You repay 9% of everything you earn above a threshold, not a fixed instalment, for a fixed number of years. Whatever is left is cancelled.
Not the balance, not the interest rate: your salary path and how long until write-off. Two people with the same debt and different careers pay wildly different totals.
Money paid into a loan that is written off anyway is given away; money paid into one you would have cleared saves real interest. Which you are is decided by a career you have not had, so the projection shows where the boundary is.
Lifetime cost is highest not for top earners, who clear the loan early, but for those who only just clear it: the full term, with nothing cancelled.
If interest exceeds your repayments the balance rises every year and still gets cancelled at the end. Alarming on a statement, irrelevant to your cost: the statement is measuring something you will never pay.
A postgraduate loan runs alongside an undergraduate one, at 6% above its own lower threshold. Combined with income tax and National Insurance, that is where the well-known marginal-rate spikes come from.
A 40-year write-off instead of 30, and a threshold that starts lower. Ten extra years means far more people repay in full: the write-off that favoured many Plan 2 graduates is much harder to reach.
Plan 1 — English/Welsh students who started before September 2012, and Northern Ireland. Plan 2 — England and Wales, starting September 2012 to July 2023. Plan 4 — Scotland. Plan 5 — England, starting August 2023 onwards, with a 40-year write-off rather than 30. If you are unsure, your online repayment account states it.
Usually no, and the projection above says why in your case. Repayment is a percentage of income, so clearing the balance early does not reduce a monthly bill — it just ends one sooner. If the projection ends in a write-off with a balance outstanding, a voluntary pound buys you nothing. If it shows you clearing the loan, overpaying saves real interest. Because that turns entirely on a salary you are guessing at, the tool also shows the growth rate at which the answer flips, and what the same loan costs on a flatter or a better career.
Less than people expect. For anyone who will not clear the balance, the rate changes the number on the statement and nothing about what they pay. It matters only near the boundary — where a lower rate is the difference between clearing the loan and being written off.
9% of your income above the threshold, so on a £32,000 salary against a £29,385 threshold that is 9% of £2,615 — about £20 a month. A postgraduate loan adds 6% above its own lower threshold, and the two run at the same time, which is where a combined marginal rate near 50% comes from for some earners.
The UK figures are the 2026/27 ones and they change every April, which is why every one of them is editable above. Check GOV.UK for the current year before making a decision on the result.
Releases in which this page changed, newest last. Derived from the archived copy of every release, not from notes written afterwards — so it reflects what actually shipped. Site-wide passes are left out; they are in the full changelog.