Student Loan Forgiveness Tracker: Is It Coming Back?

Yes — the Education Department has confirmed it will restore the IDR forgiveness tracker on StudentAid.gov, but it has not given a return date. The timing appears tied to the July 1, 2026 system overhaul required by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

• What the tracker showed. Your qualifying IDR payment months, how many months remained before forgiveness, and a month-by-month breakdown of qualifying vs. non-qualifying time.

• Why it disappeared. The Department pulled it on April 28, 2025 after a court injunction blocked parts of the SAVE plan and invalidated some qualifying criteria the tracker relied on.

• Where things stand now. The Department reversed its December 2025 “no plans” position and is updating systems to restore it.

• What you can do right now. Your underlying payment count was never deleted. You can still access it through the StudentAid.gov API or — if you’re enrolled in IBR — directly on your dashboard.

The IDR forgiveness tracker — also called the IDR payment counter, payment tracker, or progress-checker — launched on StudentAid.gov in January 2025 under the Biden administration. When it worked, it showed three things on your borrower dashboard:

• Total qualifying payment months credited toward IDR forgiveness.

• Months remaining until you hit the 20- or 25-year forgiveness threshold.

• A month-by-month breakdown separating qualifying months from non-qualifying ones.

Before this tool, you had no standardized way to track your IDR forgiveness progress. PSLF has had a similar tracker for years — IDR did not. The tracker was built as part of the one-time IDR Account Adjustment, the federal effort to recount historical payments and give credit for periods that should have qualified but didn’t.

The tracker mattered because IDR forgiveness is slow. If you’ve been repaying for 15 years, you need to know whether your count reflects the IDR Account Adjustment and whether you’re on track for the 20- or 25-year finish line. And as of 2026, IDR forgiveness is again a taxable event — meaning you need accurate count data to plan for the tax bill that arrives with your discharge.

The tracker was pulled, promised back, declared dead, then promised back again.

1. April 28, 2025 — Removed without warning. The Education Department took the tracker off StudentAid.gov, citing a February 18, 2025 Eighth Circuit injunction that enjoined the SAVE Plan Final Rule — including the changes to qualifying forbearance and deferment criteria for all IDR plans, not just SAVE. The Department argued the tracker could no longer show accurate numbers. The PSLF tracker stayed visible.

2. June 2025 — Secretary McMahon promises restoration. Senator Elizabeth Warren pressed Education Secretary Linda McMahon on the removal. Warren stated McMahon intended to “soon restore” the tracker to StudentAid.gov. No restoration followed.

3. December 2025 — the Department reverses course. In a court filing in AFT v. McMahon, the Department stated it “currently has no plans to resume using the tool.” It said it would rely on servicers to track progress in the background — you would have no direct access.

4. March 27, 2026 — the Department reverses again in updated guidance. Following the official termination of the SAVE plan, the Department updated its StudentAid.gov court-actions FAQ. In response to “When will ED begin to display IDR payment counters on StudentAid.gov?” the new answer reads: “The court actions require that we modify the display of the IDR payment counters, which will require additional system changes. We are working to update our systems to make those changes.” Around the same time, a new banner appeared on StudentAid.gov dashboards: “We are working to update our systems to display your income-driven repayment (IDR) payment count and history in compliance with a court order affecting IDR plans.”

The Department has announced no restoration date and released no comment beyond the updated FAQ.

You don’t have to wait for the tracker to come back to see your data. Your payment counts still exist — only the visual display is gone.

Your StudentAid.gov Aid Summary. Once logged in, the Aid Summary page shows per-loan qualifying month totals in plain text. No progress bar, no visual counter — but the number is there.

The hidden StudentAid.gov API. While logged in to StudentAid.gov, visit `studentaid.gov/app/api/nslds/payment-counter/summary` directly in your browser. The page returns raw JSON data showing your `qualifyingpaymentcount` per loan and per repayment plan. The format is technical, but it’s the same data the tracker used.

Your IBR dashboard widget. If you are enrolled in IBR specifically, your dashboard still displays your IDR payment count. If you’re on SAVE, PAYE, or ICR, you don’t see this widget.

Your loan servicer. You can ask your servicer for a plan-specific progress count. Servicer quality varies — some give accurate numbers quickly, others cannot.

If you haven’t already, screenshot whatever you can see — the Aid Summary, the API output, the IBR widget. The Department is mid-overhaul. Your own record of current payment counts gives you something to compare against if post-July 2026 numbers look wrong.

Related: What the “IDR Payment Count Is Temporarily Unavailable” Notice Means

The Department has not committed to a restoration date. Two factors point to a return tied to — or shortly after — July 1, 2026.

First, the back-end systems that host the tracker are the same systems being rebuilt for the July 1 rollout of the new Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) — a 30-year forgiveness plan — and the Tiered Standard Plan under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. If you’re on SAVE, you’ll have 90 days starting July 1 to switch plans before being moved to the Standard plan. The Department cannot cleanly restore the tracker onto infrastructure that’s mid-migration, which makes a July 1-tied restoration plausible.

Second, the March 2026 dashboard banner and FAQ update reference a court order and active system updates — language the Department had not used before. That suggests the restoration is technically in progress, not just political reassurance.

The most reliable place to watch for updates is the AFT v. McMahon court docket. The Department is required to file monthly status reports under that lawsuit, and those filings are the clearest public record of where it stands on tracker restoration, IDR processing, and PSLF Buyback processing.