RAP Calculator 2026 — Repayment Assistance Plan Payment

The Repayment Assistance Plan opened on July 1, 2026 and is the only income-driven repayment plan available to any borrower with a Direct Loan first disbursed on or after that date; once such a loan enters repayment, all of that borrower's eligible Direct Loans, older ones included, must be repaid under RAP or the Tiered Standard Plan. It replaces the tangle of IBR, PAYE, ICR and SAVE with a single schedule, and it calculates payments in a way none of those plans did.

Every earlier income-driven plan started by subtracting a poverty-line allowance from your income and charging a percentage of what was left. RAP charges a percentage of your whole adjusted gross income, with no allowance subtracted first. The percentage climbs one point for each $10,000 band of income: 1% from $10,001 to $20,000, 2% from $20,001 to $30,000, and so on to a 10% ceiling above $100,000. Below $10,001 the payment is a flat $10. Family size is handled at the end instead of the beginning — $50 comes off the monthly payment for each dependent — and the payment never falls below $10, so RAP has no $0 payment the way SAVE did.

Two features work in the borrower's favour and are the plan's real innovation. Any interest your payment does not cover is waived each month, so the balance cannot grow — the negative amortisation that left borrowers owing more after a decade of payments is gone. And if a payment would reduce principal by less than $50, the government brings that month's principal reduction up to $50, or up to the amount of the payment when the payment itself is under $50, which means the balance falls every month, even for borrowers paying the $10 minimum. Anything still outstanding after 360 qualifying payments is forgiven.

Thirty years is longer than the twenty or twenty-five years the older plans offered, and that is the trade. RAP payments are lower than IBR payments for many borrowers at the same income, particularly those with dependents, but they run for a decade longer before forgiveness. RAP payments count toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which for public-sector borrowers still arrives at 120 payments and makes the thirty-year horizon irrelevant. Borrowers whose loans were all disbursed before July 1, 2026 can stay on IBR, or on PAYE or ICR until those plans end no later than July 1, 2028, as long as they take out no new loan, including a consolidation loan. The choice is worth running both ways before switching: payments made under RAP do not count toward IBR, PAYE or ICR forgiveness if you later switch back, although they still count toward PSLF.