Personal loans
Personal Loans: Rates, Reviews & How to Qualify
A personal loan is unsecured instalment credit: a fixed amount, a fixed rate, and a fixed monthly payment over two to seven years. Because there is no collateral, the rate is set almost entirely by your credit profile, and the spread between the best and worst offers is enormous — the same borrower can be quoted single digits by one lender and above 30% by another.
These guides cover how to qualify, what the average rate looks like today, borrowing with damaged credit, and using a loan to consolidate expensive revolving debt.
Data snapshot
- Year over year
- +0.29 pts
- 12-month range
- 11.14% – 11.86%
Average rate on a 24-month personal loan at commercial banks, from the Federal Reserve's G.19 release. Online lenders and credit unions price around this benchmark rather than at it.
Start here
Best Personal Loans: How to Compare Lenders
Compare on APR, fees and term — not the advertised headline rate.
Read the guidePersonal Loans for Bad Credit: Options and Costs
Realistic options below a 640 score — and what to refuse outright.
Read the guideDebt Consolidation Loans: When They Save Money
One payment, one rate — if the maths and the habits both work.
Read the guidePersonal Loan Rates: What Drives the Price You Pay
How lenders build your APR, and the levers that lower it.
Read the guideLoan payment and payoff calculator
Avalanche (highest rate first)
3y 7m
- Total interest
- $4,828
- Total balance
- $35,700
Snowball (smallest balance first)
3y 7m
- Total interest
- $4,828
- Extra interest vs avalanche
- $0
What this result is based on
This tool uses only the figures you enter and standard arithmetic. No external dataset feeds the result, so there is nothing to cite beyond the formula shown on the page.
This debt payoff calculator turns a loan amount, an interest rate and a term into the numbers that actually decide affordability: the monthly payment, the total interest and the date the balance hits zero.
Every figure updates instantly, so you can test a shorter term or a slightly better rate before you ever speak to a lender.
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What people search for
Monthly US search volume for the questions this page answers, from our keyword research set.
| Search query | Monthly searches | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| personal loans for bad credit | 165,000 | 80 |
| lenders for personal loans | 135,000 | 83 |
| get a personal loan with bad credit | 135,000 | 84 |
| sofi personal loan | 90,500 | 95 |
| discover personal loans | 74,000 | 91 |
| personal loan with bad credit | 47,500 | 85 |
| personal loan for debt consolidation | 40,500 | 88 |
| personal loans for debt consolidation | 40,500 | 86 |
| bad credit personal loans | 40,500 | 84 |
| personal loan bad credit | 40,500 | 85 |