Avalanche vs Snowball: Your Loans
This calculator lines up avalanche and snowball strategies for your student loans side by side. Enter up to five loans with balances, rates, and minimum payments. Avalanche targets the highest rate first; snowball targets the smallest balance. On loans totaling $67,000, the interest gap often runs into thousands of dollars, but snowball delivers an earlier first payoff.
Highest rate first saves you
Difference between the two orders
in interest, against paying the smallest balance first — and you clear everything by .
On these balances the two orders finish in the same place — pick the one you will actually stick to.
- Same budget, two ordersAvalancheSnowball
- Debt-free in
- Interest paid
- Debt-free on
Avalanche order
Every dollar you free up when a loan clears rolls onto the next one in both plans — that is the only fair way to compare them. Total monthly budget: .
At these minimums and rates at least one balance grows faster than you are paying it down, so neither order ever finishes. Raise a minimum payment or the extra amount.
Minimum payments and rates are yours to enter. Interest is compounded monthly on each loan. If a minimum payment is smaller than that loan's monthly interest, the balance grows and the plan will not finish.
How Each Strategy Works
Both methods keep you paying the minimums on every loan. The difference is where you direct any extra money. Avalanche sends it to the loan with the highest interest rate. Once that loan is paid off, the freed-up minimum rolls into the next-highest-rate loan. Snowball sends the extra to the smallest balance regardless of rate. Once that balance hits zero, its minimum rolls into the next-smallest loan.
Avalanche always wins on total interest paid when the math is run to completion. On a five-loan set—say $22,000 at 6.8%, $18,000 at 5.5%, $14,000 at 7.2%, $8,000 at 4.5%, and $5,000 at 6.0% (illustrative)—the avalanche order attacks the 7.2% loan first, saving the most in daily accrual. The calculator shows both the payoff date for each individual loan and the total interest paid under each strategy so you can weigh the financial cost against the psychological benefit of early wins.
When Snowball Beats Avalanche
Snowball rarely wins on pure math, but it often wins on follow-through. Borrowers on student-loan forums report that eliminating a small loan early creates momentum—one fewer servicer bill, one fewer minimum payment, and visible proof that the debt is shrinking. If the rate spread across your loans is narrow (say 5.0% to 5.8%), the interest difference between the two strategies may be only a few hundred dollars over the full term. In that case, the motivational payoff of snowball can outweigh the modest mathematical edge of avalanche.
The calculator displays both finish dates and total interest precisely so you can make that judgment with real numbers. If you find a middle path appealing—snowball the two smallest loans for quick wins, then switch to avalanche for the rest—run the tool twice with adjusted inputs. For an even faster payoff under either strategy, add recurring extra payments using the extra-payment calculator or explore your debt-free date.
Balances, rates, and payment amounts in examples are illustrative. Actual savings depend on your specific loan terms and extra-payment capacity.
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Sources
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Sources: standard amortization math (daily interest = principal × APR / 365.25); salliemae.com avalanche-vs-snowball comparison.
- Federal Direct Consolidation Loan interest rate — the weighted average of the loans being consolidated, rounded up to the nearest one-eighth of one percent (Federal Student Aid, studentaid.gov, Loan Consolidation).
- Amortisation, daily interest accrual and payoff arithmetic — standard loan mathematics; every figure on this page is computed from the numbers you enter.