PSLF calculator

Counting to 120

Public Service Loan Forgiveness forgives the rest of your Direct Loans after 120 qualifying monthly payments. They don't have to be consecutive. The calculator starts from your count and adds one qualifying payment a month from next month, so the month it shows is when your 120th payment would fall if every month from now counts.

• Your count. Your StudentAid.gov dashboard shows your PSLF progress under My Loans. It changes when the Department processes a PSLF form for a new period of employment, so certify your employment every year and whenever you change employers. If you load your aid data file (MyStudentData.txt), the calculator fills in the PSLF count it lists.
• Each month. A payment counts when you work full-time, an average of at least 30 hours a week, for a qualifying employer: a government at any level, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit or certain other nonprofits. Your loans must be Direct Loans, on a plan that counts.
• At the end. You must still work full-time for a qualifying employer when you send the final PSLF form. The Department then confirms your count and forgives what is left. This site doesn't judge employers or employment; use the PSLF pages at StudentAid.gov for that.

Which payments count

The PSLF law and regulation (34 CFR 685.219) count payments under these plans:

• RAP, when the payment is on time. The law lists "on-time payments under the Repayment Assistance Plan", so a late RAP payment doesn't count.
• IBR, including a $0 payment.
• The 10-year Standard plan, which usually repays the whole loan by the 120th payment and leaves nothing to forgive.
• ICR and PAYE, for payments made by June 30, 2028.
• Graduated or extended plans for older loans, only in months when the payment is at least the 10-year standard amount.
• Never the Tiered Standard plan. With any loan made on or after July 1, 2026, RAP is the only plan whose payments count.

Pay the full amount by the due date. Installments that add up to the full payment count as one payment. Off RAP, some deferments and forbearances also count, such as cancer treatment, economic hardship and military service deferments; while you are on RAP, none do. RAP and PSLF explains how RAP's rules differ.

Lower payments usually cost less under PSLF

Whatever is left at your 120th payment is forgiven, so the cost of PSLF is what you pay until then. The calculator opens on a teacher with $60,000 of loans at 6.5%, an AGI of $48,000 and one child, 60 payments in:

• RAP starts at $110 a month (4% of $48,000 ÷ 12, minus $50 for the child).
• IBR for a new borrower starts at $129.50.
• The 10-year Standard plan would be $1,173.97 a month for the 60 months left of its term, and would repay everything.

With a 3% yearly raise, the AGI passes $50,000 in year 3 and RAP's rate moves from 4% to 5%. Over the five years, IBR totals about $8,420 and RAP about $8,770. PSLF then forgives about $57,000 on RAP, whose balance falls $50 a month, and about $71,100 on IBR, where unpaid interest builds up. A lower payment now isn't always the lower total: run your own numbers, or compare every plan with the same inputs.

PSLF buyback calculator

A buyback earns PSLF credit for months in a deferment or forbearance that didn't count, if you worked full-time for a qualifying employer in those months. Under the Department's buyback rules:

• It opens at 120 months of qualifying employment. You need 120 months of certified qualifying employment, counting the paused months, and you can buy back only enough months to reach 120.
• Not for months on RAP or Tiered Standard, or in school, in a grace period, in default or in bankruptcy. On a consolidation loan, only months after it was made can be bought back.
• The cost is what your income-driven payment would have been then. If you were on an income-driven plan just before or after a pause shorter than a year, it is the lower of those two payments. Otherwise the Department uses your tax return and family size for that year: the lowest income-driven amount you qualified for, or the 10-year Standard payment if that is lower. Without those documents within 30 days, it uses the 10-year Standard payment. If the amount is $0, nothing is due.
• How to ask. Submit a PSLF Reconsideration request and choose "PSLF Buyback". Then pay the buyback agreement within 90 days, in one payment or several, and keep making your regular payments until it is done.

Open Buy back paused months in the calculator and enter your paused months and the payment for each. Two examples, both the teacher above:

• Enough to finish now. With 110 payments made and 14 months of a forbearance while working for the school district, only 10 of those months are needed. At the $95 a month the teacher paid on IBR just before the forbearance, the buyback costs $950. It replaces the last 10 payments: $1,100 on RAP or $1,295 on IBR. PSLF then forgives the balance 10 months sooner.
• Not yet at 120. With 100 payments and 12 paused months, buyback opens after 8 more payments, when qualifying employment reaches 120 months. Buying back the 12 months then costs $1,140 and ends PSLF a year sooner, replacing $1,358 of RAP payments or $1,596 of IBR payments.

What the calculator assumes

• Every month from next month counts: full-time work for a qualifying employer, a plan that counts, and each payment in full by its due date.
• A fixed interest rate, the yearly raise you enter, and yearly recertification of your income. Your dependents, and a spouse's share of the loans on a joint return, stay the same.
• No deferment or forbearance from now on. IBR leaves out its three-year interest help on subsidized loans.
• Fixed plans run from when your loans entered repayment. Unless you enter your months in repayment under More details, that is taken as one month for each PSLF payment.
• The dates count from the current month, and your official count is the one on StudentAid.gov. These are estimates for planning, not tax, legal or financial advice.