Personal Loan EMI Calculator

What is a personal loan EMI?

A personal loan is an unsecured loan — no property, car or gold is pledged — that you can use for almost anything: a wedding, medical bills, travel, home renovation or consolidating credit card debt. You repay it in equal monthly instalments (EMIs) over one to five years, sometimes seven.

This personal loan EMI calculator shows your monthly EMI, the total interest, a month-by-month repayment schedule and, just as importantly, what the loan really costs once the processing fee is counted. It works as a general EMI calculator for any reducing-balance loan: enter the amount, rate and tenure of any loan to get its EMI.

How this calculator works

Enter the loan amount, the annual interest rate and the tenure. The calculator applies the standard reducing-balance EMI formula, the same one banks and NBFCs use, and lays out every instalment in the amortisation schedule.

Each month, interest is charged on the balance you still owe; the rest of the EMI repays principal. Early EMIs therefore contain more interest, and later EMIs more principal.

Personal loans usually carry a processing fee that is deducted before the money reaches you. The calculator shows the fee with GST, the amount you actually receive, and the effective annual cost (APR) — the true rate on the money in your hand.

Formula

        P × r × (1 + r)ⁿ
EMI = ──────────────────────
          (1 + r)ⁿ − 1

P = loan amount    r = annual rate ÷ 12 ÷ 100    n = tenure in months

Worked example

1. A ₹5,00,000 personal loan at 11.5% a year for 3 years (36 months).
2. Monthly rate r = 11.5 ÷ 12 ÷ 100 ≈ 0.009583.
3. EMI ≈ ₹16,488. Total repaid ≈ ₹5,93,568, of which ₹93,568 is interest.
4. A 2% processing fee plus 18% GST (₹11,800) is deducted upfront, so you receive ₹4,88,200. The effective annual cost is about 13.2%, not 11.5%.

Personal loan EMI for common amounts

EMIs at 11.5% a year over 3 years.

How the interest rate changes a ₹5 lakh loan

Personal loan rates vary far more between borrowers than home loan rates do — from around 10% for salaried employees of large companies with excellent credit, to well above 20% at some NBFCs and digital lenders. The difference adds up quickly.

Choosing the tenure

Choose the shortest tenure whose EMI you can pay comfortably every month, even in a bad month. Lenders generally want all your EMIs together to stay below about 50% of your take-home pay.

The real cost: processing fee, GST and APR

The interest rate is only part of a personal loan’s cost. The processing fee, and 18% GST on it, are usually deducted from the loan, so you receive less than you borrowed but repay EMIs on the full amount. That is why a 2% fee lifts an 11.5% loan to an effective 13.2% a year over three years — and the shorter the loan, the bigger the effect.

Since October 2024, RBI rules require lenders to give every retail borrower a Key Fact Statement (KFS) before the loan is signed. It must show the annual percentage rate (APR), all fees and charges, and the repayment schedule. Use the APR to compare offers.

What decides your personal loan interest rate?

• Credit score: a CIBIL score of 750 or more usually unlocks the best rates; below about 700, offers are fewer and dearer.
• Income and employer: salaried employees of large, well-rated companies and government bodies generally get lower rates.
• Existing debt: if your current EMIs already use a large share of your income, expect a higher rate or a smaller loan.
• Relationship: pre-approved offers from the bank where your salary is credited are often cheaper than new-customer rates.

Prepaying or foreclosing a personal loan

Most personal loans are fixed-rate, so the RBI rule that bars prepayment penalties on floating-rate loans usually does not apply. Many lenders charge 2%–5% of the outstanding principal plus GST to foreclose, and some allow it only after 6 or 12 EMIs.

It can still pay to close early. On the ₹5 lakh, 11.5%, 3-year loan above, about ₹3.52 lakh is outstanding after 12 EMIs and ₹43,700 of interest is still to come. A 4% foreclosure charge with GST costs about ₹16,600, so closing the loan at that point saves around ₹27,000.

Assumptions & important notes

Frequently asked questions