Loan calculators
Loan EMI calculator: your EMI, and where every rupee of it goes
What will this loan cost every month — and in total?
Enter the amount, the rate and the tenure. You get the number lenders lead with — the EMI — and then everything they don't: the total interest, where each payment actually goes, and the full year-by-year amortisation schedule.
Set your loan above to see the EMI and what the loan costs in full.
What the loan really costs
Every EMI is part principal, part interest. Added up over the whole tenure, the split looks like this.
The balance, and the interest piling up
The solid line is what you still owe. The dashed line is the interest you have paid so far — notice how fast it climbs while the balance barely moves.
Year-by-year amortisation schedule
The amortisation schedule, summed by year: what you paid in EMIs, how much of it was interest, how much repaid the loan, and the balance still owed at year end.
Educational only. These are projections from the numbers you entered — not advice, a quote, or a prediction. Real returns vary, and tax treatment differs by option and changes over time. Klera never lends or moves money.
The number lenders lead with, and the ones they don't
Every loan advertisement leads with the EMI, because the EMI is the smallest honest number a loan has. It is real — you will pay exactly that, every month — but it is engineered to feel affordable: the cost of the loan divided into so many pieces that no single piece alarms anyone. The numbers that describe what the loan actually costs are the ones this calculator puts beside it. On the default ₹30 lakh loan, the EMI is ₹26,035; the interest is about ₹32.5 lakh, more than the loan itself.
The formula behind it is short. Your annual rate divided by twelve is charged on whatever you still owe; the EMI is the one fixed payment that clears the balance exactly on the last month. Everything surprising about loans falls out of that single constraint — because the payment is fixed while the balance falls, the mix inside the payment has to keep shifting, and at the start it is shifted almost entirely towards interest.
The crossover: when your EMI starts working for you
Open the year-by-year table above — that is the amortisation schedule (the amortization schedule, in the spelling most search results use), and it is the only place a loan tells the truth. In the first year of the default loan you hand over about ₹3.1 lakh in EMIs and the balance falls by roughly ₹59,000. The other ₹2.5 lakh was interest. The payment did not change; what it was buying did.
Somewhere in the schedule is the crossover — the first month in which more of your EMI repays principal than pays interest. People assume it comes early. On the default loan it arrives nearly twelve years in, past the halfway mark of the tenure. Until then, every EMI is mostly rent on the balance. This is also why prepaying early in a loan saves so much more than prepaying late: an early rupee cancels interest that would otherwise have been charged for decades. The prepayment calculator puts figures on that.
Why the rate matters more than the sticker EMI
Move the rate slider by half a point and watch the total interest, not the EMI. The EMI shifts by about ₹950 a month — noticeable, survivable. The total interest shifts by about ₹2.3 lakh. That is the asymmetry worth carrying into a bank branch: a rate difference that looks trivial monthly is a large, certain sum over twenty years, and it is the one number on the offer sheet that is actually negotiable.
It also compounds quietly after you sign. Floating rates move, and most lenders absorb a rise by lengthening your tenure rather than raising the EMI — so the loan gets more expensive without your monthly outgo ever telling you. If your rate has drifted well above what new borrowers are offered, the balance transfer calculator will tell you whether switching survives the fees.
The lower-EMI trap
The easiest way to lower an EMI is to lengthen the loan, and it is almost always a bad trade dressed as a favour. Stretching the default loan from 20 to 25 years buys you about ₹1,900 a month and costs about ₹10 lakh of interest — over ₹500 of certain future cost for every rupee of monthly relief, paid across an extra five years. The EMI curve flattens hard: each added year buys less relief than the one before, while the interest keeps accruing at full rate.
There is one honest version of the trade: take the longer tenure deliberately and invest the difference, accepting that the investment has to out-earn your loan rate to come out ahead. Whether that gamble is worth it for your numbers is exactly what the loan tenure calculator tests — and if the spare money already exists, prepay, SIP, or gold? compares the three places it could go.
Tracking a real loan, not a round number
A calculator answers the loan you might take. The loan you have is messier: the rate has moved since you signed, part payments have bent the schedule, and the statement's remaining tenure no longer matches the one you were quoted. Klera's loan manager holds the real amortisation schedule — EMIs, mid-loan interest-rate changes, interest paid and remaining, payoff progress, with optional auto-recording of the monthly EMI — offline, on your phone, with no account and no server that ever sees your balance. This EMI calculator is in the app too, next to the loan it will eventually describe.
Frequently asked questions
How is a loan EMI calculated?
Take your annual rate and divide it by twelve to get the monthly rate. The EMI is then the principal, times that monthly rate, times a growth factor of (1 + monthly rate) raised to the number of months, divided by that same growth factor minus one. In symbols: EMI = P × r × (1+r)ⁿ ÷ ((1+r)ⁿ − 1). What the formula guarantees is one fixed payment that exactly clears the loan on the last month — which means the mix inside each payment has to keep shifting, from mostly interest at the start to mostly principal at the end.
Why is my EMI mostly interest at first?
Because interest is charged on what you still owe, and at the start you still owe everything. On a ₹30 lakh loan at 8.5%, the first month’s interest is about ₹21,250 — so of a ₹26,035 EMI, only ₹4,785 actually repays the loan. As the balance falls the interest charge falls with it, and more of the same fixed EMI goes to principal. It is not a lender trick; it is arithmetic. But it is why leaving a loan early, or refinancing late, costs more than people expect.
What happens to my EMI when interest rates change?
On a floating-rate loan, usually nothing — and that is the trap. Most lenders keep the EMI the same and quietly stretch the tenure instead, so a rate rise shows up as extra years rather than a bigger payment. You can ask for the opposite: keep the tenure and raise the EMI, which costs less in total. Either way, check the tenure on your next statement after any rate change, not just the EMI.
Should I choose a lower EMI or a shorter tenure?
A lower EMI is bought with a longer tenure, and the price is interest — stretching the default loan above from 20 to 25 years trims the EMI by about ₹1,900 a month and adds about ₹10 lakh of interest. The honest answer is the shortest tenure whose EMI you can pay in a bad month, not an average one. The loan tenure calculator runs the full comparison, including what happens if you invest the EMI difference.
Is a lower EMI always better?
No. The EMI is a cash-flow number, not a cost number, and optimising it alone almost always raises the cost. A lower EMI from a longer tenure means more interest. A lower EMI from a balance transfer can be a genuinely cheaper loan — or the same loan stretched over more years, dressed up as a saving. Compare total interest over the whole tenure, which is what the calculator above puts next to the EMI.
Can I reduce my EMI without paying more overall?
Two ways, and only one is free of catches. A genuinely lower rate — negotiated with your lender or via a balance transfer — cuts the EMI and the total together, though transfer fees can eat the gain. A part payment with the lender reducing the EMI also works, though keeping the EMI and shortening the tenure saves more; the prepayment calculator shows both. Anything that lowers the EMI by adding years is not a reduction, it is a deferral with interest.
What is an amortisation schedule?
The month-by-month table behind the EMI: for each payment, how much was interest, how much repaid principal, and the balance left afterwards. It is the only view that shows what a loan actually does — the EMI is constant, but the schedule reveals that the early years are almost all interest and the loan barely shrinks. The calculator above builds the full schedule for your numbers, summarised year by year.
Is there an EMI calculator app that works offline?
Klera ships this same EMI calculator inside the app, along with a side-by-side loan comparison — and, for a loan you actually take, a full loan manager with real amortisation schedules, mid-loan interest-rate changes, interest paid and remaining, and payoff progress. All of it runs offline on Android, free, with no sign-up and no server that ever sees your balance.