How to use it
- Loan amount, the principal you plan to borrow. The tool is currency-neutral, so pounds, dollars and rupees all behave the same.
- Annual interest rate, the yearly figure on the sanction letter, entered as a percentage.
- Loan tenure, the length of the loan. Switch the unit between Years and Months.
- Read the four boxes: monthly EMI, total interest payable, total payment and principal. They refresh on every keystroke.
- Three charts follow. A pie splitting principal from interest, a line tracking the balance you still owe each year, and a line comparing the principal and the interest you pay in each year.
- The table lists every payment, twelve months to a page. Use Previous and Next to walk through it.
The numbers you type stay in the page. The maths runs in your browser, and nothing you enter is sent to a server.
The formula behind it
EMI = P × r × (1 + r)n ÷ ((1 + r)n − 1)
P is the principal. r is the monthly rate, not the annual one. n is the number of months.
Turning the quoted rate into r trips people up. Divide the annual rate by 12, then by 100. A 10% annual rate becomes 0.008333 per month. Pick Years and the tool multiplies by 12 for you first.
Try the default figures. Borrow 100,000 at 10% over 5 years and the EMI is 2,124.70. Total paid, 127,482. Interest, 27,482.
Every EMI has a floor, and no tenure gets you under it
This is the part most calculators never show you.
Stretch the tenure and the EMI falls. But it falls towards a hard limit, not towards zero. That limit is one month of interest on the whole principal: P times r. On 100,000 at 10%, it is 833.33.
Watch it happen. Over 5 years the EMI is 2,124.70. Over 30 years it drops to 877.57. Push the tenure to 100 years, the longest schedule this tool will build, and the EMI still only reaches 833.37. You would hand over roughly 1,000,000 on a 100,000 loan, and the monthly figure has barely shifted.
The reason is plain. Your first payment owes 833.33 in interest before a single unit of principal clears. Pay less than that and the shortfall gets added to the debt, so the balance climbs instead of falling. Lenders call this negative amortisation. The Reserve Bank of India banned it as an outcome of stretching a loan, in its circular of 18 August 2023 on resetting floating rates (DOR.MCS.REC.32/01.01.003/2023-24). When a floating rate rises, the lender must offer you a bigger EMI, a longer tenure or a mix of both. A longer tenure is allowed only where the EMI still covers the interest.
So if a broker offers to fix your affordability problem by adding years, check the arithmetic. Past a point the extra years buy almost nothing monthly and cost a fortune overall.
Your final instalment will not match the others
The schedule here clears the exact remaining balance in the last month rather than charging the usual EMI again. Lenders do the same. Rounding across 60 or 360 payments leaves a small residue, and the closing instalment absorbs it, so expect your real last payment to sit a little above or below every other one.
Tenure is the expensive lever
Rate gets all the attention. Tenure quietly does more damage.
On that 100,000 at 10%, five years costs 27,482 in interest. Thirty years costs 215,926. The monthly figure looks kinder by 1,247, and you pay nearly eight times as much for it.
Read the third chart to see why. In the early years of a long loan, nearly every unit you pay goes to interest, and the principal line stays flat. The two lines cross only once much of the term has gone.
Which is why paying extra early beats paying extra late. Money you put in during year two strips interest out of every year that follows. The same sum in year twenty-five strips out almost none.
Prepayment charges are changing in India
Calculating a home loan EMI in India? This one is worth knowing before you sign.
The rule sits in the Reserve Bank of India (Pre-payment Charges on Loans) Directions, 2025, issued on 2 July 2025 asRBI/2025-26/64.
Regulated lenders may no longer charge you to prepay or foreclose a floating rate loan taken for personal, non-business use. No lock-in applies, and it does not matter where the money came from. The rule covers loans sanctioned or renewed on or after 1 January 2026, so an older loan may still carry a fee. Fixed rate loans sit outside it.
Elsewhere the picture varies. UK mortgages often let you overpay 10% a year before an early repayment charge kicks in, and US rules bar prepayment penalties on most qualified mortgages. Read your own agreement rather than assuming.
What these figures leave out
The tool models a clean fixed-rate loan with monthly compounding. Nothing else. Real lending piles on processing fees, documentation charges, tax on those fees, insurance bundled into the sanction, and day-count rules that may not match a flat one-twelfth a month. A floating rate loan will drift too, so redo the sum whenever your benchmark moves.
One quirk worth knowing: type a fractional tenure in years, say 5.3, and the schedule rounds to the nearest whole month. Enter the months directly if you want the table and the headline to agree exactly.
Estimate only: figures here assume a fixed rate and even monthly compounding. Your real EMI may differ because of fees, insurance, rounding rules, day-count conventions or rate changes. Confirm the exact numbers with your lender before committing. Not financial advice.
Frequently asked questions
What is EMI?
EMI stands for Equated Monthly Instalment. It is the fixed sum you pay your lender each month until the loan is cleared. Every payment covers the interest owed on the balance, plus whatever is left over towards the principal.
Can I use this for home, car and personal loans?
Yes. The maths is identical for any reducing-balance loan, so home loan EMI, car loan EMI and personal loan EMI all come from the same formula. Only the amount, rate and tenure change.
Why does doubling the tenure not halve my EMI?
Because the interest on your balance falls due every month, however long the loan runs. That interest sets a floor under the instalment. On 100,000 at 10% the floor is 833.33 a month, and no tenure gets you below it.
What happens if I enter a 0% rate?
The EMI becomes the loan amount divided by the number of months, and total interest reads zero. Staff purchase schemes and some manufacturer car finance really do work this way.
Does the table show every single month?
Yes, for tenures up to 100 years, at twelve rows a page so one page equals one year. Anything longer stops at that 1,200-month ceiling.
Will my lender quote the same EMI?
Close, but rarely identical. Fees, bundled insurance and different rounding rules all nudge the number. Treat this as a planning figure and confirm the exact instalment on your sanction letter.