The 11 Student Loan Repayment Plans Ranked

Editor's note: If you’re currently on the SAVE plan, there’s a new timeline to be aware of.Beginning July 1, 2026, borrowers will have 90 days to select a new repayment plan.If no action is taken, you may be automatically placed on the Standard Repayment Plan or the new Tiered Standard Plan, which will generally result in higher monthly payments and may not support forgiveness goals.Note the new Tiered Standard Plan and the new Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), both available beginning July 1, 2026, will be added to this list once fully implemented.Unfortunately for student loan borrowers, every time a new Congress tinkers with the student loan system, it adds a new federal student loan repayment option on top of all the ones that came before.

We like to call this the “student loan sandwich.” And with so many options, it's hard to know which is the best student loan repayment plan for your situation.Here's a breakdown of the student loan repayment plans available.How many student loan repayment plans are there? In the ‘90s, there were only a couple of student loan payment choices for federal debt.As the student loan crisis exploded, lawmakers have created new plans but left the old ones intact.

There are now 10 different student loan repayment options with the U.S.Department of Education that you can select from.Even though many of these plans are almost useless, almost every one has a unique application where you’d want to utilize it.Student loans are like taxes if you have huge debt from your education.

Yes, it’s scary when you owe a lot.But because there are so many options, there are extremely beneficial ways to ethically use the complicated rules to your advantage.Read on to see how each of the student loan repayment plans ranks from worst to best.Related: Your Guide to Federal Loan Repayment Plans That Qualify for PSLF The 3 worst federal student loan repayment options This group of repayment options doesn’t have a huge application in the vast majority of scenarios.

Our team has advised on over $5.1 billion worth of student debt.If there were great uses for these payment plans, we would have seen them by now.10.Income-Sensitive Repayment If you have loans through the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program, then congratulations! You’re eligible for this strange repayment plan — Income-Sensitive Repayment (ISR).

You’ll pay your loan over 15 years with the payment differing based on your servicer.You also must pay the full debt off.If you do have FFEL Loans, then you’re at least eligible for Income-Based Repayment, where you might be eligible for student loan forgiveness after 25 years of payments.Alternatively, you might even want to refinance to a lower interest rate.

The final alternative would be consolidating your FFEL Loan to a Direct Loan so you get significantly more student loan repayment options.Either way, ISR sounds good, but it’s totally lousy.9.Extended 25-Year Plan The Extended Repayment Plan doesn’t qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), and it’s more expensive than consolidating to a 30-year fixed payment (we’ll see that later).

It’s also not based on your income.If you earn too much to qualify for one of those options, you probably need to refinance and not pay a giant interest rate to the government for 2.5 decades.You need to owe more than $30,000 to have the Extended Plan as a payment option.Many borrowers in my experience could be on Extended and not even know they have better options.

Usually when someone is on this plan, I know we can save them a lot of money.8.Graduated 10-Year Plan The most common way to end up on Graduated 10-Year is if you have a bunch of non-consolidated loans.The Graduated 10-Year plan is like a fixed payment option that forces you to pay off the loan balance you owe — but with one big difference.

The payments start off small and significantly increase over time.Kind of like a ballooning mortgage.That went over great in the last financial crisis, right? In reality, someone on a Graduated Plan could consolidate and possibly get on a 30-year repayment plan if they truly need a low payment.Income-based repayment plan options usually are also better than this.

The 4 federal student loan payment plans with limited use The following four student loan repayment choices have some important reasons you might use them.These cases will represent a small minority of borrowers, though.That’s why these plans don’t appear higher on the list.7.

Standard Repayment Plan for consolidation loans The Standard 10-Year Repayment Plan ceases to exist for consolidation loans.Once you consolidate, you only have the option to sign up for the Standard Repayment Plan.That sounds like the exact same thing, but it’s not.Here are the six different repayment term lengths for the Standard Plan when you consolidate, depending on what you owe: Less than $7.5k: 10 years $7.5k to $10k: 12 years $10k to $20k: 15 years $20k to $40k: 20 years $40k to $60k: 25 years $60k and up: 30 years That means anybody who consolidates and owes more than $60,000 would get put on a 30-year fixed payment plan.

Why would you ever want this? In the mid-2000s, there were borrowers who locked in 3% rates on their FFEL Loans.That group could consolidate and reset the payment clock to 30 years at the same interest rate.That means hundreds of thousands of borrowers could extend their student loan debt basically forever at an ultra-low interest rate — lower than what they have on their mortgage.This doesn’t apply to a ton of people, but when it does, it’s pretty sweet.

6.Graduated Repayment Plan for consolidation loans The Graduated Plan for consolidation loans is very similar to the Standard Plan for consolidation loans.The main difference is that the Graduated Plan payments start low and increase significantly over time.The loan term length of the graduated plan is the same as for the Standard in the prior section.

Less than $7.5k: 10 years $7.5k to $10k: 12 years $10k to $20k: 15 years $20k to $40k: 20 years $40k to $60k: 25 years $60k and up: 30 years You’d use this plan if you have that ultra-low rate on your federal debt and want to pay even less because you have better uses for your money.5.Standard 10-Year Plan None of the payment plans we’ve covered so far count for PSLF.But the Standard 10-Year explicitly counts.

Even if you don’t have a financial hardship anymore, if you haven’t consolidated, you can sign up for the Standard 10-Year Plan.And it counts for PSLF.One of the most common problems that happens for borrowers seeking to use loan forgiveness programs is that they won’t be eligible to pay based on their income anymore, and they call their loan servicer seeking advice.The issue is that not all income-driven repayment plans are created equal.

