Student loan forgiveness calculator
On an 80,000 balance with 55,000 of income and a household of two, 20 years of payments at 193.96 a month total 46,550, leaving 33,450 to be forgiven. Enter your four numbers to see your remainder. Free in your browser.
- Free
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- Your data stays on your device
Run — free
Worked example
- Balance
- 80,000
- Income
- 55,000
- Family size
- 2
- Years paid
- 20
- Poverty line
- 21,150
- Protected income
- 31,725
- Discretionary income
- 23,275
- Annual payment
- 2,327.5
Student loan forgiveness under an income-driven repayment plan is the leftover principal that is cancelled after a borrower has made qualifying payments for a stated number of years. Searchers who type student loan forgiveness calculator want that leftover figure from four inputs they already know: the current loan balance, annual income, family size, and years already paid on an income-driven plan. This calculator applies a PAYE-style identity: discretionary income is annual income minus one hundred fifty percent of a pinned federal poverty line for the household, ten percent of that discretionary income is the annual payment, total paid is that payment times years paid, and the forgiven amount is the remaining balance after those payments, floored at zero.
What income-driven student loan forgiveness estimates and how the remainder is formed
Income-driven repayment exists so a federal student loan does not consume a fixed fraction of cash when income is low: the monthly installment is a share of discretionary income, and after a published term—commonly twenty years for undergraduate loans and twenty-five for graduate loans—whatever principal is still standing is cancelled. Searchers who type student loan forgiveness calculator are not asking for a full origination engine.
They want the leftover number: given the balance they still owe, the income they report, the household counted on the IDR form, and the years of qualifying payments, how much principal would remain to be forgiven. This tool answers that with a PAYE-style remainder that is pinned so two calls never disagree. Protected income is one hundred fifty percent of that line, which is the discretionary-income floor used by PAYE, REPAYE, and the current income-based plans.
Discretionary income is income minus protected income, floored at zero so a borrower below the floor is not billed a negative payment. The annual IDR payment is ten percent of discretionary income. The forgiven amount is the original balance minus total paid, floored at zero: if IDR payments already cover the note, nothing remains to cancel; if income sits under the protection, payments are zero and the entire remaining balance is the forgiven amount.
Unpaid interest is not accrued and origination fees are not invented—those belong in a servicer quote. Money fields round to two decimals so they match a worksheet.
Where a student loan forgiveness calculator earns its keep
Counselors, borrowers, and personal-finance publishers rank for student loan forgiveness calculator because the decision that matters is the leftover principal, not a twelve-row amortization that a visitor will not finish. Campus financial-aid offices and nonprofit debt clinics can embed the same identity so a student sees why a low-income year produces a zero payment and a large leftover, rather than treating a zero installment as a gift that shrinks the note.
Educators teaching income-driven versus standard ten-year repayment can seed classroom examples that fail loudly on a negative balance instead of silently printing a refund a student might treat as a credit. Failed validation does not consume balance. Keep the loan balance non-negative, pin the rounded money fields in tests, and you get a reproducible remaining forgiven amount for widgets, course modules, and edge workers without standing up a loan-servicing stack of your own.
What you can do with it
Counselor IDR remainder worksheet
Turn a current student-loan balance, reported income, household size, and years on an income-driven plan into the leftover principal a counseling packet can treat as the amount cancelled at the end of the term.
Compare staying on IDR versus refinancing
Show a borrower how much principal would remain to be forgiven after twenty years of PAYE-style payments before they trade federal cancellation for a private fixed note.
Campus and clinic scenario labs
Seed classroom or clinic examples that return a full remaining balance when income sits under the poverty protection, and that fail loudly when someone pastes a negative loan.
FAQ
What happens if the loan balance is negative?
A negative balance is not a student-loan debt.
What if income is below one hundred fifty percent of the poverty line?
A borrower in that band still has to recertify; this calculator only sizes the leftover principal.
Does this include unpaid interest, SAVE versus PAYE, or Public Service Loan Forgiveness?
No. Payments do not accrue unpaid interest, the protection is the PAYE-style 150% floor with a 10% share, and PSLF qualifying employment is not tested. Pair the remainder with a servicer quote if you need those layers.
How is the forgiven amount worked out?
Your yearly payment is 10% of income above 150% of the poverty line for your household. That payment times the years paid is subtracted from the balance, and whatever remains, never below zero, is the forgiven amount.
Which poverty line does the calculator use?
The 2025 HHS guideline for the contiguous United States: 15,650 for a household of one plus 5,500 for each extra person. For a household of two that is 21,150, so 31,725 of income is protected.
Related tools
For developers — API access
Everything on this page is available programmatically. This section is for teams who want to wire it into their own systems; everyone else can just use the tool above.
API endpoint
Prefer to automate it? One authenticated POST creates the task; the result comes back by webhook or a signed link. The same capability also runs here on the web, by email and from Telegram — and soon from our app too.
