When exactly does PAYE end?
PAYE is retired no later than July 1, 2028. The date appears both in the official plan detail on the income-driven repayment application and in the Department's 2026 Federal Register notice for the sibling ICR plan, which states that plan sunsets on the same day. Nothing about your loans changes before then: if you are on PAYE today, your payment is calculated the same way until the plan retires.
What happens if you do nothing before the deadline?
You are moved into an income-driven plan, not a fixed one. Under 34 CFR 685.209(c)(7)(iii), PAYE and ICR borrowers who have not elected a plan by the sunset are placed into RAP if they are eligible for it, and into IBR if they are not.
This is worth stating plainly because it is the opposite of what happens when a former SAVE borrower misses their 90-day window — that lapse lands you in a fixed Standard payment, which is usually higher than any income-driven option. The PAYE sunset has a softer default. It is still a default, though: it is chosen by rule, not by which plan is cheapest for you, and RAP and IBR price income very differently. Running your own numbers before 2028 is how you find out whether the automatic destination is the one you would have picked.
Do your PAYE payments carry over to RAP?
Largely, yes — you do not restart near zero. RAP's 360-payment forgiveness count includes prior on-time payments made under other plans, per 34 CFR 685.209(k)(8)(i)(C), along with certain deferment and forbearance months that ended before July 1, 2026.
The catch is an amount test. The rule credits payments made in an amount at least equal to the 10-year Standard payment, plus IBR payments made at the required IBR amount. A PAYE month billed below the 10-year Standard amount — which is the ordinary case, since qualifying for PAYE requires a payment lower than that figure — may not carry. Whether those months count is a genuinely open reading of the rule, so treat any carried count as unconfirmed and get your official number from your servicer before relying on it.
If you enter a payment count in the comparison on the homepage, the tool applies the carry rules per plan and shows the same caveat in your watch-outs. Months in RAP, note, do not count toward IBR's separate forgiveness clock — the clock-reset trap cuts the other way too.
Can you still enroll in PAYE before it ends?
This is where the paperwork and the regulation disagree, so here is both. The regulation at 34 CFR 685.209(c)(4)(iv) closes PAYE to anyone who was not already repaying under it on July 1, 2024, and who has not left and re-enrolled since. Read strictly, that makes PAYE a continuing-enrollee plan for its final years. The official IDR application, however, has been observed offering PAYE more broadly than that text allows.
This site follows the regulation and marks PAYE ineligible if you were not continuously enrolled, while saying so in the reason — so you can take that answer to your servicer rather than being quietly shown a plan you may not be able to join. Three other limits apply regardless:
- The 2007 and 2011 tests. You must have had no outstanding Direct or FFEL balance as of October 1, 2007, and have received a Direct Loan disbursement on or after October 1, 2011.
- The 2026 lockout. Any new federal loan or consolidation on or after July 1, 2026 removes PAYE — and every other legacy plan — for all of your loans, permanently. That is worth reading before you sign anything: should you consolidate in 2026?
- Partial financial hardship. Your calculated PAYE payment must come in below the 10-year Standard amount. If it does not, you cannot enter the plan — unlike IBR, which admits you and caps the payment instead.
Parent PLUS loans, and consolidations containing them, are excluded from PAYE entirely.
How is the PAYE payment calculated while it lasts?
Ten percent of your discretionary income — your AGI minus 150% of the federal poverty guideline for your family size — divided by 12, capped at the 10-year Standard amount, with forgiveness after 20 years of qualifying payments. A calculated payment under $5 a month bills at $0; from $5 to just under $10, it bills at $10. Married borrowers who file separately are assessed on their own income alone.
The 20-year forgiveness matters less than it looks for a borrower starting now, because the plan itself retires in 2028 — you would be switching plans long before reaching it. What you are really choosing between is PAYE's payment for the next couple of years and the plan you move to afterward. Any balance eventually forgiven under an income-driven plan may be taxable in the year it is forgiven: is forgiveness taxable in 2026?
PAYE or RAP: which is cheaper for you?
It depends on your income, family size, and balance, and the two plans are built on different math — PAYE prices income above a poverty-line multiple, while RAP prices your entire AGI at a bracket rate. Neither is reliably cheaper in the abstract. The comparison on the homepage runs both on your actual numbers, applies each plan's eligibility rules, and shows what carries forward, entirely in your browser. For the companion plan retiring on the same day, see what happens when ICR ends.