Some plans include a built-in cap that limits your monthly payment to what you would pay under the Standard 10-year plan, such as PAYE or IBR.Others don’t, which means your payment can continue to rise as your income increases.In the past, borrowers were often guided into the Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE) plan.The problem was that REPAYE didn't include a payment cap, and once borrowers left a capped plan like PAYE or IBR, it wasn’t always possible to go back.

Although REPAYE is no longer available, we’ll likely see this same issue play out again with the new Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), which also calculates payments based on income but does not include that same payment cap.With the Standard 10-Year on non-consolidated loans, you have an out.Outside of counting toward PSLF or serving as that cap benchmark, the Standard 10-Year has virtually no other application that’s useful.If you’re not going for loan forgiveness, you need to scroll to the bottom of this blog post and check out your student loan refinancing options.

4.Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) The Income-Contingent Repayment plan started back in the 1990s as a way for struggling borrowers to pay based on their income.Today, ICR is mostly used as a stepping stone for Parent PLUS borrowers.Under ICR, you must pay 20% of your adjusted gross income (AGI) minus 100% of the federal poverty line.

That’s a much higher payment than other income-driven repayment plans, or IDR for short.ICR qualifies for PSLF, but it’s fairly rare for a Parent PLUS borrower to use it for PSLF due to the higher payment calculation.Historically, Parent PLUS borrowers who consolidated their loans could only access ICR (unless they used the double consolidation strategy).However, due to changes under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Parent PLUS borrowers can switch to the more affordable IBR plan after making at least one ICR payment.ICR is also scheduled to be phased out by June 30, 2028, making it more of a short-term strategy than a permanent solution.

The 3 Best Student Loan Repayment Plans These income-driven plans are what 80% or more of the population should be using (if you shouldn’t be refinancing, which is a different conversation entirely).You could make an argument for shuffling around the top three, but all of them are extremely helpful to borrowers who took out a ton of student debt.The right choice ultimately depends on eligibility, long-term stability, and how each plan fits into your forgiveness strategy.3.

Pay As You Earn (PAYE) The strengths of the Pay As You Earn repayment plan are: Payment amount equal to 10% of discretionary income Can file separately for taxes and exclude spousal income Qualifies for PSLF Payments until forgiveness last 20 years if you don’t do PSLF Interest capitalization is limited to no more than 10% of the principal loan balance from when you entered the plan I love the PAYE plan because it gives the borrower a ton of options if you get married (or unmarried) to move your payment around seamlessly.PAYE also lasts only 20 years if you go for private sector forgiveness.The downside? PAYE doesn’t offer interest subsidies except to a very limited degree on subsidized loans for the first three years.Additionally, it's set to be eliminated by June 30, 2028.

It's still an option that locks in 10% of discretionary income, but borrowers should be aware they will need to transition to IBR or risk being pushed into the new Tiered Standard Plan or RAP at a later time.2.Income-Based Repayment (aka Old IBR) The Old IBR version of Income Based Repayment asks for 15% of your AGI, minus 150% of the federal poverty line for your family size.It also comes with a 25-year loan forgiveness timeline unless you're able to qualify for PSLF.

So why is it ranked higher than PAYE considering PAYE is based on 10% of discretionary income and a 20-year forgiveness timeline? Because IBR is written into law and, therefore, isn’t going away.While PAYE and ICR are set to sunset by June 30, 2028, IBR remains a stable, long-term option for borrowers who want predictable access to income-driven payments and forgiveness.Additionally, many borrowers either aren’t eligible for newer plans or don’t want to risk resetting their progress toward forgiveness.For example, FFEL borrowers can only use Old IBR unless they consolidate.

And if you’re already 10 or 15 years into a 25-year repayment timeline, you’ll want to carefully evaluate whether consolidating makes sense based on how your prior payments will be treated.So why do we call it Old IBR? You'll see in a second.1.New Income-Based Repayment (New IBR) Remember my “student loan sandwich” metaphor? Every time a new payment plan is made, it’s layered on top of the old ones like toppings on a sandwich.

To qualify for New IBR, you must be a new borrower as of July 1, 2014.That means you can’t have had any outstanding federal loans before that date, unless you paid them off before borrowing again.New IBR is very similar to PAYE.Both cap payments at 10% of discretionary income and offer a 20-year forgiveness timeline.

In practice, they function almost identically for most borrowers.However, with PAYE set to sunset by June 30, 2028, New IBR has effectively become the primary long-term option for borrowers who qualify for a 10% income-driven payment.That’s why New IBR now takes the top spot.It offers the same lower payment calculation as PAYE but with the added benefit of being written into law and not subject to phaseout.

One downside: it’s confusingly named.Both Old IBR and New IBR show up simply as “IBR” on most servicer documents, which makes it difficult for borrowers to know which version they’re actually on.When to avoid these 10 federal student loan repayment plans I suggest ditching the federal loan options and using our cash-back refinancing links to lower your interest instead if the following five criteria apply to you: You owe less than 1.5 times your income You work in the private sector Your emergency fund covers at least six months’ worth of expenses Paying at least 1% of your balance each month would be easy You have a stable job It makes no sense to use federal repayment options if all you’re going to do is pay the government 6% to 8% interest until your loans are gone.Instead, transfer your loans to a private lender for a lower rate by visiting the sites listed at the bottom of this post.

Are 10 student loan repayment options too many? We can help All we do every day (besides churn out free content) is make custom plans for federal and private student loan borrowers.You can check out our servicers by visiting the “Hire Us” part of the site menu or look at our availability using the button below.What do you think of our rankings of the top 10 federal payment choices? Comment below!