Finance
Amortisation schedule
An amortisation schedule is the loan written out in full — every instalment, split into the interest it pays and the principal it removes, until the balance reaches zero. This page explains how that split is arrived at before it asks you for anything, and it asks you for the interest rate rather than filling one in, because no published rate stays current long enough to be printed on a page.
The tool — empty until you type
From your lender's own quote. We hold no rate.
Fill all three and the instalment appears here; the month-by-month table is below. Nothing you type leaves the browser.
The method
How the instalment is arrived at
Four sentences of arithmetic, and one consequence that surprises almost every first-time borrower.
The instalment is the level payment that clears the loan exactly over the tenure. It is derived by setting the present value of the payments equal to the amount borrowed: EMI = P × i × (1 + i)ⁿ ÷ ((1 + i)ⁿ − 1), where P is the principal, i is the monthly rate — the annual rate divided by twelve — and n is the number of months.
Each month, interest is charged on the balance outstanding at the start of that month. Whatever is left of the instalment after the interest reduces the principal. Next month's interest is charged on the smaller balance, so the interest share falls and the principal share rises, every month, at an accelerating pace.
That is the whole of why an early schedule looks so unrewarding. In the opening years almost the entire instalment is interest, not because of any charge or penalty, but because the balance it is calculated on has barely been reduced. The month in which the principal share first overtakes the interest share is a more honest measure of progress than the number of instalments paid, and the calculator marks it.
The last instalment is trimmed to whatever is actually outstanding. A schedule that leaves a few rupees over, or takes a few extra, has rounded somewhere a lender would not.
The empty box
Why we ask you for the rate
Every other calculator fills this in. That is the part we disagree with.
We ask you for the rate rather than filling one in, and the reason is not caution. No published rate stays current: lenders reprice floating loans against an external benchmark that moves, the figure in an advertisement is the best case for the strongest applicant, and your own rate is set only after your file is assessed. A number typed into a page that is built once and served for months would be wrong within weeks and would look authoritative the entire time. So the page holds no rate, and the answer you get is an answer to the assumption you supplied.
Your figures
Build the schedule
Three inputs, all yours. The table below appears as soon as all three are filled.
Principal, rate, tenure
Enter the amount you would borrow, the annual rate your lender has actually quoted you, and the tenure in years.
From your lender's own quote or sanction letter. We hold no rate.
Fill all three fields and the instalment, the totals and the year-by-year schedule appear here.
Everything is worked out in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, stored, or seen by us.
Limits
What this schedule assumes, and what it leaves out
Stated here rather than in a footnote, because each of these is a reason your lender's figures will differ from these.
Four assumptions
- Monthly rests are assumed. A lender that accrues interest daily will produce slightly different figures, and the gap compounds over a long tenure.
- The rate is held flat for the entire tenure. A floating rate does not do that. On a floating loan, a rate change usually alters the tenure rather than the instalment — which means the real variable is how long you pay, not how much.
- No fee is modelled: no processing fee, no documentation charge, no insurance premium bundled into the sanction, no part-prepayment charge. Each of these is your lender's to disclose in the sanction letter.
- This is a schedule, not a sanction. It says what a loan of that size at that rate would look like. It says nothing about whether you would be offered one.
Beyond arithmetic
Three things no schedule can know
Your lender's policy
How much of your income a lender will let you commit, what it counts as income, which of your existing obligations it counts, what share of the price it will lend against, and what it does with a co-applicant are all internal policy. Two lenders reading the same file reach different answers, and neither answer is arithmetic.
Your credit assessment
The rate you are offered is set after your file is assessed — bureau record, employment, existing exposure, the property itself. A rate quoted in an advertisement is the best case for the strongest applicant, and a page that assumed it would be quietly wrong for almost everyone.
The rate on the day you sign
Floating rates reprice against an external benchmark, and the benchmark moves. Any schedule computed today is a picture of one assumption held flat for the whole tenure, which is the one thing a floating rate never does.
Questions
Questions this page is asked
- Why does this page not fill in an interest rate?
- Because no rate stays current. Floating rates reprice against an external benchmark that moves, advertised rates are the best case for the strongest applicant, and your own rate is set after your file is assessed. A rate stored in a page built once and served for months would be wrong within weeks. The Reserve Bank of India regulates the lenders that set these rates; the current figure for a product is the lender's to publish.
- Why is almost all of my early instalment interest?
- Interest is charged each month on the balance outstanding at the start of that month, and in the early years that balance has barely been reduced. Nothing is being added; the split simply follows the balance. The schedule marks the month in which the principal share first exceeds the interest share.
- Will my bank's schedule match this one exactly?
- Not to the rupee. This assumes monthly rests and interest on the opening balance; lenders that accrue daily will differ, and fees, insurance premiums bundled into the sanction and any rate change during the tenure are not modelled here.
Sources
Who publishes what, and what we do not publish
This page holds no rate of any kind. Where a current figure is needed, the body that publishes it is named and linked here.
Regulates the banks and housing finance companies that set lending rates, and publishes the policy rate and the master directions on external benchmark lending rates. The current rate on any product is the lender's to publish, not ours.
The register on which a Karnataka project's registration, its declared timelines and its uploaded agreement format can be checked before any payment is made.
The equivalent register for a Tamil Nadu project, and the authority to whom a complaint about a payment demand in that state is made.
Income Tax Department
Income Tax Department, Government of India (opens in a new tab)www.incometax.gov.in
Publishes the current position on deductions claimed against home loan interest and principal, including the ceilings and the conditions, which change by Finance Act and are not transcribed here.
Every address above was opened on . Government sites move their pages; if one of these no longer resolves, the fact it holds up is unverified until someone finds where it went, not true because it was true once.
Next
Where to go from here
These tools are meant to be used together — an instalment is only half a decision until you have seen what the schedule, the plan and the paperwork do to it.
Ask for the sanction letter, not the indication
Any lender can put a schedule in front of you. The document that binds is the sanction letter — the rate, the reset, the fees and the prepayment terms in writing. Read it before the schedule.