EMI Calculator

Three inputs, and the output most people scroll past

Loan amount, interest rate as a percentage per annum, tenure in years. The EMI updates as you type. Half-year tenures are allowed because personal loans and two-wheeler loans often come in 18 or 30 months.

The figure to stop at is the last one, equivalent flat rate. It is the single number that lets you compare a bank’s quote with the one from a car dealer’s finance desk or a consumer durable counter at Croma, and it is the reason this page exists rather than the hundred other EMI calculators.

The annuity formula behind every EMI in India

EMI = P × i × (1+i)^n / ((1+i)^n - 1)

• P is the principal
• i is the monthly rate, the annual rate divided by 12 and then by 100
• n is the number of monthly instalments

Every EMI is the same amount, but its makeup changes. In the first year of a 20-year home loan around four-fifths of each instalment is interest; in the last year almost all of it is principal. Interest is charged on what you still owe, and what you still owe falls slowly at the start and quickly at the end.

₹25 lakh at 8.5 percent for 20 years

The monthly rate is 8.5 ÷ 12 = 0.7083 percent, and there are 240 instalments.

Monthly EMI	₹21,696
Total interest	₹27,06,939
Total payable	₹52,06,939
Equivalent flat rate	5.41%
Tenure	240 months

You repay more than twice what you borrowed. That is normal for twenty years at 8.5 percent, and it is the actual price of spreading a loan that far. The bank’s own figure may differ from this by a few hundred rupees a year: lenders round the instalment, some accrue interest daily, and the broken period between disbursement and the first EMI date is billed separately as pre-EMI interest.

Why a flat rate always looks cheaper than it is

Reducing balance charges interest only on what is outstanding. A flat rate charges interest on the full original amount for the entire tenure, including on money you repaid years ago. The total is far higher, but the number is smaller, and the smaller number is what gets printed.

Take the ₹25 lakh loan above. It produces ₹27,06,939 of interest. Spread that over the original principal and the full tenure, which is how a flat rate is defined:

flat equivalent = 27,06,939 / (25,00,000 × 20) × 100 = 5.41%

So 8.5 percent reducing costs exactly the same as 5.41 percent flat. Which means:

• A dealer offering “7 percent flat” on a car loan is charging you more than a bank at 8.5 percent reducing, despite the smaller headline.
• A “6 percent flat” personal loan over five years is roughly 11 percent reducing.
• On a four-year loan, 12 percent reducing is 6.60 percent flat; on five years, 12 percent reducing is 6.69 percent flat.

The ratio is not fixed. On a short tenure a flat rate is about 1.8 times smaller than its reducing equivalent; on a long one, closer to 1.6. The only safe habit is to ask every lender which basis their rate is on, and to run it through this calculator before you compare. A lender who will not answer the question plainly has answered it.

Prepayment: the lever most borrowers never pull

Because interest is charged on the outstanding balance, every rupee paid early removes interest from every month that remains. On the same ₹25 lakh loan, an extra ₹5,000 a month on top of the EMI:

Months saved	85, a little over 7 years
Interest saved	₹10,89,361

The extra ₹5,000 adds up to about ₹7.75 lakh over the shortened loan, and it removes almost ₹11 lakh of interest. No FD pays that, and no SIP guarantees it.

RBI has long prohibited prepayment charges on floating-rate home loans taken by individuals, and its 2025 direction extends that, from 1 January 2026, to all floating-rate loans to individuals for non-business purposes. Fixed-rate loans, which most car and personal loans are, can still carry a foreclosure charge, so check the sanction letter before you plan around a lump sum. One practical note: banks apply a part-prepayment to reduce the tenure by default, which is the cheaper choice. If you would rather cut the EMI, you have to ask.

Tenure resets, processing fees and the EMI that quietly grows

Negotiating the EMI instead of the rate. Any EMI can be reached by stretching the tenure, so “₹22,000 a month” tells you nothing about what the loan costs. Fix the amount and the rate, then let the EMI fall out of them.

Stretching to 30 years. On this loan it cuts the EMI by ₹2,473, to ₹19,223, and adds ₹17,13,282 of interest. Sometimes that is the only way the loan is affordable at all, and then it is the right call. It is never a way to save money.

Fees and insurance rolled into the loan. Most lenders charge 0.25 to 1 percent as a processing fee, and many bundle a loan protection policy into the disbursement. Both are financed, so you pay interest on them for the full tenure. The home loan calculator counts the fee, and the personal loan calculator shows what a fee deducted at disbursement does to the real rate.

Assuming the EMI is fixed. Home loans are linked to the repo rate and reset quarterly. When rates rise, the bank’s default is to keep your EMI unchanged and add months to the tenure, which is why a 20-year loan sanctioned in 2021 might now run to 2044. You can ask for the EMI to rise instead, and it costs less.

For how much you can borrow in the first place, which lenders decide from your income rather than the property, the home loan eligibility calculator works it out the way a bank does. For a car, the car loan calculator starts from the on-road price.