Auto Loan Calculators
Estimate Monthly Car Payments & More
Looking to buy a new or used car? Our easy-to-use auto loan calculators can help you get on the road to better financing! (Psst, click the little blue plus sign next to any of the input labels on the calculators for more details.)
Calculator Disclaimer
| Payment Period | Purchase APR* "As Low As" | Minimum Loan Amount | Payment per $1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 48 Months | 5.74% | No minimum loan amount | $23.37 |
| Up to 66 Months | 6.24% | $10,000 | $17.94 |
| Up to 75 Months | 6.74% | $12,000 | $16.38 |
| Up to 84 Months | 6.99% | $20,000 | $15.09 |
Rates shown are fixed Annual Percentage Rates for vehicle model years 2024 and newer. Rates are subject to change. Your actual rate and terms are affected by your creditworthiness, term selected, vehicle type, and model year. Certain restrictions apply. You may be asked to furnish a down payment. Florida loans are subject to Documentary Stamp Tax. The tax amount is not included in the quoted APR.
Additional Auto Loan Resources
About Auto Loans at Space Coast Credit Union (SCCU)
Whether you're looking to get a pre-approval, refinance, or finance at a dealership, we offer low-rate car loans8 with flexible terms9
to help you get the car of your dreams.
Car Loan Pre-Approval
At SCCU, we’ll check your income, debt information, and credit score to determine what you would qualify for an auto loan. For example, let’s say you earn $42,000 a year—which is $3,500 per monthly—and your debts equal $900 per month:
- Rent: $700
- Credit card payments: $100
- Personal loan: $100
Now let’s say that a lender will loan up to 36% of your gross monthly income minus your debts. Here’s the formula: $3,500 x .36 = $1,260 - $900 = $360. In other words, you may get pre-approved for a monthly car loan payment up to $360 based on this debt-to-income ratio.
Use our “Vehicle Affordability by Loan Term” calculator to get an estimate of car loan purchase prices that would work with this monthly car loan payment at different terms.
Auto Financing at the Dealership
To streamline your car buying experience, ask for SCCU when you’re at the dealership, and they’ll help you get your loan financing sorted on the spot.
Auto Loan Refinance
When you refinance with SCCU, our lower rates8can translate into lower monthly principal and interest payments and potentially save you money over the life of the loan. The auto refinancing process at SCCU is just like the auto preapproval process—fast, easy, and convenient.
About These Car Loan Calculators
Our calculators can help you determine vehicle purchase price, down payment amount, loan term, and more that best suit your budgeting needs.
Calculate A Vehicle Payment
This is one of the most popular auto loan calculators where you’ll enter a few pieces of information:
- Vehicle purchase price: If you already know what car you’d like, enter its price. If you’re not sure yet, feel free to try out different amounts to get an idea of what your monthly payment could be.
- Cash rebate or cash back: Sometimes dealerships or manufacturers offer cash rebates (also called “cash back”) as an incentive to consumers to sell more cars. Many people add that amount to their down payment to lower their monthly car payment (but you could opt to get a check in the mail after the purchase is complete instead).
- Sales tax rate: This varies by state. Here’s what it is in Florida.
- Value of your trade-in: You can use online resources like Kelley Blue Book or Edmunds to help you estimate this value.
- Amount owed on trade-in: This is your outstanding loan balance on the vehicle you’ll trade in, which is typically added on to the total of your new car.
- Loan term (months): You can refer to our auto loan products or our auto refinance product to see our available tiers of terms.
- Interest rate: Enter the interest rate that corresponds with the term.
- Down payment amount: This is the amount of cash you’ll put down besides the trade-in value. The more you can put down now, the less you’ll have to pay back later.
You’ll then receive a principal and interest payment amount based on the answers you’ve entered as well as what your loan payoff schedule would look like. Do you think this payment would fit into your personal budget? If so, then you can apply to get pre-approved for a car loan so you can begin shopping with the confidence of a cash buyer and show the pre-approval letter to the seller to demonstrate how you’re a qualified buyer.
Low Rate or Cash Back?
