PSLF Buyback Program: How It Works and How to Apply

The PSLF Buyback program lets you convert months spent in deferment or forbearance into qualifying PSLF payments — by paying what you would have owed on an income-driven repayment plan.

• It’s for borrowers who already have 120 months of qualifying employment. Buyback doesn’t add employment credit. It adds payment credit for months you were working but not paying.

• Your cost depends on what your IDR payment would have been. If your income was low enough, buyback can cost $0.

• You apply through the PSLF reconsideration form on StudentAid.gov. There’s no separate buyback application.

• The program is regulatory, not statutory. It could be changed or eliminated through rulemaking — a real possibility under the current administration.

PSLF requires 120 qualifying monthly payments while working full-time for a qualifying employer. For years, many borrowers who met the employment requirement fell short on payment counts — because their servicers steered them into forbearance or deferment instead of income-driven repayment.

The Department of Education created buyback in its November 2022 final rule — codified at 34 CFR § 685.219(g)(6) and effective July 1, 2023 — to fix that problem. You pay the equivalent of what you would have owed on a qualifying repayment plan. Once you pay, those months count toward your 120 — and if that puts you at or over 120, your remaining balance is forgiven. You may also see it referred to as “hold harmless,” the term used while the rule was being drafted.

You must meet three requirements:

1. You have Direct Loans with a remaining balance. FFEL and Perkins loans don’t qualify unless you consolidate them into a Direct Consolidation Loan first. Loans that are already paid in full, forgiven, or discharged can’t be bought back.

2. You have 120 months of approved qualifying employment. This means your employment has already been certified and approved on studentaid.gov. Buyback doesn’t create employment credit — it converts non-payment months into qualifying payment months. You don’t have to still be working for a qualifying employer: the Department’s position is that you can participate as long as you were employed during the month associated with your 120th payment and your loan still has a positive balance.

3. You have months in deferment or forbearance that overlap with your qualifying employment. These are the months you’re buying back.

How far back you can reach. If you never consolidated, buyback reaches months starting in October 2007, when PSLF was created. If you have a Direct Consolidation Loan, it reaches back only as far as the later of October 2007 or the earliest disbursement date of that consolidation loan. Anything before that date is outside the program regardless of what you were doing at the time.

Months You Cannot Buy Back

Not every non-payment month qualifies. You cannot buy back months when your loans were in:

• In-school or in-origination status

• Grace period

• Default

• Bankruptcy

• Total and permanent disability (TPD) monitoring

• Any month you were repaying under the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) or the Tiered Standard Plan

The key distinction: buyback covers deferment and forbearance. It does not cover default, bankruptcy, or the other statuses listed above. Months repaid under the Repayment Assistance Plan are excluded by the regulation itself, which opens with that carve-out. Months repaid under the Tiered Standard Plan are excluded as well — that exclusion comes from the department’s own guidance rather than the regulation’s text, and follows from the Tiered Standard Plan not being a qualifying repayment plan for PSLF in the first place. For borrowers whose first loans come after July 1, 2026 — whose only repayment options are RAP and the Tiered Standard Plan — the practical effect is that buyback isn’t available at all.

If You Consolidated — or Are Thinking About It

Consolidation and buyback pull in opposite directions, and this catches people who are trying to do everything right.

You can only buy back months on the consolidation loan itself. The department is explicit about this: once loans are folded into a Direct Consolidation Loan, you can’t buy back months from the loans that went into it, or any period before that consolidation loan’s first disbursement. Those months are gone for buyback purposes even if you were working in public service the whole time.

That makes consolidating and buying back competing routes, not complementary ones. Consolidating carries a weighted average of your prior qualifying payments onto the new loan, and for someone holding FFEL or Perkins loans it’s the only way those loans earn PSLF credit at all. But it simultaneously closes the door on buying back the deferment and forbearance months sitting on those older loans.

Two things decide which way it falls. The first is where the weighted average leaves you relative to 120 payments — you can model that with our PSLF weighted-average count calculator. The second is how much time you have left in qualifying employment, because months you can still earn the ordinary way are months you don’t need to buy. Someone three years from retirement and someone ten years into a career reach different answers from the same loan file.

