Germany Loan Calculator

What kind of loan can you calculate?

The main model behind this tool is a German Ratenkredit: a loan repaid through regular, equal instalments. It suits straightforward personal borrowing, furniture financing and ordinary car loans where the interest rate stays fixed for the whole term.

Each payment contains interest and a repayment of principal, called Tilgung. As the outstanding balance falls, less interest accrues, so more of the same payment reduces your debt. This structure is often called an annuity loan, or Annuitätendarlehen. The calculator's advanced balloon option models an additional final principal payment on top of this basic shape.

Mortgages, revolving credit and overdrafts need different assumptions than the ones used here. In particular, a mortgage's Sollzinsbindung, or fixed-rate period, may end while a large amount of debt still remains. This tool does not predict what the refinancing rate will be at that point.

Which information should you enter?

Start with the amount you need to borrow, the annual interest rate and the number of monthly payments. Use the figures from your actual offer whenever you can. The calculator's starting figures are an illustration, not current lending conditions.

The term can be entered in months or years, but every calculation runs on whole months internally. Five years means 60 payments. If you choose a first payment month, the schedule shows matching month labels; it still assumes equal monthly interest periods rather than exact calendar-day interest.

For a detailed calculation, enter the Sollzins. If you only know the effective APR, switch to the APR estimate option and read its assumptions before relying on it. Add costs only in the detailed Sollzins mode, placing each one correctly as a financed, upfront or monthly expense.

Keep the purchase price and the loan amount separate. If a car costs 25,000 € and you pay 5,000 € yourself, the amount you actually borrow is 20,000 €, before any financed extras are added on top.

Sollzins and effective APR: what is the difference?

The Sollzins is the contractual interest rate used to calculate interest on the outstanding loan balance, month by month. The effektiver Jahreszins, or effective APR, folds in payment timing and the credit costs that the applicable disclosure rules require to be included.

Required costs and optional extras can receive different treatment. An optional insurance premium, for example, is not automatically part of the disclosed APR. Check both the headline rate and the actual euro amounts you would pay before comparing two offers.

When comparing offers, compare equivalent amounts, terms and payment structures. A smaller headline rate on its own does not resolve a difference in balloon payments or optional add-on products between two offers.

If only an APR is available, the calculator converts it to an equivalent monthly rate for you. That gives a simplified estimate; it cannot reveal exactly how your bank actually divides each instalment between contractual interest, fees and principal repayment.

The formula behind the monthly payment

For a standard loan with a payment at the end of each monthly period, the regular instalment A is calculated from the financed balance P, the monthly interest rate r and the number of payments n:

For a nominal annual rate of 6%, the monthly rate is:

The monthly rate is therefore 0.5%. The formula works backwards from the requirement that the loan is fully repaid after the final payment, and it accounts for interest falling as principal is repaid month by month.

At zero interest, the calculation becomes simply:

For an APR-only estimate, the equivalent monthly rate uses a different formula, where e is the annual effective rate as a decimal:

Dividing an effective annual rate by 12 is not the same conversion, and it would overstate the real monthly rate for a positive rate (6% effective annually works out to about 0.4868% a month compounded, not 0.5%). With additional costs or irregular payment timing, an accurate annual cost rate needs a full cash-flow calculation rather than this simple conversion alone.

In nominal mode without any added costs, compounding the monthly rate over a year gives the model's own mathematical effective annual rate. For 6% nominal, that works out to about 6.17%, close to but not identical to the nominal 6% headline figure.

Example: borrowing 20,000 € over five years

Assume 20,000 € borrowed, a fixed nominal rate of 6%, 60 monthly payments and no additional costs. Under this calculator's rounding convention, the regular payment works out to 386.66 €.

The first month's interest is 100.00 €, calculated on the full starting balance.

The remaining 286.66 € of that first payment reduces the debt, leaving a balance of 19,713.34 €. The next month's interest is then calculated on this smaller balance, and so on for every remaining month.

The final payment differs slightly from the regular one because the model rounds monthly interest and payments to the cent. Total repayment is calculated by adding up the individual schedule rows, rather than by multiplying the displayed regular payment by 60 - a lender using a different rounding convention may land on a slightly different final figure.

How does the repayment term change the cost?

For the same 20,000 € and 6% nominal rate, changing only the term changes both the monthly payment and the total interest:

These are model calculations with an adjusted final payment and no extra costs. A longer term reduces the regular monthly commitment, but interest keeps accruing for longer, so the total cost of the loan rises.

Choosing a term is therefore a trade-off between monthly cash flow and total cost. A payment that leaves no room for repairs, annual bills or a change in income can be difficult to sustain, even when its total interest looks lower on paper. Compare several terms against your own budget before deciding.

Reading the charts and the Tilgungsplan

The balance chart shows how much debt remains after each payment. With extra repayments enabled, a second, dashed line compares your accelerated repayment plan against the original schedule, and a marker highlights a balloon payment if one is configured.

