Student Loan Consolidation Calculator: Benefits and Costs

Consolidating federal student loans combines them into one new loan — a Direct Consolidation Loan — with one payment, one servicer and one fixed interest rate.

Student loan consolidation has its benefits, but it won't always lower your monthly payment or save you money. It could actually cost you more in interest over the life of the loan if you end up with a longer term.

Changes to federal student loans that took effect on July 1, 2026, can make it difficult to determine whether consolidation is a good move. Our student loan consolidation calculator can help. It shows your new interest rate, monthly payment and total interest cost. What's more, it provides guidance on what you could gain or lose based on recent student loan changes.

How to use the student loan consolidation calculator

• Prepare by gathering information. For each of your federal student loans, you’ll need the principal balance, interest rate and what you pay each month. All are on your studentaid.gov dashboard. Estimates work, but real numbers will give you a more accurate answer. 

• Decide whether to include unpaid interest. Optionally, you can input unpaid interest. Any interest you've accrued but not paid gets added to your consolidation loan principal balance. If you've been in an income-driven plan or a forbearance, this number can increase your consolidation loan balance significantly. So have that number ready if you intend to use it.

• Know the types of student loans you have. The calculator will ask if you plan to include specific loans: parent PLUS, Perkins or Federal Family Education Loans (FFEL). That's because consolidating these loans has unique considerations you should be aware of. Our calculator guidance provides that.

• Have the dates when your student loans were disbursed. If all were paid out before July 1, 2026, consolidating will affect the repayment options and terms available to you. The calculator accounts for that.

What to know about your calculator results

Along with your new payment, interest rate, term and total interest, your calculator results show how much consolidating will reduce or increase your payment and interest cost. It also explains your repayment options and any other information specific to your loan types.

Here are a few things to know about your calculator results:

Your new interest rate. It's the weighted average of the rates on the loans you consolidate, rounded up to the next one-eighth of a percent (0.125%). Loans with larger balances carry more weight and pull the average toward their rates. The result is usually near the middle of your current rates.

Your repayment term. If you consolidate your student loans today, and don't designate that you prefer the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), you're automatically placed on the new Tiered Standard Repayment Plan. Those are the only two options.

The Tiered Standard Repayment Plan sets your term based on your total Direct Loan balance at the time of repayment — 10 years for under $25,000; 15 years from $25,000 to $49,999; 20 years from $50,000 to $99,999; and 25 years at $100,000 or more. So any Direct Loans you leave out of the consolidation loan still count toward setting your term.

Before recent changes, consolidation loans on the old Standard Repayment Plan could stretch repayment of large balances up to 30 years. A longer term helps lower payments. The maximum term for high-balance loans on the new Tiered Standard Repayment Plan is 25 years. A shorter term results in higher payments.

If you’re able to lower your payment with a longer term, it's likely you’ll pay a lot more in total interest. Our calculator will show you if that's the case.

Your income-driven payment. RAP, the only income-driven option you have after consolidating, can also result in higher monthly payments when compared to not consolidating and staying on a legacy income-driven repayment (IDR) plan. That's because legacy plans calculate payments based on your discretionary income — your adjusted gross income minus a percentage of the federal poverty guideline. RAP skips that step and applies its payment percentage to your whole AGI, so the same income could produce a bigger bill.

Reasons to consolidate student loans or not

Even if it won't save you money, there are a few ways you could still benefit from consolidating.

• Simplicity. Instead of juggling payments with multiple loans/servicers, you have one monthly payment. That's easier to manage and can help you avoid missing payments. It's also an opportunity to choose a new servicer.

• Access to Direct Loan status. If you still hold old FFEL or Perkins loans, consolidating converts them into a Direct Consolidation Loan, which can unlock Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) eligibility going forward if you repay under RAP. (The Tiered Standard Repayment Plan doesn’t qualify for PSLF.)

• Path out of default. If your student loans are in default, consolidation is one way to get back into good standing. 

Whether it saves you money or not, there are reasons you might want to avoid consolidation.

• Loss of access to legacy IDR plans. A consolidation loan made on or after July 1, 2026, can only be repaid two ways: the Tiered Standard Repayment Plan or RAP. Because consolidation loans are considered new loans, you’ll permanently lose access to older IDR plans that may offer lower payments.

• Loss of credit toward PSLF. Payments you've already made that counted toward PSLF carry forward as a weighted average based on loan balance. That means if you consolidate a high-balance loan with little payment history and a smaller loan with a long payment history, you could lose some of your progress toward forgiveness. 

• Loss of repayment options for parent PLUS borrowers. Parent PLUS loans had to be consolidated by June 30, 2026, to keep any access to income-driven repayment. Loans that weren't consolidated by then still have access to the legacy Standard Repayment Plan, as well as Graduated and Extended plans. Consolidating now would limit you to the Tiered Standard Repayment Plan, which has less flexibility and for some borrowers a higher payment.

» MORE: How to consolidate federal student loans

How does refinancing compare to consolidating?

When you refinance through a private lender, you take out a new loan from a bank, credit union or online lender. Typically, the goal of refinancing is to lower your interest rate and payment. You can include federal loans with a refinanced loan, but you’ll lose federal benefits, such as forgiveness and IDR.

You may hear private lenders refer to refinancing as consolidation, but the two are different. For this article, our definition of consolidation is combining only federal student loans into a Direct Consolidation Loan.

Refinancing tends to make sense when:

• Your loans are already private. There's no federal protection to lose. 

• You have strong credit and steady income. You're likely to qualify for a lower interest rate than you would with consolidation. It's at least a good idea to compare rates.

• You're repaying high-rate federal loans and won't need IDR. The higher your rate, the more a refinance can save — as long as you're confident you won't need income-driven payments down the road.

• You don't need forgiveness. You have no plans to work in a role that could benefit from PSLF.

• You have little chance of job instability. Federal loans can be paused when you lose a job. With some private loans, you can’t.

» MORE: What is a private student loan?

Weigh the trade-offs before you consolidate

Before moving forward with consolidating or refinancing student loans, make sure you know what you’ll gain or lose. The decision whether to consolidate is not as clear as it once was. Once you consolidate federal loans and lose access to repayment plans, or you refinance and lose federal benefits, you can't go back.

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