7.5 million borrowers must pick a new plan.
See your real numbers in 60 seconds.

IBR is Income-Based Repayment — a plan from 2009 where you pay a percentage of income above the poverty line. RAP is the Repayment Assistance Plan — the new plan launched July 1, 2026 that replaces SAVE, PAYE, and ICR, where you pay 1–10% of your income depending on how much you earn. RAP vs IBR, compared in full →

If you file jointly and you both have federal loans, each spouse’s income-driven payment — on RAP, IBR, or PAYE — becomes a share of the household figure rather than a separate full payment. Your share is your loan balance divided by your combined balances, so a spouse who owes more pays a larger slice of the same number. RepayCompass works out both filing scenarios, jointly and separately, so you can see the trade-off; filing separately can lower the payment but also changes your taxes, which is worth talking through with a tax professional.

After your 90-day window closes, the Department of Education automatically places you in the Standard plan (or Tiered Standard). For most SAVE borrowers that means a significantly higher monthly payment than they were used to. What the 90-day window means →

Every plan is computed from the payment formulas published in federal rules — RAP’s income brackets, IBR’s discretionary-income math against the federal poverty guidelines, and standard amortization — and our results are tested against the official StudentAid.gov calculators to match within a dollar. The "Rules as of" date at the top tells you which version of the rules we’re using, since they’re still being litigated and refined. Read the full methodology →

Usually it is the income. StudentAid.gov pulls your AGI straight from the IRS, which is often a return from one or two years ago, while this tool uses whatever figure you type — so if your income has changed, every income-driven number moves with it. Family size and dependents do the same. Proration is the other common one: if you file jointly and both spouses have federal loans, RepayCompass splits each income-driven payment by loan-balance share the way the federal rule does, but only once you switch on “my spouse has federal loans” — leave it off and you see the unsplit figure. Beyond that, a few deliberate conventions can move things: it defaults to the 2025 poverty guidelines, because official tools were seen still applying them in July 2026 (switchable under Assumptions); it shows the RAP dependent credit both with and without the $50-per-dependent reduction, since some official quotes have appeared without it; and for a borrower already in repayment, the Standard payment is the current balance spread over the months remaining on the original 10-year schedule — what a servicer quotes — not a fresh 120-month amortization. How the math works →

No. All calculations run in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to a server, saved, or shared — close the tab and it’s gone. That’s a deliberate design decision, not a promise buried in a privacy policy. The whole privacy story →

Yes, temporarily. Borrowers enrolled in automatic payments get a 1 percentage point interest rate reduction instead of the usual 0.25, through June 30, 2028. The Department of Education says you must be enrolled in auto-pay by 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on September 30, 2026 to get it, and it applies to Direct loans first disbursed on or after July 1, 2012. Loans that do not qualify for the larger reduction — older Direct loans, FFEL loans, or enrollments after the deadline — still receive the standard 0.25 point. It stops if you leave auto-pay, or move into deferment or forbearance. Note that the figures on this page do not include it: RepayCompass projects the interest rate you enter as-is for the whole term, and models no auto-pay reduction at all — neither this temporary one nor the standard 0.25 point. Read ED's announcement →

No — RepayCompass is an educational comparison tool. The math follows published federal rules as of the date shown at the top, but your servicer and StudentAid.gov are the final word on your options. Not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Education.