EMI Calculator
Work out the monthly installment on a home, car or personal loan. Uses the reducing-balance formula that every Indian bank follows. Updated for FY26.
Home, plot or construction loan. Typical: ₹50L–₹1Cr over 20–25 years.
What if I prepay the loan? +
Save and compare scenarios +
Save the current input values under a name, then switch between scenarios with one click. Stored only in this browser via localStorage — nothing leaves your device.
No saved scenarios yet.
Yearly principal vs interest
Each bar shows what you paid in one year. Hover or tap a bar to see the year and the principal/interest split. Watch principal grow each year as the loan winds down.
Amortization schedule +
What is EMI?
EMI is short for Equated Monthly Installment. It's the fixed amount that gets debited from your account every month until the loan ends. For a typical home loan this can be your biggest monthly outflow, often more than rent.
The amount looks fixed but what's inside it shifts month to month. In the first few years most of every EMI is going to interest. By the second half of the tenure, the principal portion catches up and starts taking the bigger share. Look at the year-by-year table above to see this play out for your loan.
Indian banks (SBI, HDFC, ICICI, Axis, Kotak and so on) all use the reducing-balance method. Interest each month is charged only on the principal you still owe, not on the original amount. So the longer you pay, the smaller the interest portion gets.
How EMI is calculated
The formula looks intimidating but the idea is simple. You're asking: what's the constant monthly payment that, over n months, will repay the loan including interest?
EMI = [P × r × (1+r)^n] / [(1+r)^n − 1]
Where:
- P is the loan amount (principal)
- r is the monthly interest rate, calculated as (annual rate ÷ 12) ÷ 100
- n is the total number of months (tenure in years × 12)
Behind the maths is a present-value calculation. Each future EMI is discounted back to today's value at rate r. When you add up all those discounted EMIs, the total should equal what you borrowed. Solving for EMI gives you the formula above.
Worked example
Take a typical case. You borrow ₹10 lakh at 9.5% for 20 years.
Plug the numbers in. r works out to 0.007917 (that's 9.5 ÷ 12 ÷ 100). n is 240 months. P is 10,00,000.
EMI comes to about ₹9,321 a month. Over 20 years that adds up to roughly ₹22.37 lakh. Out of that, ₹12.37 lakh is pure interest. So you end up paying back more in interest than the original loan, which is the trap with long-tenure loans.
Now pull tenure down to 15 years. EMI rises to about ₹10,442, but total interest drops to around ₹8.8 lakh. An extra ₹1,121 a month saves you over ₹3.5 lakh across the loan. The amortization table on this page shows exactly how this works year by year.
Common mistakes to avoid
The flat-rate trap is the one that catches most first-time borrowers. Some smaller NBFCs and consumer finance lenders quote "12% flat" in their ads. It sounds cheaper than what a bank offers, but the maths is brutal. For a typical 3-5 year personal loan, 12% flat works out to roughly 21-22% on a reducing-balance basis (the gap narrows a bit for longer tenures). Always ask which method the lender is quoting before you sign.
Processing fees are easy to forget because they hit upfront and never appear in your EMI. On a ₹50 lakh home loan, a 1% fee is ₹50,000 leaving your account on day one. That cash never works for you again. Most banks will reduce or waive this if you negotiate, particularly during festival offers and salary-account tie-ups.
Now the costliest mistake of the lot: stretching tenure to bring the EMI down. A ₹50 lakh home loan at 9% costs about ₹37 lakh more in total interest if you take 30 years instead of 20. The lower monthly feels like breathing room, but it's expensive breathing room. Rule of thumb: take the shortest tenure your monthly budget can actually handle without making life painful. If you do find some surplus each month, run it through the SIP calculator at a realistic 11-12% expected return and compare against the interest you would save by prepaying the same amount instead. The result decides which side gets the rupee.
Last one is purely a paperwork problem. Under the old tax regime, Section 24 of the Income Tax Act lets you deduct up to ₹2 lakh of home loan interest per year on a self-occupied property. In the 30% slab (which is actually 31.2% once you include 4% cess), that works out to roughly ₹62,400 a year in tax saved. First-time buyers can claim another ₹50,000 under Section 80EE if conditions are met. The Section 80C bucket of ₹1.5 lakh on principal repayment is often already filled by EPF and a PPF contribution, so do not double-count it. Skipping any of these deductions is leaving free money on the table.
