The SAVE Plan Is Gone: How to Pick Your Next Repayment Plan

The SAVE plan no longer exists, and every borrower who was on it must move to a new repayment plan. Your servicer will send a notice giving you 90 days to choose — and if you don’t, one gets chosen for you. The right pick depends on one thing: what you’re trying to do with these loans. Here’s how to decide.

You’re in a payment pause, not a $0 payment plan. Borrowers on SAVE were moved into an administrative forbearance while the courts and Congress dismantled the plan. The $0 you’ve been paying isn’t based on your income — it’s a litigation pause, and it’s winding down.

Interest has been running since August 1, 2025. The interest-free stretch of the forbearance ended then. Every month you stay parked, your balance grows.

These months aren’t building forgiveness credit. Time in the SAVE forbearance doesn’t count toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness or income-driven forgiveness. If you’re working toward either, sitting still costs you progress. PSLF borrowers may be able to recover some months through buyback, but buyback is a repair tool, not a plan.

The 90-day clock starts when your notice arrives — not on a single national date. Servicers began sending notices around July 1, 2026, in waves expected to continue into 2027 — the Department of Education has said no borrower would be required to move off SAVE before September 29, 2026 at the earliest. Some borrowers have theirs; others won’t see one for months. You don’t have to wait: you can apply for a new plan at any time at StudentAid.gov. Once your new plan is processed, the forbearance ends early — payments start even if your 90 days aren’t up.

One date worth knowing: borrowers enrolled in automatic payments by September 30, 2026 get a larger interest-rate reduction — 1% instead of 0.25%, running through June 2028. Borrowers already on autopay are upgraded automatically; details vary by servicer, so check yours. For when your first bill is likely to land, see when payments restart.

No choice means auto-placement into a Standard-type plan. If your 90 days lapse without an election, your servicer moves you into the Standard plan — or the new Tiered Standard plan if you have a loan disbursed on or after July 1, 2026. The Tiered Standard plan only exists for borrowers with post-July-2026 loans, which is why servicers describe the default as “depending on your loan disbursement dates.”

The quoted payment can be a shock, and there’s a specific reason. A Standard plan doesn’t restart a fresh 10-year term. It takes your current balance and spreads it over whatever is left of the original repayment period — and years you spent in repayment count against that clock, while deferment and forbearance months get added back. A borrower ten years into repayment can see their entire remaining balance compressed into a short window. That’s where the four-figure quotes come from.

The one thing auto-placement doesn’t do is stop your forgiveness clock. Payments under the 10-year Standard plan still count toward PSLF and income-driven forgiveness. The catch: to claim income-driven forgiveness at the milestone, you must be on an income-driven plan. And a Standard payment set by your balance — not your income — is usually the more expensive way to build that credit.

You can switch out after auto-placement. Landing in Standard isn’t permanent. But choosing deliberately beats paying a balance-based bill while you get around to it.

Your loan dates decide the menu. If all of your Direct Loans were made before July 1, 2026 — true for almost everyone leaving SAVE — you can choose Income-Based Repayment (IBR), the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), or the fixed plans (Standard, Graduated, Extended). If you take out any new Direct Loan or consolidation on or after July 1, 2026, the older income-driven plans close to you, and the menu shrinks to RAP or the Tiered Standard plan — how new borrowers choose between them. Parent PLUS borrowers are the special case: those loans and the consolidations that repaid them can’t use RAP at all, and their income-driven path runs through its own sequence — see Parent PLUS repayment options.

IBR ties your payment to income above a protected floor. IBR shelters 150% of the poverty guideline for your family size, then charges a percentage of what’s above it — 10% with a 20-year term for post-July-2014 borrowers, 15% and 25 years for earlier ones. At low income, the math can produce a $0 payment. IBR is also written into federal statute — it isn’t scheduled to sunset, and its payment is capped at what you’d owe on the 10-year Standard plan. IBR is the plan changing least in the current overhaul — what’s happening to the IDR plans covers that landscape.

RAP charges a percentage of your whole income, with different tradeoffs. RAP takes 1% to 10% of your adjusted gross income — the rate steps up with income — minus $50 per dependent, with a $10 monthly floor and a 30-year forgiveness term. There’s no protected income floor, so RAP rarely reaches $0. In exchange, it waives unpaid interest each month you pay on time and adds a small principal match, which keeps the balance from growing.

Neither plan is cheaper for everyone — income, household size, and which IBR formula you get decide it. Because IBR protects a chunk of income first and RAP doesn’t, a single borrower earning around $24,000 could owe $0 on IBR but roughly $40 a month on RAP. As income rises, the comparison tightens or flips: at $40,000, that borrower’s RAP payment runs about $133 — while IBR runs about $134 under the newer 10% formula, or about $201 under the older 15% formula for pre-July-2014 borrowers (2026 figures, rounded; family size moves every number). The answer is personal — the full comparison breaks down when each plan wins.

