Switching Between IBR and RAP: How to Do It and What It Costs You

RAP became available on July 1, 2026, and you can apply for it now. If you’re already in IBR, nothing forces you to switch — you can stay, move to RAP, or move back. One thing does close IBR permanently, and it isn’t a deadline: taking out a new federal loan.

Nothing happens to your IBR on its own — if you’re already enrolled and you don’t borrow again, you keep the plan, your payment history, and your place in line.

RAP doesn’t replace or erase IBR. It became the only income-driven option for borrowers taking out federal loans on or after July 1, 2026. You’re allowed, but not required, to move to it. Your existing payment history stays intact, including everything credited through the one-time account adjustment. If you’ve made 240 or 300 qualifying payments, those months still count.

What changes is the length of the clock. RAP forgives the remaining balance after 360 qualifying payments — 30 years — and that number is the same for everyone, no matter which version of IBR you’re on now. IBR forgives at 20 years if you borrowed on or after July 1, 2014, and 25 years if you borrowed before. So moving to RAP pushes the finish line out five years for some borrowers and ten for others. Your existing months carry forward against the 360, so what you’re choosing is how many payments remain.

Whether that tradeoff works depends on your numbers. Run the IBR vs RAP calculator to see your monthly payment under each plan. Related: IBR vs RAP: which plan is better for you.

You switch by submitting an income-driven repayment application at StudentAid.gov and selecting RAP — no IBR payment required first, and no waiting for a start date.

Log in to StudentAid.gov. Use your FSA ID and open the income-driven repayment application.

Start the plan request. Choose to change your repayment plan and select the Repayment Assistance Plan.

Confirm your income and family size. RAP bases your payment on your adjusted gross income and the dependents you claim, so outdated figures change the payment you’re quoted.

Submit and confirm it posts. Your servicer processes the change; the new plan and payment amount take effect once it does.

Applications are processing now, not just being accepted for a later date.

You bring your IBR credit into RAP, but payments made in RAP don’t count toward IBR forgiveness. That asymmetry is the real cost of the move — switching plans doesn’t erase the payments you’ve already made.

Moving into RAP carries your qualifying months forward. Months you paid under IBR, PAYE, ICR, or SAVE count toward RAP’s 360-payment clock.

Moving the other way, those months don’t come with you. Time paid under RAP counts toward RAP’s own 30-year forgiveness and toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness — but not toward IBR’s 20- or 25-year timeline. Switch back to IBR and your clock picks up where it stood when you left.

That asymmetry breaks a plan some borrowers are considering: spend most of the term in RAP to collect the interest waiver, then switch to IBR near the end to finish on the shorter clock. The months in RAP don’t advance the IBR clock, so the switch doesn’t land where that plan assumes. It works the other direction — time in IBR counts toward RAP — but not this one.

You’re allowed to switch back. There’s no lock-in that traps you in RAP if your loans still qualify for IBR. Almost nobody has made the return trip yet, though. The traffic since July has run one direction, into RAP, so the mechanics of moving back are untested rather than in doubt, and servicers are handling these requests for the first time.

What closes IBR is new borrowing, not a calendar date.

Receiving any new federal Direct Loan on or after July 1, 2026 ends your access to IBR. Only loans made before that date can be repaid under IBR, and the rules require all of a borrower’s Direct Loans to sit on the same repayment plan. Together, those two rules mean a new loan doesn’t just follow the newer rules by itself — it pulls your older loans off IBR with it. The Department of Education has said so plainly: once a borrower receives a Direct Loan on or after July 1, 2026, that borrower is no longer eligible for IBR. Eligibility works at the borrower level, not loan by loan.

A new consolidation counts as a new loan. A Direct Consolidation Loan taken out on or after July 1, 2026 is itself a post-2026 Direct Loan, so consolidating now triggers the same result even though you haven’t borrowed a dollar more.