The principal-and-interest chart shows where each year's instalments actually go. The interest share normally falls as the balance declines, while the cost breakdown shows the original cash amount borrowed alongside total interest and any additional costs you entered.

Use the Tilgungsplan, or repayment schedule, to inspect individual months or years. Opening balance plus interest, minus the regular payment and any extra principal, equals the closing balance. Costs paid separately never reduce the debt itself. You can export the schedule as a CSV file to compare it against a lender's own documents.

Can Sondertilgung reduce your interest?

A Sondertilgung is an additional principal repayment on top of the regular instalment. In this calculator, an extra payment keeps the regular instalment unchanged and instead brings the payoff date forward.

In the five-year example above, adding 50 € every month from the first payment produces a combined monthly payment of 436.66 €. The loan then finishes after 53 payments, including a smaller final payment of 64.01 €.

Interest falls to 2,770.33 €, a saving of 429.02 € compared with the original schedule, before taking into account any early-repayment compensation the lender may be entitled to charge.

General consumer loans can usually be repaid early, in whole or in part, under §500 BGB. That does not make every extra repayment free of charge. Where compensation is permitted, §502 BGB caps it at 1% of the amount repaid early, or 0.5% when no more than one year of the term remains, and it can never exceed the lender's own lost interest on that amount. Conditions and exclusions apply, and these percentage caps are not a general mortgage-lending rule.

Check your own agreement for any free annual repayment allowance, and ask your lender for a settlement figure before making a large extra payment. The interest saving this calculator shows does not automatically include compensation or refunds of other costs.

What changes with a balloon payment?

A balloon loan leaves an agreed amount outstanding until the very end. The smaller regular instalments in between can help with monthly cash flow, but a larger amount of principal remains outstanding for longer than in a fully amortising loan.

This calculator defines the balloon as an additional principal amount, paid together with the last regular instalment, not as the entire final payment on its own.

For 20,000 € over 60 months at 6% nominal interest with a 5,000 € balloon, the regular payment falls to about 314.99 €. The final month then requires 5,315.17 € in total, once the adjusted regular component and the balloon are added together.

Total interest for this scenario is 3,899.58 €, higher than for the fully amortising 60-month example above, since a larger balance stays outstanding for the whole term. Compare the final obligation as well as the monthly figure, and check your own contract: some lenders use Schlussrate to mean the entire last instalment rather than just the extra portion modelled here.

Fees, financed extras and insurance

Where an extra cost sits in the calculation matters. An item added to the loan increases the financed balance and may itself attract interest for the rest of the term. The same amount paid separately at the start increases your out-of-pocket cost without increasing the balance at all. A recurring monthly charge simply adds to your monthly spending.

This calculator keeps these three categories separate so a financed cost is never counted twice. Enter only the costs that actually appear in your own documents; the mere presence of a field in this tool does not mean a particular charge is standard, lawful or necessary.

For example, borrowing 10,000 € with 500 € in costs added to the loan and a further 100 € paid upfront, at 0% interest over 12 months, gives a financed principal of 10,500.00 € and a total outflow of 10,600.00 €. The real cost of borrowing here is 600.00 €, not the sum of both cost items counted against the total outflow a second time.

Restschuldversicherung is insurance intended to cover specified repayment risks such as illness or unemployment. Verbraucherzentrale highlights high costs and significant restrictions in many such policies, so review the cover, exclusions and any existing protection you already have before deciding. Under §7a Abs. 5 VVG, the declaration to enter such a contract linked to a general consumer loan cannot be made earlier than one week after the loan contract itself.

How much monthly repayment fits your budget?

Work from a dependable net household income figure. Subtract housing costs, everyday spending, existing repayments, annual expenses spread across the months, and a buffer for unexpected costs. Treat what remains as a starting point for your own planning, not as automatic permission to borrow all of it.

There is no approval guarantee attached to the calculator's "loan amount from a payment" result. It is a mathematical figure based on the rate and term you entered; the tool does not assess your creditworthiness or predict what any lender would actually decide.

Use the German salary calculator to estimate your take-home pay first. If you work under an applicable metal and electrical industry agreement, the IG Metall ERA calculator can help translate a tariff wage into a dependable monthly figure before you plan around it - gross tariff pay on its own is not the number that has to cover a monthly instalment.

Comparing a replacement loan

If you are considering Umschuldung, or refinancing an existing loan, compare the future payments from today onward. Interest you have already paid on the old loan should not be added again to a decision that is only about future borrowing.

Start with the lender's current settlement amount for the old loan and its remaining schedule. Compare that against the new loan's full repayments plus any switching costs that are payable separately. Keep the amount borrowed consistent: a replacement loan that also hands you extra spending money is a different comparison from a like-for-like refinance.

A lower new monthly payment often comes mainly from extending the repayment period rather than from a better rate. Look at the new payoff date and the total remaining outflow before treating a lower instalment as a genuine saving. This calculator's scenario comparison can help you organise the figures, but it does not obtain settlement quotes or work out insurance refunds; use the verified amounts from your own providers for those.