Which credit card should I pay off first?
Enter your cards and what you can put toward them each month. We run both methods — avalanche and snowball — and tell you which card to attack.
Your cards
The verdict
Estimates for education only — not financial advice. Assumes your minimum payment stays fixed and no new charges are added. Real issuers recalculate minimums monthly (usually 1–3% of the balance) and compound interest daily, so your actual payoff date will differ by a little. Confirm figures against your statements.
The two methods, in one sentence each
Both plans do the same thing with your minimums: every card gets its minimum, every month, no exceptions. The only question is where the leftover money goes.
Avalanche sends every spare dollar to the card with the highest APR. When that one hits zero, its payment rolls into the next-highest. Snowball does the same thing but targets the smallest balance first. That's the whole difference — one line in the sort order.
Why the math favors avalanche
Interest is charged on balances, at a rate. A dollar parked on a 27% card costs you about 2.3 cents a month. The same dollar on an 11% card costs about 0.9 cents. Killing the expensive dollar first is cheaper, always, and avalanche is provably the cheapest possible order — no arrangement of your cards beats it on total interest.
But the size of that win depends on the spread between your rates, not on how many cards you have. If your cards run 26%, 24%, and 22%, avalanche and snowball land within a few dollars of each other, because a dollar costs roughly the same wherever it sits. If one card is at 29.99% and another at 6.9%, the gap can run into four figures.
Why behavior sometimes favors snowball
The cost of avalanche is that it can spend a year or more grinding on one big expensive balance while nothing visibly changes. Snowball closes an account early — sometimes within a few months — and that card's minimum is freed up, which makes the next payment bigger. Research on actual repayment behavior, including work by Harvard Business School's Remi Trudel, has found that people who cleared small balances first were more likely to stay with the plan to the end.
A plan you finish beats a better plan you abandon. When the avalanche advantage on your numbers is a few hundred dollars or less, that's a rounding error against the cost of stalling out, and snowball is a perfectly reasonable choice. When the advantage is large, this calculator says so and shows you the gap, because at that point the discomfort is buying something.
Where balance transfers fit
A 0% balance transfer card changes your inputs rather than your strategy. Typical offers run 12–21 months at 0% with a transfer fee of 3–5% of the amount moved. Moving $6,000 at a 3% fee costs $180 up front, against roughly $1,500 of interest a year at 25% — so the arithmetic is usually favorable. Three things decide whether it actually works:
- Can you clear it before the promo ends? Divide the balance by the number of promo months. If that payment doesn't fit your budget, you'll be paying the go-to rate — often 25%+ — on whatever's left.
- Will the limit hold it? Transfer amounts are usually capped at some fraction of the new card's credit limit, and you don't know the limit until you're approved.
- Will the old card stay at zero? A cleared card with a live limit is the most common way a transfer ends up adding debt instead of removing it.
If you get one, come back and re-run this calculator with the transferred balance entered at 0% APR. The payoff order usually changes, because that balance drops straight to the bottom of the avalanche list.
What both methods assume
That every minimum gets paid, every month. A single missed payment can trigger a penalty APR near 30% and erase months of progress. The reliable setup is autopay for the minimum on every card, then the extra sent by hand to whichever card you're attacking.
Common questions
Will paying off a card help my credit score?
Usually yes, and fairly quickly. Utilization — how much of your available credit you're using — is one of the biggest scoring factors, and it updates as balances report each month. Paying a card to zero is the fastest lever most people have. One caveat: leave the account open, because closing it removes its limit from your total available credit and pushes utilization back up.
Should I build an emergency fund or pay off cards first?
The common approach is a small buffer first — often around $1,000 — then attack the cards, then finish the fund. The reasoning is mechanical, not moral: without any cushion, the next car repair goes back on a card at 25%, which undoes the progress.
Can I just ask for a lower APR?
Often, yes. Calling your issuer and asking for a rate reduction takes a few minutes, costs nothing, and has no effect on your credit. It works most often when you've been on time for a while. If they say no, ask again in six months — and re-run this calculator if the rate changes, since a lower APR can reshuffle the order.
What if I can't cover all the minimums?
Then no payoff order helps, and this calculator won't pretend otherwise. Two things are worth doing early rather than late: ask each issuer about a hardship program, which can temporarily cut the APR or the minimum, and talk to a nonprofit credit counselor accredited by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. The first session is typically free. Nonprofit counseling and for-profit debt settlement are different businesses — be cautious with anyone charging large upfront fees or promising to erase what you owe.