If you already consolidated, this isn’t a decision anymore — it’s just the boundary of what you can request.

Related: PSLF Weighted Average Consolidation Rules

Your buyback amount is based on what you would have paid on a qualifying income-driven repayment plan. The calculation depends on how long your forbearance or deferment lasted and whether you were on an IDR plan before or after.

Forbearance or Deferment Under 12 Months

If you were on an IDR plan before or after a forbearance that lasted fewer than 12 months, FSA uses this calculation:

1. Identify your monthly IDR payment immediately before the forbearance began.

2. Identify your monthly IDR payment immediately after the forbearance ended.

3. Use the lower of the two amounts as your monthly buyback rate.

4. Multiply by the number of months being bought back.

Example: Your IDR payment was $150/month before forbearance and $175/month after. You were in forbearance for 6 months. Your buyback cost: $150 × 6 = $900.

Forbearance or Deferment 12 Months or Longer

For longer gaps, FSA requires documentation to recalculate what your IDR payment would have been:

• Tax returns for each calendar year covered by the forbearance

• A signed statement of your family size

FSA recalculates your hypothetical IDR payment for each year. If the forbearance spanned multiple calendar years, the monthly amount may differ across years.

The 30-day deadline matters. When FSA requests this documentation, you have 30 days to submit it. If you miss that deadline, FSA defaults your buyback calculation to the 10-year Standard Repayment Plan amount — which is almost always higher than the IDR-based amount.

$0 Buyback

If your income during the deferment or forbearance period would have qualified you for a $0 payment on an IDR plan, your buyback costs nothing. This is written directly into the regulation at 34 CFR § 685.219(g)(6)(ii) — it’s not discretionary.

You qualify for $0 buyback when your adjusted gross income during those months fell below the poverty level threshold used by your IDR plan. You can estimate your own amount with our PSLF buyback calculator.

The 10-Year Standard Plan Cap

Regardless of the calculation method, your buyback amount per month is capped at the 10-year Standard Repayment Plan payment. This cap protects borrowers whose income-based calculation would otherwise exceed the standard amount — typically higher-income borrowers with smaller loan balances.

The SAVE Formula Change (March 2026)

As of March 31, 2026, the Department of Education changed how buyback is calculated for borrowers who were on the SAVE plan. Previously, FSA used the SAVE plan’s payment formula — which produced lower monthly amounts because SAVE used a higher income exemption (225% of the federal poverty level vs. 150% for IBR and PAYE).

Under the new policy, SAVE payment amounts can no longer be used for buyback calculations. What replaces them depends on your history. If you were enrolled in SAVE on or after July 18, 2024, the department looks back to the income-driven plan you were in immediately before you enrolled in SAVE, and uses that plan to inform the payment amount. If you weren’t on an income-driven plan before or after the months you’re buying back, the department instead requests your income information and bases the amount on the lowest income-driven payment you would have been eligible for at the time. For many borrowers, either route makes buyback more expensive than the SAVE-based calculation would have been.

Example of the impact: A borrower whose SAVE-based buyback would have cost $4,300 may now owe $12,800 under IBR. The difference comes entirely from the formula change — not from any change in the borrower’s income or loan balance.

The department describes which plan’s formula applies, but not how it arrives at a particular borrower’s number, and the March 2026 change wasn’t accompanied by a Federal Register notice or an electronic announcement. Much of what circulates about the amounts people actually owe comes from borrowers comparing offer letters. Treat any specific figure you see as an estimate until you have your own letter.

If you were on SAVE before the plan was blocked by litigation in mid-2024 and placed into administrative forbearance, those months are eligible for buyback — but the cost is now calculated as if you had been on a different IDR plan.

Related: PSLF Buyback Timeline: How Long Does It Take | Will My SAVE Months Still Count Toward Forgiveness?

There’s no separate buyback application. You request it through the PSLF reconsideration process on studentaid.gov.

