Title loan true-cost engine
Typical pricing — data as of June 2026
Loan amount
Term (days)
Monthly rate
Advertised cost
$250.00
Total to repay
$1,250.00
Denise owns a nine-year-old Camry outright, and the lender in the strip mall near her shift will hand her $1,000 today if she leaves the title behind. The quoted price sounds almost civilized: 25% for the month. What the quote hides is what that number becomes when you stretch it across a year, and what happens to the fee if she cannot clear the whole balance in 30 days. The calculator above does that translation instantly. Set the amount, the term, and the monthly rate a lender actually quoted you, then read the annualized figure before you sign.
How to use this calculator
Three steps. No personal information, nothing submitted, nothing stored.
- Load a preset scenario. The buttons across the top set a common amount-and-term combination, from $500 up to $2,500, at the market-typical monthly rate. That gives you a realistic baseline in one tap.
- Match the lender's quote with the steppers. Use the plus and minus controls to move the loan amount, the term in days, and the monthly rate until they match the paperwork in front of you. Quotes vary, so enter yours exactly.
- Read the true APR and total repayment. The results panel shows the advertised fee first, then the same fee annualized as an APR, then a bar splitting principal from fees, and finally the total you would hand back at the end of the term.
One more use worth thirty seconds: stress-test the rollover before it happens. Leave the amount and the rate where they are and step the term upward. Because the fee pro-rates by the day, the panel shows exactly how the cost grows if repayment slips a cycle, which is the single most common way these loans go wrong.
What is a title loan?
A title loan is a short-term, secured loan against a vehicle you own free and clear. You keep driving the car; the lender keeps the title and records a lien. Some also install a GPS tracker or a starter-interrupt device, so the collateral can be found and disabled the day a payment is missed. There is usually no meaningful credit check. The car is the underwriting.
The loan itself is small relative to the vehicle. Lenders typically advance between 25% and 50% of the car's resale value, with amounts running from $100 to $10,000 and terms of 15 to 30 days. Repayment is a single balloon payment: principal plus the full finance fee, due at once. That structure matters. A borrower who could not spare $1,000 this month is being asked to produce $1,250.00 next month.
When the balloon does not clear, most lenders offer to roll the loan into a new term for a new fee. When it does not clear and no rollover is arranged, repossession follows. CFPB research on single-payment title lending found that about one borrower in five loses the vehicle, which is a brutal outcome when the car is also how you get to work. Pricing, paperwork, and state rules are covered in depth in our title loans guide; this page stays focused on the math.
State law decides whether any of this is available to you, and at what price. Roughly half the states permit title lending in some form. Others cap small-loan rates near the level credit unions charge, which prices the storefront model out, and several prohibit the product outright. The same car, driven across a state line, can secure a loan at a third of the cost or none at all.
Title loan APR vs. the advertised monthly rate
The advertised number is a monthly finance fee, typically 15% to 30% of the principal. Here is the trap: 25% reads like a mid-range credit card, because card rates near 22% are the interest numbers most people carry around in their heads. But the card figure is yearly. The title figure is monthly.
Run the typical deal through the same engine the calculator uses. Borrow $1,000 for 30 days at a 25% monthly rate and the finance fee is $250.00, the total due is $1,250.00, and the annualized cost is 304% APR. Same fee, same loan; the only thing that changed is the honesty of the yardstick.
Rollovers are where the monthly framing does real damage. Each extension repeats the full fee while the principal stands still. Extend that typical loan twice and the fees alone reach $750.00 on $1,000 borrowed, and the car is still on the line.
A useful habit follows from this. Whenever a short-term quote arrives, in dollars or percent, monthly or biweekly, push it through the annualizer before your gut files it as small. Advertised framing is chosen by the seller. APR is chosen by the arithmetic.
When a title loan is, and isn't, defensible
There is a narrow case. The gap is one-time and verified, money you can point to is already scheduled to arrive, the amount is small next to the car's value, and every cheaper route has actually been tried rather than assumed closed. A borrower who repays in a single term pays the quoted fee and walks away. Expensive, but contained.
The indefensible cases are more common. Using a title loan to cover a recurring shortfall means the balloon lands on the same strained budget that caused the loan, and the rollover cycle starts. Borrowing against a car you need for work stakes your income on the loan itself. And borrowing to service another debt just moves the hole while adding 304%-APR pricing on top of it. If any of those describe the situation, stop here.
If you proceed anyway, get four answers in writing before you sign:
- the payoff figure in dollars for your exact term, not just the monthly rate;
- whether the contract allows partial paydown of principal without penalty;
- what event triggers repossession, and whether a cure period lets you catch up;
- what it costs to get a repossessed car back, since towing and storage charges are added to the debt.
Cheaper alternatives to check first
A Payday Alternative Loan from a federal credit union is capped at 28% APR with an application fee of no more than $20, repaid in installments over 1 to 12 months. An installment loan costs more than that but still replaces the balloon with fixed, scheduled payments. For smaller gaps, small-dollar loans avoid putting a vehicle up at all. Even a credit-card cash advance near 29% APR undercuts the typical title loan by an order of magnitude.
Two non-loan moves outrank all of these when they are available. The first is calling whoever the money is owed to; utilities, landlords, hospitals, and even repair shops grant payment plans more often than borrowers expect, and a payment plan at zero cost beats every product on this page. The second is an employer paycheck advance, which a growing share of payroll systems now support for little or nothing.
If the other offer on your table is a payday loan, do the same exercise before deciding: run it through the payday loan calculator and compare the two APRs side by side.