Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) Calculator

34 C.F.R. § 685.209(f)(4)(i) sets the ICR payment as the lesser of two figures, and the calculator shows you which one won:

1. Twenty percent of discretionary income, divided by 12. Discretionary income for ICR is your AGI minus 100% of the HHS Poverty Guideline for your family size and state. Every other income-driven plan subtracts 150%. That is the single most consequential difference between ICR and IBR: at the same income, ICR treats roughly half a poverty guideline more of your money as available to pay.

2. The 12-year fixed amount, multiplied by an income percentage factor. The Department amortizes your balance over 144 months, then multiplies by a factor drawn from a table it republishes each year. The 2026 table runs from 50.52% at the bottom to 200% at the top and applies from July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027. If your AGI sits between two printed rows, the factor is interpolated between them.

There is no cap tied to the 10-year Standard payment — the kind of cap IBR carries. The lesser-of test is the only ceiling ICR has.

On IBR, PAYE, and RAP, your loan balance does not set your payment — income does. ICR is different. Because half the formula is a 12-year amortization, a borrower with a small balance can find that the 12-year figure is the lesser amount, and their payment falls well below 20% of discretionary income. A borrower with a large balance at the same income lands on the 20% side instead.

One caution on the number to enter: the Department amortizes the balance as of the date your loans entered repayment, including interest capitalized at that point — not today's balance. If you have been paying for years, the correct figure is higher than what your servicer shows now, and using today's balance will understate the 12-year side of the formula.

This is contested, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The printed regulation at 34 C.F.R. § 685.209(c)(5)(i)(B) requires that a borrower was repaying under ICR on July 1, 2024, and generally bars re-entry after leaving the plan. Read literally, that closes ICR to most new enrollees.

But the provision's validity is disputed. The Department currently tells borrowers that ICR enrollment remains available, its own income-driven repayment application does not apply the July-2024 condition, and the National Consumer Law Center treats the provision as vacated. No court has ruled, and a cleanup rulemaking is pending.

Our practice: apply rather than self-deny — and never assume approval. If ICR is the right plan for your situation, submit the application while the Department continues to say enrollment is open. Keep the application, the screenshots, the eligibility output, and every approval or denial notice you receive. If you are denied on this basis, that denial is worth preserving. What we will not do is tell you the outcome is certain in either direction.

One more caution: if you are already on ICR, do not leave the plan casually. On the vacatur theory the no-re-entry sentence falls along with the rest of the provision — but a borrower who leaves is the one exposed if a servicer does apply the printed text, and getting back in requires a fresh application.

A Direct Parent PLUS loan cannot be repaid under ICR on its own. It reaches ICR only through a Direct Consolidation Loan, under its own provisions at § 685.209(c)(5)(ii)(A) and (c)(5)(iii)(A) — which are separate from the disputed general enrollment gate above and are not closed by it.

But those are grandfathering provisions, not an open door. Each is switched off by the paragraph that follows it — § 685.209(c)(5)(ii)(B) and (c)(5)(iii)(B) both say the carve-out "shall not apply if that borrower received a Direct Loan on or after July 1, 2026." A new Direct Consolidation Loan is a Direct Loan received on or after that date. Consolidating today therefore destroys the exception people assume it creates, and § 685.209(c)(5)(i)(C) and (d)(5) independently bar ICR once you have any post-July-1-2026 Direct loan.

So the question is not whether to consolidate — it is whether your consolidation already exists. If a qualifying Direct Consolidation Loan was disbursed before July 1, 2026, this path may be open to you through the plan's June 30, 2028 sunset, and the thing to do is protect it by taking on no further federal debt. If it was not, a new Parent PLUS loan or a post-July-1-2026 reconsolidation has no income-driven forgiveness path at all.

Consolidation cannot be undone. Read the Parent PLUS repayment guide and talk to an attorney before you consolidate anything.

ICR forgives the remaining balance after 300 qualifying monthly payments — 25 years. The plan itself ends on June 30, 2028. Those two facts do not fit together for anyone enrolling now: there is no path from a 2026 enrollment to 300 ICR payments.

So ICR forgiveness should not be your reason for choosing ICR. A low monthly payment right now, or reaching an income-driven plan at all when nothing else is available to your loans, can still be perfectly good reasons. What this calculator cannot tell you is which plan you would move to at sunset, or how the months you build in the meantime are treated — those depend on rules that are not settled, and they are worth an actual conversation.

The same date limits PSLF: ICR counts as a PSLF-qualifying plan only through June 30, 2028 under § 685.219(b)(28)(iv)-(v). If you are chasing PSLF, plan past that date now.

ICR is usually the most expensive income-driven plan available to a borrower who has a choice, because of the 100% poverty deduction. If you have a choice, run the numbers side by side: use the IBR calculator and the RAP calculator, or read IBR vs. ICR for the structural comparison.

For the wider picture of which plans still exist and which are closing, read income-driven repayment in 2026. For the deduction itself, see how to calculate discretionary income.

The payment formula is 34 C.F.R. § 685.209. The income percentage factors, the 12-year amortization formula, the joint-repayment proration, and the interpolation method come from Annual Updates to the Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) Plan Formula for 2026, 91 Fed. Reg. 34815 (June 9, 2026), which applies through June 30, 2027. Poverty guidelines are the 2026 HHS figures at 91 Fed. Reg. 1797.

This calculator is tested against the Department's own worked examples and reproduces them to the cent. It does not retrieve tax or loan data, determine eligibility, verify official payment credit, predict future income, or replace an official servicer calculation. Confirm any result with the Federal Student Aid Loan Simulator and your servicer.