Call it from your stack
curl -X POST https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/student-loan-forgiveness \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $KIT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"balance":80000,"income":55000,"family_size":2,"years_paid":20}'const res = await fetch("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/student-loan-forgiveness", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.KIT_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify({
"balance": 80000,
"income": 55000,
"family_size": 2,
"years_paid": 20
})
});
const { task_id } = await res.json();import os, requests
res = requests.post(
"https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/student-loan-forgiveness",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['KIT_KEY']}"},
json={
"balance": 80000,
"income": 55000,
"family_size": 2,
"years_paid": 20
},
)
task_id = res.json()["task_id"]<?php
$res = file_get_contents("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/student-loan-forgiveness", false, stream_context_create([
"http" => [
"method" => "POST",
"header" => "Authorization: Bearer " . getenv("KIT_KEY") . "\r\nContent-Type: application/json",
"content" => '{"balance":80000,"income":55000,"family_size":2,"years_paid":20}',
],
]));
$task = json_decode($res, true);body := bytes.NewBufferString(`{"balance":80000,"income":55000,"family_size":2,"years_paid":20}`)
req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/student-loan-forgiveness", body)
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("KIT_KEY"))
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)Example request
{
"balance": 80000,
"income": 55000,
"family_size": 2,
"years_paid": 20
}Example response
{
"task_id": "tsk_a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6",
"type": "fin.student_loan_forgiveness",
"status": "queued",
"_links": {
"result": "/tasks/tsk_…/result"
}
}The API is asynchronous: the call returns a task_id immediately and the result arrives by webhook. Polling is capped at 1 req/s per task.
Pricing
Published price — no tokens, no invented credits. A failed task is never charged.
Limits
max_abs_value | 1000000000000000 |
Errors
| HTTP | Code | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
401 | unauthorized | Missing or invalid API key. |
402 | insufficient_balance | Your balance doesn't cover the task price. |
404 | unknown_type | That task type doesn't exist. |
429 | rate_limited | Too many requests. Use the webhook instead of polling. |
Technical notes
A negative loan balance is not a debt, so it fails with invalid_input instead of printing a refund.
What income-driven student loan forgiveness estimates and how the remainder is formed
The poverty line is the 2025 HHS guideline for the forty-eight contiguous states: fifteen thousand six hundred fifty for a household of one, plus five thousand five hundred for each additional person in family_size. Total paid is that annual payment times years_paid.
Input contract, response shape, and error behaviour
Zero balance is allowed and yields a forgiven amount of zero. Zero income and a household under the protection both yield a zero annual payment, so the forgiven amount equals the full remaining principal. POST a JSON body that supplies balance, income, family_size, and years_paid. balance is the current student-loan principal remaining in a single currency unit, a finite number that is not negative, with aliases loan_balance, principal, and amount. income is annual adjusted gross income in the same unit, a finite number that is not negative, with aliases agi, annual_income, and adjusted_gross_income. family_size is the household counted on the IDR application—the borrower plus dependents—as a positive integer from one through thirty, with aliases household_size, family, and household. years_paid is how many years of qualifying IDR payments have been made, or the term at which remaining principal is cancelled, a finite number from zero through forty; fractional years are accepted so a mid-year recertification does not have to be padded. Each numeric field may arrive as a JSON number or as a numeric string. Missing fields, empty strings, non-finite values, a family_size that is not a positive integer, years_paid above forty, or a magnitude above the declared limit fail with invalid_input naming the field and are not billed. Negative balance is the error this landing exists to catch: the message contains 'balance' must not be negative so a form can highlight that control instead of showing a global alert. On success the body echoes the four inputs after rounding, poverty_line and protected_income from the pinned table, discretionary_income, annual_payment, monthly_payment as annual_payment divided by twelve, total_paid as annual_payment times years_paid, forgiven_amount as the leftover principal, and a formula string restating the identity. Pair the figure with your own servicer interest if you need a quote that grows; this endpoint computes the zero-interest remainder only.
Where a student loan forgiveness calculator earns its keep
Household budget apps can store forgiven_amount as a planned cancellation at year twenty or twenty-five, then let the user layer Public Service Loan Forgiveness hours or extra principal payments on top instead of reverse-engineering a blended figure.
Technical questions
How is the forgiven student loan amount calculated?
Send balance (≥ 0), income (≥ 0), family_size as a positive integer, and years_paid (≥ 0). Discretionary income is max(0, income − 1.5 × poverty_line), the annual payment is ten percent of that, total paid is the annual payment times years_paid, and forgiven_amount is max(0, balance − total_paid). The poverty line is 15650 + 5500 × (family_size − 1).
What does the student loan forgiveness calculator cost?
The browser tool is free. API requests use prepaid KIT balance at $0.002 per successful call; invalid input is not billed.