1. Certify all qualifying employment. Make sure every period of qualifying employment is reflected in your studentaid.gov account. Submit a PSLF form (formerly the Employment Certification Form) for any uncertified periods. Your account needs to show 120+ months of approved qualifying employment.

2. Submit a PSLF reconsideration form. Go to studentaid.gov and select the PSLF reconsideration option. Choose “PSLF Buyback” as the reason for your request.

3. Respond to any documentation requests within 30 days. If FSA needs income documentation to calculate your buyback amount, submit tax returns and family size statements promptly. The consequences of missing this deadline are explained above.

4. Receive your buyback offer letter. FSA sends a letter stating the total buyback amount. Review the amount carefully — it should reflect IDR-based calculations, not the Standard Plan amount (unless your income was high enough to produce that result).

5. Pay within 90 days. Your servicer must receive the full buyback payment within 90 days of the date on the offer letter. You can make more than one payment inside that window as long as the full amount arrives in time. If it doesn’t, the agreement is void and you start the process over. PSLF administration moved from MOHELA to Federal Student Aid in 2024, so MOHELA may still service your loans without being the office that decides your request — if MOHELA is your servicer, questions about a buyback go to Federal Student Aid directly.
   Once payment is processed, those months are added to your qualifying payment count. If that brings you to 120 or more, your remaining balance is forgiven.

After submitting, there’s no status to track — the department doesn’t provide progress on a pending buyback request and will contact you by email once the review is complete.

What voids an agreement after you get one. The department lists several things that cancel a buyback agreement once it’s been sent: submitting a new PSLF form, paying the loan off, or applying to consolidate after the agreement goes out, as well as the loan being discharged or forgiven in the meantime. If an agreement is voided, payments you’ve already made toward it aren’t refunded — they’re credited to your loans as ordinary payments instead.

Related: PSLF Reconsideration: How to Fix a Denied PSLF Application

Decisions take months, which makes the months in between their own decision.

Filing doesn’t lock anything in. Submitting a request doesn’t change your repayment plan, doesn’t stop your payment count from advancing, and doesn’t commit you to paying the amount that eventually comes back. The offer letter is where you decide.

Keep making your payments. The department’s position is that you must continue paying until the review is complete. Those payments still count toward PSLF on their own terms, so they aren’t wasted — and if they carry you past 120 qualifying payments, the amount above the threshold on Direct Loans can be refunded.

You won’t be able to check the status. The department tells borrowers it can’t provide status on a pending buyback request and will respond by email when the review is done. There’s no queue position to watch.

Leaving public service doesn’t close the door. Buyback doesn’t require you to be working for a qualifying employer when you request it, so a borrower who has already left can still file. What changes is the arithmetic — without qualifying employment you’re no longer accumulating months the ordinary way, so the request is doing all the work.

How long the wait runs is its own question, and the department has declined to give an estimate. We track what the filings actually show on our PSLF buyback timeline page.

Related: How Does a PSLF Overpayment Refund Work?

PSLF itself is statutory — Congress created it in 2007, and eliminating it would require legislation. But buyback is different. It was created by regulation (the Department of Education’s 2022 final rule), not by statute. That means it can be changed or eliminated through the rulemaking process without congressional action.

The current administration has not announced plans to eliminate buyback, and the program survived the 2026 regulatory overhaul — it was narrowed rather than removed. The backlog remains large. In court filings tracking its progress, the department reported roughly 88,000 pending buyback requests as of April 30, 2026, down from a peak of about 89,700 a month earlier. The department has also said that figure includes duplicate requests, and estimates 18,000 to 19,000 of them will be removed, which would put the true number of unique pending requests closer to 69,000 or 70,000.

April was the first month in which the department decided more requests than it received — about 6,870 decided against 4,790 received, and the first decline in the backlog since it began reporting. That is a change in direction, not a resolution.

None of this means buyback is disappearing tomorrow. Applications are still being accepted and processed. But as a regulation, the program’s future depends on administrative decisions.

Related: Can PSLF Be Reversed?