Two situations catch people. A parent takes out a new Parent PLUS loan for another child. Or a borrower consolidates for an unrelated reason — to change servicers, or to simplify a set of loans — without realizing what it does to the plan they’re on.

If you don’t borrow again, none of this reaches you. Your pre-2026 loans stay eligible, and you can move between IBR and RAP as your situation changes. That’s the actual line: not a date you have to beat, but a decision you control.

Parent PLUS borrowers face a tighter version. A new Parent PLUS loan, or a consolidation completed on or after July 1, 2026, leaves no income-driven forgiveness path at all — only the tiered standard plan. Related: consolidating Parent PLUS loans for income-driven repayment.

SAVE is already gone, PAYE and ICR close on July 1, 2028 — and the qualifying payments you made under any of them follow you to whichever plan you move to.

SAVE no longer exists. A court order ended the SAVE Plan on March 10, 2026, vacating the 2023 rule that created it. Something like 7 million borrowers were enrolled when it ended, many of them parked in administrative forbearance, and all of them need to move to a different plan. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act also eliminates SAVE by statute effective July 1, 2028, but the court’s action ended it well ahead of that date.

PAYE and ICR stay open until July 1, 2028. New PAYE enrollments end on July 1, 2027. After July 1, 2028 both plans sunset permanently, and borrowers still in them move to RAP, or to IBR for loans RAP can’t cover.

Your payments carry over — your forbearance months don’t. Every qualifying payment you made under SAVE, PAYE, or ICR counts toward forgiveness in the plan you move to. Make 150 payments under PAYE and switch to IBR, and you have 150 toward IBR’s 240- or 300-payment threshold; the same carry-forward applies to RAP. But months spent parked in SAVE administrative forbearance are not payments, and they don’t carry. If most of your recent SAVE time was forbearance rather than payments, your credit is smaller than the calendar suggests. Borrowers in SAVE forbearance can move to IBR now without waiting.

RAP keeps two features that SAVE introduced, and both depend on paying on time.

An interest waiver. Unpaid interest your monthly payment doesn’t cover is waived — but only for a payment made in the month it’s due.

A principal match. When an on-time payment reduces your principal by less than $50, the Department covers the difference, up to $50 a month. It’s a top-up for small payments, not a reward for paying more.

Paying ahead suspends both. An extra payment advances your due date, and a month with no due date earns no waiver and no match. Declining to have extra payments advance the due date is an option, either in your electronic-payment settings or through your servicer. Paid-ahead status can create other complications with a servicer as well. Forgiveness credit and PSLF credit aren’t affected either way — the cost of paying ahead is the subsidy for those months, not your progress.

Both features shrink the balance that eventually gets forgiven, which matters more than it used to. The tax break that covered forgiven student debt through 2025 has expired, so forgiveness under IBR and RAP is federally taxable again, and a smaller balance at the finish line means a smaller tax bill. What matters is when you earn the forgiveness, not when the paperwork catches up: a final qualifying payment made in 2025 falls inside the old window even if the discharge is only being processed now. PSLF forgiveness stays tax-free. State treatment varies — a tax professional is the right person to ask about yours. Related: taxes on IBR forgiveness after 2025.

The tradeoff is that RAP’s payments are often higher than SAVE’s old formula, and its forgiveness timeline runs five to ten years longer. Because RAP is live, both plans can be compared against your own numbers today — the IBR vs RAP calculator runs your income and family size through both formulas.

Dates between now and 2028:

June 30, 2026 (passed): the last date Parent PLUS borrowers could consolidate and keep income-driven credit.

July 1, 2026: RAP became available, and the only income-driven option for anyone borrowing on or after that date.

July 1, 2027: new PAYE enrollments close.

July 1, 2028: PAYE and ICR sunset; remaining borrowers move to RAP or IBR.

If you’re already in IBR and not planning to borrow, none of these dates requires action from you. Your servicer will send notices when transitions begin.

• Is RAP or IBR better for PSLF?

• What’s happening to IDR plans in 2026