Glossary +
- Principal
- The amount you originally borrow from the lender.
- Interest rate
- The percentage the lender charges on the outstanding principal, expressed per year.
- Tenure
- The total duration of the loan, usually expressed in years or months.
- Reducing balance
- Interest is computed only on the outstanding principal at each step. All Indian bank loans use this method.
- Flat rate
- Interest is computed on the original full principal throughout the tenure. Always more expensive than the equivalent reducing-balance rate.
- Amortization
- The process of paying off a loan through scheduled installments, each split between principal and interest.
- Prepayment
- Paying back a portion of the loan ahead of schedule. Reduces total interest paid.
- Foreclosure
- Paying off the entire outstanding loan in one go before tenure ends.
- Processing fee
- An upfront charge (0.5%–2% of loan amount) levied by the lender to process your application.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is EMI? +
EMI is short for Equated Monthly Installment. It's the fixed amount that gets debited from your account every month till your loan is over. Each EMI has two parts: an interest portion (bigger in the early years) and a principal portion (bigger toward the end).
How is EMI calculated? +
EMI = [P × r × (1+r)^n] / [(1+r)^n − 1]. P is the loan amount, r is the monthly interest rate (annual rate divided by 12 and then by 100), and n is total months. Every Indian bank uses this reducing-balance formula.
What is the difference between flat-rate and reducing-balance EMI? +
Reducing-balance charges interest only on the principal you still owe, which is what SBI, HDFC, ICICI and other banks use. Flat-rate charges interest on the original loan amount throughout the tenure, which is what some smaller NBFCs and consumer finance lenders use in their ads. A 12% flat-rate loan is roughly equivalent to a 21-22% reducing-balance loan, so the numbers look very different in practice.
Does this calculator include processing fees or GST? +
No. Processing fee (typically 0.5% to 2% of the loan amount) and GST on that fee are charged upfront. They're not part of the monthly EMI math. Add them separately when comparing total cost across lenders.
Should I choose a longer tenure for a lower EMI? +
Lower EMI looks tempting but it costs you a lot more over the life of the loan. A ₹50 lakh home loan at 9% for 30 years has an EMI of about ₹40,231 and total interest near ₹94.8 lakh. The same loan at 20 years has EMI around ₹44,986 but total interest of only ₹57.9 lakh, which is a ₹37 lakh saving. Pick the shortest tenure your monthly budget actually allows.
What happens if I prepay part of the loan? +
Part prepayment cuts down the principal you still owe, so future EMIs have less interest and more principal. RBI rules since 2014 stop banks from charging any prepayment penalty on floating-rate home loans taken by individual borrowers. Fixed-rate home loans and most NBFC personal loans can still charge 2-4%, so always check your sanction letter before transferring extra money.
Can I get the amortization schedule? +
Yes. See the year-by-year breakdown table on this page. It shows opening balance, principal paid, interest paid and closing balance for every year of the loan.
Is this calculator accurate for floating-rate loans? +
It assumes the rate stays the same throughout, which is rarely true for home loans because they're tied to the RBI repo rate. Use this as a baseline. Whenever RBI changes the repo rate, your bank will revise either the EMI or the remaining tenure, and you'll need to redo the math.
Will the bank's offered EMI match exactly? +
Almost always, down to the rupee. Tiny differences can show up if the bank uses an actual day-count convention (like 365 days) instead of treating each month as one-twelfth of a year, or because of rounding. The gap is usually under 0.5%.
Is paying a higher EMI better than investing the difference? +
Compare your post-tax loan rate against the return you can realistically earn elsewhere. A 9% home loan, after the Section 24 deduction, costs about 6.2% for someone in the 31.2% slab (30% + 4% cess). If you can clear more than that post-tax in mutual funds or whatever you trust, invest the extra. Otherwise prepay. Most people overestimate their investment returns and underestimate the certainty of saving interest.
References & sources
Embed this calculator on your site +
Paste the snippet below into any HTML page or CMS that allows embeds (WordPress, Substack, Ghost, Medium pro, Wix). The iframe is responsive on width and 720px tall by default. CC-BY-style attribution required — the snippet includes a "Calculator by Niveshkar" line.
Preview: open the embed view in a new tab.