Auto Loan Calculator

Estimate your monthly car payment, or find the maximum price you can afford for a target monthly payment.

About the Auto Loan Calculator

Calculate your monthly car payment from a vehicle price, or flip it around to find the maximum price you can afford for a target monthly payment — including sales tax, fees, trade-in, and incentives.

How the Auto Loan Calculator works

The "Total Price" tab works like a typical loan calculator: enter the vehicle price and the calculator finds your monthly payment. The "Monthly Payment" tab works backwards — enter the payment you want, and it solves for the highest vehicle price that fits that payment. A trade-in reduces the amount you need to finance, but if you still owe more on it than it's worth (negative equity), that difference gets added to the new loan instead. Cash incentives (manufacturer rebates) usually still count toward the taxable price in most states, even though they reduce what you finance. You can choose to pay sales tax, title, and registration fees upfront at signing, or roll them into the loan — rolling them in raises your loan amount and the total interest you'll pay over the loan.

How to use the Auto Loan Calculator

Choose "Total Price" to calculate a payment from a vehicle price, or "Monthly Payment" to find the max price for a target payment.
Enter the loan term in months and the annual interest rate.
Enter any cash incentives, down payment, trade-in value, and amount still owed on the trade-in.
Optionally select your state (for reference only), and enter your sales tax rate and any title/registration/other fees.
Check "Include taxes and fees in loan" if you want them financed instead of paid at signing.
Press Calculate to see your monthly payment, loan amount, due at signing, and full amortization schedule.

Tips for the Auto Loan Calculator

Rolling taxes and fees into the loan means you pay interest on them too, increasing your total cost over the life of the loan.

Formula used by the Auto Loan Calculator

Monthly Payment: M = P × [r(1+r)ⁿ] / [(1+r)ⁿ − 1]
where P = loan amount, r = monthly interest rate, n = number of monthly payments

In "Monthly Payment" mode, this is solved in reverse for the loan amount, then for the maximum affordable vehicle price.

Example: Auto Loan Calculator

Financing $27,000 (after a down payment) over 5 years

Amount financed: $27,000
Loan term: 60 months
Annual rate: 5% (illustrative)

Result: Monthly payment ≈ $509.52; total interest ≈ $3,571.40

With a monthly rate of 5% ÷ 12 over 60 payments, the amortization formula returns a payment of about $509.52, for total interest of roughly $3,571.40 over the loan.