Debt Consolidation Calculator
Replacing several debts with one new loan is only worth doing if it costs less overall, and the fees decide that more often than the interest rate does. This counts the processing fee, the GST charged on it and what your current lenders bill you to close early, then tells you whether you come out ahead or behind.
The debts you have now
Each one separately, with its own rate and what you actually pay it each month. The rate matters: two of the tools surveyed for this build take a list of debts and never ask what any of them charges.
The loan that would replace them
Set this longer than your current debts have left and watch the total, not the monthly figure.
Charged on the loan amount by the new lender.
Usually 2 to 4% on a fixed-rate loan. Credit cards carry none, and nor do floating-rate personal loans sanctioned from 1 January 2026.
Consolidating would save
₹7,236
- New monthly payment
- ₹14,017
- You pay now, in total
- ₹19,800
- Switching cost
- ₹32,272
- Amount to be cleared
- ₹5,00,000
| Keep them | Consolidate | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly payment | ₹19,800 | ₹14,017 |
| Months to clear | 36 | 48 |
| Interest | ₹1,80,041 | ₹1,40,533 |
| Fees and charges | ₹0 | ₹32,272 |
| Total cost | ₹6,80,041 | ₹6,72,805 |
The switching cost breaks down as ₹10,400 in processing fee, ₹1,872 of GST on it and ₹20,000 to close the existing debts. Because the fee is added to the loan, you also pay interest on it for the whole tenure.
Rates, fees and foreclosure charges vary by lender and by borrower, so treat this as arithmetic on the numbers you enter and not as a quote. Whether consolidating suits your situation depends on things a page cannot see.
Cite this calculator
Using this in an article, a report or a class? Please credit it, and link back so readers can run the numbers themselves.
The Money Decoded. "Debt Consolidation Calculator." https://themoneydecoded.com/calculators/debt-consolidation
The embed drops this calculator straight into your page as a working tool. It is 2180px tall by default and full width, so change the height if your column is much wider or narrower than ours.
Why does the fee go into the loan?
Because that is how lenders usually arrange it, and it means you pay interest on the fee for the entire tenure. A fee is not a one-off deduction when it is financed. It becomes part of the debt.
Borrow Rs 5,00,000 with a 2% processing fee and Rs 11,800 goes onto the loan once GST is counted. Your payment is worked out on Rs 5,11,800, not Rs 5,00,000, and over 48 months at 12% that small addition costs about Rs 3,000 more than paying the fee from savings would have.
This is the gap that started the build. More than twenty working consolidation and balance-transfer calculators were opened and read in August 2026, across Indian aggregators, lender pages, US banks and credit unions, alongside a long tail of pages that turned out to host no calculator at all. Exactly one names where the fee lands, a UMB field labelled New balance with balance transfer fee.
The Indian tool with the fullest fee handling gets the direction backwards. calcwise.finance charges a 2% processing fee and a pre-closure penalty that varies by loan type, then treats both as separate upfront cash, so the new instalment it shows you is worked out as though the fee were free.
Does GST apply to the processing fee?
Yes, at 18%, so the advertised processing fee is never the amount you pay. A 2% fee on Rs 5,00,000 is Rs 10,000 on the tariff sheet and Rs 11,800 on the statement. On a Rs 20,00,000 consolidation the gap is Rs 7,200 of pure arithmetic.
One tool applies it, and it cannot answer the consolidation question. Axis Bank's Balance-on-EMI calculator prints a line reading GST on PF, and on its default figures that is Rs 90 against a Rs 500 fee, which is exactly 18%. But that tool converts your existing Axis card dues into instalments. It models no other debt, so there is nothing to compare it against.
Every Indian calculator that does compare consolidating against carrying on drops the tax, including the ones whose own page text explains it. Lenders publish the real numbers in prose beside calculators that ignore them: Bajaj states a processing fee of up to 4.13% of the loan amount inclusive of applicable taxes, with foreclosure charges up to 4.72%, and IDFC FIRST states 0 to 3.5% including GST.
What does closing the old loans cost?
A foreclosure charge is what your existing lender bills you for ending a loan before its tenure runs out. Consolidating closes those loans, so the charge is a cost of consolidating, not a separate matter.
It does not apply everywhere, and the Indian rule changed recently enough that most pages have not caught up. The Reserve Bank of India's Pre-payment Charges on Loans Directions, 2025, issued on 2 July 2025, bar lenders from levying pre-payment charges on floating-rate loans taken by individuals for purposes other than business. That protection applies to loans sanctioned or renewed on or after 1 January 2026, and it covers commercial banks other than payments banks, co-operative banks, NBFCs and All India Financial Institutions.
Read the two conditions carefully, because both have to hold. The loan must be floating rate, and most Indian personal loans are fixed rate, which is precisely the kind of loan people consolidate. For anything outside paragraph 5, the directions say pre-payment charges follow the lender's own approved policy, and the published range sits at 2 to 4%. Credit cards carry no foreclosure charge at all.
One calculator models this at all, and it hardcodes the percentage by loan type, at 3% on a personal loan and 4% on a business loan, with no way to enter what your lender actually charges you. Everywhere else the cost of closing your current loans is silently assumed to be zero, which flatters every result.
Why can a lower payment cost more?
Because the monthly payment and the total cost are separate outcomes, and a longer tenure moves them in opposite directions. Stretch Rs 5,00,000 from 24 months to 60 and the payment falls while the interest climbs, and the climb can outrun whatever the lower rate saved you.
Some tools handle this honestly. Vedantu prints the negative number rather than hiding it, and warns in plain words that extending the term will often mean paying more interest overall. WSECU reserves screen space for the bad case with a label reading Total Additional Interest sitting beside Total Interest Savings. Wells Fargo states the mechanism above its own form.