When you have the choice of low rate or cash back, it can be difficult to decide what’s best. By entering the same kind of information that you did with the first calculator—along with the low rate you’re considering—this calculator does the work for you. The calculator’s default example show you that taking the low rate financing instead of the rebate would save the borrower $1,137.85 over the loan’s life.
Compare Monthly Payment by Term
Simply fill in the information and the calculator will share the principal and interest payment for 24 months, 36 months, 48 months, and 60 months. As the term lengthens, the payment goes down—but, the longer the term, the more you’ll pay in interest until the loan is paid off.
Vehicle Affordability by Loan Term
The longer the term, the lower the payment—which means the more car you can buy. Enter your data in this calculator and compare the possibilities.
Compare Two Vehicle Loans
With this auto loan calculator, you can enter information for two vehicles (the loan amount, term, and interest rate) to help you make a better decision about your financing.
Gas Mileage Savings with a Fuel-Efficient Vehicle
With today’s gas prices, people often want to analyze whether it makes sense to trade in a “gas guzzler” for a vehicle that’s more fuel efficient. You can calculate this by including your current miles per gallon, the miles you drive monthly, and the current cost of fuel. Then you can estimate how much a fuel-efficient vehicle would save you and when you’d break even on the financial transaction. Pretty cool, right?
Purchase or Lease a Vehicle
Our final auto loan calculator will compare/contrast buying and leasing a vehicle to help you determine which option will save the most over the loan’s life—and by how much.
Frequently Asked Questions
The answer to this question depends upon your unique financial situation and choices. Typically, 72-month car loans and 84-month car loans are the longest available terms (and that’s true for SCCU). A key benefit of a longer loan term: payments are lower.
You might choose to go with a 72-month term if you don’t qualify for the car payment with a shorter term or if you’d like more room in your monthly budget.
With a longer term, though, you’ll pay more interest over the life of the loan, and you risk paying more than your car is actually worth (also known as “going upside down” or “negative equity”). The “Compare Two Vehicle Loans” calculator can help you see the pros and cons of going with a 72-month term versus a different loan term.
According to Experian’s Q4 2023 Auto Finance Trends report, the average car loan payment was $738 for new cars in the United States and $532 for used ones. A rule of thumb says that a car payment shouldn’t cost more than 10 to 20% of your take-home pay. Keep in mind that a car payment will need to fit within a lender’s debt-to-income requirements for approval; if the payment causes you to exceed the ratio, it’s too high.
The auto loan’s interest rate is a percentage to demonstrate what you’ll pay in interest. It doesn’t factor in any fees. The annual percentage rate (APR) accounts for both the interest rate and the fees, making it a better apples-to-apples comparison when looking at different loan programs. A “good” APR for 72 months, then, shouldn’t be significantly more than the interest rate because that would indicate higher fees being charged on the loan.
Interest rates for auto loans vary by financial institution, and the rate you receive depends on a number of factors, such as if your car is new or used and your credit score. Because SCCU offers its members low interest rates8 with no application fees, our APRs are competitively low. You can always find our current auto loan APRs here.
Fortunately, our auto loan calculators do the work for you. If you enter information in the “Calculate A Vehicle Payment” one, you can click on the amortization tab to see a breakdown of how much you’ll pay in interest and how much in principal each month. Because the interest is calculated each month on the current balance, as you pay down your loan, more of your monthly payment will go towards principal and less towards interest.
To calculate it yourself, multiply the current balance (for month one, that’s the original loan amount) by the interest rate (note: 6.12% = 0.0612). Then, divide by 12. This is your interest amount for the month.
Next, subtract that interest amount from your principal and interest payment; that’s the amount of the payment that will go onto the principal balance, lowering the outstanding amount due.
You just keep repeating the process throughout the life of the loan. This calculation assumes that the lender uses simple interest; most lenders do, which includes SCCU.
They include low interest rates and APRs with fast approval processes for new and used vehicles. We don’t charge application fees, and we don’t have prepayment penalties. What we do have: highly flexible terms9. You can quickly and effortlessly apply for car loans online. If you have any questions, fill out this form or reach out to us here.
The information provided by these calculators is intended for illustrative purposes only and is not intended to represent actual user-defined parameters. The default figures shown are hypothetical and may not be applicable to your individual situation. Be sure to consult a financial professional prior to relying on the results.