holds that payment constant on both sides, so the figure it reports is what moving the debt is worth after the fee. If that figure is small, paying the same amount at the highest-rate card first is simpler and costs nothing.

When the interest you avoid is comfortably larger than the fee, and the payment that clears the balance inside the intro period is one you can actually make. As a rough guide a 3% fee is recovered in about two months of interest at a 22% APR, so a transfer you can clear in time almost always wins. One you cannot clear leaves the remainder at the go to APR, and then the fee bought you months rather than money.

Sometimes, but the margin is thin. Whatever is left when the intro period ends is charged at the regular APR of the card from that month on, so the saving is only the interest avoided during the 0% months, minus the fee. The calculator shows the balance left at three payment levels and the first month of interest on it, which is the number to judge this by. There is no retroactive interest on a true 0% card.

It depends on the payment you will make, which is why comparing offers in the abstract does not work. A low fee wins when you can clear the balance quickly, because you never use the extra months. A long intro period wins when your payment needs the time, because a few months of avoided interest at a 20% plus APR outweighs one or two points of fee. Run both offers through the calculator with your real payment and compare the totals.

It is possible and sometimes sensible, but do not plan on it. You pay a fresh fee on the remaining balance, approval is not guaranteed, and issuers increasingly decline applicants who transfer repeatedly. Treat a second transfer as a fallback rather than the plan, and size the payment so the first one finishes the job.

The fee (usually 3% to 5% of the amount moved, with a $5 or $10 minimum) is added to your new balance on day one. It sits inside the 0% balance, so it costs nothing during the intro period but is charged at the go-to APR if any of it is still there when the intro period ends.

Paying more clears debt faster whether or not you transfer. Comparing the transfer with the same payment on your current cards isolates what the transfer itself saves, after its fee. The comparison with your current payments is shown too, but the verdict is not based on it.

Whatever is left is charged at the card's regular APR from that month on. The calculator shows the balance left at three payment levels and the first month's interest on it. There is no retroactive interest on a true 0% APR card; that only happens with deferred-interest store financing.

Yes. The intro clock starts at account opening, and the old card keeps charging interest until the transfer posts, so the default 14-day posting time shortens the usable 0% window by about half a month and adds a small amount of interest on the old card.

The saving is the interest you avoid minus the transfer fee, and it depends far more on what you pay each month than on the size of the intro period. On the $5,000 example above the saving is $796. On the same balance paid at $120 a month the intro period expires with most of the debt still there, and the 3% fee buys very little. Run your own figures rather than trusting a headline number.

No, and there does not need to be. People search for a Citi balance transfer calculator or a Discover balance transfer calculator, but a transfer is arithmetic on four terms, not a brand. This calculator is issuer neutral and asks for the terms rather than the name, so it works with any card. Take the transfer fee percentage, the fee minimum, the intro period in months and the go to APR from the offer you were actually approved for, not from the marketing page, and enter those. Approved terms often differ from advertised ones.

Most calculators compare a transfer against your current minimum payment, which flatters the transfer because paying more would have helped anyway. This one holds the payment constant so the figure you see is what the transfer itself is worth after its fee. It also charges interest on the old card while the transfer posts. The methodology page shows every point where our result differs from theirs and why.

Not this page. A credit card transfer has a fee, an intro period and a go to rate. A loan transfer, sometimes called a takeover, has processing fees, a remaining tenure and a foreclosure charge on the old lender, so it needs different maths. The India section has dedicated home loan, personal loan, car loan and loan against property transfer calculators.

The one that shows its assumptions. A calculator that reports a large saving without telling you what it compared against, whether it applied the fee minimum, or whether it charged interest while the transfer posted, is not giving you a figure you can check. Put the same scenario through two or three, then read the methodology behind whichever number you plan to act on.

It is free, there is no sign up and no email is asked for. The maths runs entirely in your browser, so balances and APRs never leave your device and are not stored or logged. There are no affiliate links to card issuers, so nothing here has a reason to prefer one answer over another.