Others do not. One India tool clamps a genuine loss to zero, and on its own shipped default values it displays Interest Saved Rs 0 in green while the arithmetic underneath shows roughly Rs 47,000 of extra interest. HDFC Bank's home loan transfer calculator does the same in its own code, resetting the total saving to zero whenever the figure turns negative, under a headline reading Enjoy your Savings. A US lender pre-selects a 60-month term with a 29% default rate, reports the monthly difference as its only output, and never asks the rate on the debts being replaced, which leaves it structurally unable to compute interest.
This calculator reports both numbers and, when the payment falls while the total rises, says so in a sentence rather than leaving you to spot it.
What this calculator does not do
It cannot tell you whether you will be approved, or at what rate. The rate you enter is the rate you were quoted or expect, and lenders price on credit history, income stability and their own portfolio position. Enter an optimistic rate and you get an optimistic answer.
It does not model a promotional rate that expires partway through, which is how most balance-transfer offers work. It also treats each existing debt as a fixed monthly payment, so a credit card whose minimum falls as the balance drops will clear more slowly in life than it does here.
For the sequencing question of which debt to attack first without borrowing at all, the snowball and avalanche calculator answers that instead, and the debt-to-income calculator shows whether a lender is likely to entertain the application at all.
Pair this with the guide
How Debt Consolidation Works covers what the calculator cannot: how balance transfers differ from personal loans, what a lender looks at, and the ways consolidation goes wrong when the spending that created the debt carries on. The calculator answers whether the arithmetic works. The post explains what you are signing.
Frequently asked questions
Does the processing fee change my monthly payment?
Yes, when the fee is added to the loan, which is the usual arrangement. If you borrow Rs 5,00,000 and a 2% fee plus GST adds Rs 11,800, the payment is worked out on Rs 5,11,800 and you pay interest on that fee for the whole tenure. Of 17 consolidation and balance-transfer calculators checked live in August 2026, one named where the fee lands, and none added it to the principal before computing the payment. The Indian tool that models fees most fully treats them as separate upfront cash, so its new payment is worked out as though the fee were free.
Is GST charged on a loan processing fee in India?
Yes. Financial services carry GST at 18%, so a 2% processing fee on Rs 5,00,000 is Rs 10,000 plus Rs 1,800 of GST, or Rs 11,800. One tool surveyed for this build applies it, and it cannot answer a consolidation question: Axis Bank's Balance-on-EMI calculator prints a GST on PF line correctly, at Rs 90 against a Rs 500 fee, but it converts your own Axis card dues into instalments and models no other debt to compare against. Every Indian calculator that does compare consolidating against carrying on drops the tax, including ones whose own page text explains it.
What is a foreclosure charge and does it apply to me?
A foreclosure charge is what your existing lender bills you for closing a loan before its tenure ends, and it is a real cost of consolidating because consolidating closes those loans. Credit cards do not carry one. The Reserve Bank of India's Pre-payment Charges on Loans Directions, 2025, issued 2 July 2025, bar pre-payment charges on floating-rate loans taken by individuals for non-business purposes, for loans sanctioned or renewed on or after 1 January 2026. Both conditions matter: most Indian personal loans are fixed rate, so the charge usually still applies to exactly the loans people consolidate, at the 2 to 4% lenders publish, with Bajaj stating up to 4.72% inclusive of taxes. One calculator surveyed models a foreclosure charge at all, hardcoded at 3% on a personal loan and 4% on a business loan with no way to enter what your own lender charges.
Why does the verdict sometimes say consolidating costs more?
Because sometimes it does, and a lower rate does not prevent it. Stretching Rs 5,00,000 of debt from 24 months to 60 lowers the monthly payment and raises the total interest, and the second effect can be larger than the rate saving. One India tool caps its own new-rate field at its current-rate default, so its savings figure cannot go negative by construction. Another clamps a real loss to a green zero: on its own shipped defaults it displays Interest Saved Rs 0 while the arithmetic underneath shows roughly Rs 47,000 of extra interest.
Should I enter my credit card balance or my minimum payment?
The balance goes in the balance field and what you actually pay goes in the monthly field, and those are different numbers. If you pay Rs 7,500 against a Rs 1,50,000 card balance, enter both. Paying only the minimum on a card at 38% can mean the payment barely covers the interest, and this calculator says so rather than printing a payoff date that will never arrive.
Does a lower monthly payment mean I am saving money?
No, not on its own. The monthly payment and the total cost are separate outcomes and they can move in opposite directions. Wells Fargo states the mechanism above its own form, that the payment reduction may come from a lower rate, a longer term, or both, and that extending the term may mean paying more interest. Several tools do the opposite: one pre-selects a 60-month term with a 29% default rate, reports the monthly difference, and never asks the rate on the debts it is replacing, so it cannot compute the interest at all.
Sources
- Reserve Bank of India, Reserve Bank of India (Pre-payment Charges on Loans) Directions, 2025 (issued 2 July 2025; paragraph 5(i) bars pre-payment charges on floating-rate loans to individuals for non-business purposes, applicable to loans sanctioned or renewed on or after 1 January 2026), rbi.org.in
- Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, GST rate schedule for services (financial services at 18%), cbic-gst.gov.in
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, What is a debt consolidation loan?, consumerfinance.gov
- Observations about how other consolidation and balance-transfer calculators handle fees, GST, foreclosure charges and tenure come from a live review of the ranking tools in India and the United States on 13 August 2026, reading the served markup and calculator scripts rather than the marketing copy. Tools inspected included Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, SMFG India Credit, calcwise.finance, Vedantu and Financeseva in India, and Wells Fargo, Discover, OneMain Financial, Navy Federal, WSECU, UMB, Kitsap Credit Union, UMCU, CCU, CoVantage and Market USA in the United States.