How does RAP calculate your payment?
The Repayment Assistance Plan uses income brackets, not the poverty line. Your entire adjusted gross income is priced at one rate — 1% if your AGI is between $10,000 and $20,000, stepping up one percentage point per $10,000 bracket to 10% above $100,000 — then divided by 12. From that, subtract $50 a month for each dependent you claim on your tax return (by statute; official tools have been observed quoting RAP without this reduction, so this site shows the payment both ways when you enter dependents). The minimum payment is $10 a month. The full table, with the boundary fine print, is in the RAP bracket guide; the official source is Federal Student Aid's RAP information center.
The cliff: because the percentage applies to your whole AGI, crossing a bracket boundary re-prices every dollar, not just the excess. One dollar of extra income can move the payment by roughly $80/mo near the top brackets.
How does IBR calculate your payment?
Income-Based Repayment uses discretionary income: your AGI minus 150% of the federal poverty guideline for your family size. There are two variants, set by your borrowing history: if your first federal loan was disbursed on or after July 1, 2014, you pay 10% of discretionary income with forgiveness after 20 years; older borrowers pay 15% with forgiveness after 25 years. Either way the payment is divided by 12 and capped at the 10-year Standard amount — when the cap binds, this site annotates the figure "capped at Standard" so identical numbers across plans don't read as an error. The formulas are described in the official income-driven repayment overview.
Because IBR subtracts a poverty-line multiple first, family size moves the IBR payment a lot and the RAP payment not at all (dependents move RAP only via the flat $50 credit). Married borrowers: IBR counts only your own income if you file separately; joint AGI if you file jointly — a real trade-off, since filing separately often raises the tax bill.
When is each plan forgiven?
- RAP: after 360 qualifying payments — 30 years. That's 5 to 10 years longer than IBR.
- IBR: after 20 years (10% variant) or 25 years (15% variant).
Under current law, balances forgiven under either plan in 2026 or later may be taxed as income in the year of forgiveness — the one-time bill most summaries skip. The details, including how this tool estimates it, are in is student loan forgiveness taxable in 2026? PSLF forgiveness, by contrast, is not federally taxed and both plans qualify for PSLF while they run.
What happens to interest under each plan?
This is RAP's structural advantage. In any month you make your full on-time RAP payment, unpaid interest is waived rather than charged, and if your payment reduces principal by less than $50, the government adds a matching principal payment of up to $50. The result: a RAP balance never grows, even at the $10 minimum payment. Under IBR, a payment smaller than the month's interest leaves the difference accruing — an IBR balance can climb for years even while you pay on time (the government does cover unpaid interest on subsidized loans for your first three years in IBR). The balance chart in the comparison on the homepage makes this visible: RAP's line only moves down.
The clock-reset trap: RAP months don't count toward IBR
If you're weighing "RAP now, IBR later": months spent in RAP do NOT count toward IBR's 20- or 25-year forgiveness clock. Enrolling in RAP and switching to IBR later restarts your progress toward IBR forgiveness. RAP months do count toward RAP's own 30-year forgiveness and toward PSLF. If you run the comparison on the homepage while eligible for both, this appears in your watch-outs automatically.
Who can enroll in each?
IBR remains available indefinitely — but only to borrowers whose loans all predate July 1, 2026. Taking any new federal loan or consolidating on or after that date removes IBR (and the other legacy plans) permanently, which is why consolidation deserves its own decision. RAP is open to Direct Loans borrowed for your own education — Parent PLUS loans and consolidations containing them are excluded. The calculator on the homepage applies both plans' eligibility rules to your answers and tells you which apply, and why, before comparing a single dollar.
One more thing if you're coming off SAVE: this choice is on a clock. Miss your 90-day window and you're placed into a fixed plan by default, which is usually more expensive than either RAP or IBR — see what happens if you don't pick a plan in time.