PAYE and ICR still exist, but they’re closing. Both plans sunset by July 1, 2028, and they count toward PSLF only through June 30, 2028. The Department of Education is currently accepting applications for both. For a borrower whose PAYE payment beats both IBR and RAP, it can serve as a bridge until 2028 — see PAYE vs RAP for that math. Anyone still on PAYE or ICR in July 2028 without choosing gets moved to RAP, or to IBR for loans RAP can’t take.

The fixed plans are there if you don’t need an income-based payment. Standard, Graduated, and Extended set payments by balance and term, not income — with the same remaining-time compression described above. If you can afford a balance-based payment and aren’t pursuing forgiveness, they come with no income paperwork and no annual recertification. Compare everything side by side in the repayment plans guide.

Your SAVE payment months come with you. Months you made payments under SAVE (or PAYE, ICR, or REPAYE before it) count toward IBR-family forgiveness and toward RAP’s 30-year clock. Switching plans does not zero out that history — the “your clock starts over” warning that circulates in borrower forums is wrong on this point.

The forbearance months are the ones that don’t count. The SAVE administrative forbearance isn’t payment history. Those months build no PSLF or income-driven forgiveness credit on any plan.

The carry rule runs one direction. You bring the credit you have into RAP — but credit you earn in RAP generally can’t be brought back to IBR. You can move to RAP, and you can move back to IBR if you haven’t borrowed again — but the RAP months you accumulate along the way generally won’t advance IBR’s shorter clock. If IBR’s 20- or 25-year milestone is your target, that asymmetry is worth understanding before you leave — switching between IBR and RAP walks through it.

If you’re pursuing PSLF, pick the qualifying plan with the lowest payment. IBR and RAP both qualify, and PAYE and ICR qualify only through June 30, 2028. Your balance is forgiven tax-free at 120 qualifying payments either way, so the payment amount is what differs between plans. The urgent part isn’t which plan — it’s getting on one, because forbearance months aren’t qualifying payments.

If you’re close to 20 or 25 years of payments, count your months before you move. IBR forgives at 240 or 300 payments; RAP at 360. For a borrower a few years from IBR’s milestone, a lower RAP payment can cost five-plus extra years of payments. Your payment counts are on StudentAid.gov — look before you move, not after.

If you need the lowest payment right now, run both formulas with your real household size. The IBR-vs-RAP answer flips depending on income, family size, and filing status — there’s no shortcut around running the numbers. Married borrowers: calculate it both ways. Filing separately keeps your spouse’s income out of the count on IBR, and RAP assesses joint filers on combined income, with the payment split between spouses who both have loans. The tax cost of filing separately is its own analysis — how filing separately affects student loans covers it.

If your income is low enough that everything still feels impossible, check IBR before defaulting to another pause. IBR’s protected floor means genuinely low-income borrowers can qualify for $0 payments — a $0 that, unlike forbearance, counts toward forgiveness. General forbearance and deferment remain available, but they carry the same problem the SAVE pause does: accruing interest, no progress.

If your plan is to pay the loans off, the choice matters less. Any plan you can comfortably pay works; extra payments are allowed on all of them. The autopay interest reduction applies on any plan, and a fixed plan’s higher payment is only a problem if it doesn’t fit your budget.

On timing: move when you can afford the payment. Not on day 89 for the sake of optionality, and not in a panic the day the notice lands. The forbearance is a budgeting window — the moment a plan’s quoted payment fits your budget, apply. Waiting past that point just adds months of interest and zero forgiveness credit. Applications can take weeks to process, so don’t cut it close to your deadline. Apply at StudentAid.gov/idr or through your servicer — here’s how the switch works.

Two moves to avoid while you decide. Don’t take out a new federal loan or a new consolidation on or after July 1, 2026 without understanding the consequence: any new Direct Loan closes IBR, PAYE, and ICR for your entire loan portfolio, permanently. And be careful with consolidation generally — it can affect how your prior payment history is credited, and it eliminates PSLF buyback for the months before it. Consolidation solves real problems for some borrowers, but it’s a one-way door; understand what it changes before you sign.

One more input for the forgiveness math: taxes. Income-driven forgiveness reached on or after January 1, 2026 is federally taxable again (PSLF remains tax-free). A plan that keeps your balance from growing — RAP’s interest waiver, or simply a higher payment — also shrinks the eventual tax bill. State treatment varies; we’re not tax advisors, so confirm your state’s rules with a tax professional.

Choosing a repayment plan is exactly the kind of decision we help borrowers work through every week. Not everyone needs help — many borrowers can run the numbers and switch on their own, and we’ll tell you honestly if that’s you. If you’d like a second set of eyes before your window closes, tell us about your situation.