Personal-loan fee study
Published 2026-09-27
What a 5% loan fee adds to your cost
To receive $10,000 after a 5% fee, you need to borrow $10,526.32. You pay interest on that fee, too.
Page summary
A fee taken out means you must borrow more to get the same cash. You pay interest on that extra amount, too. This made-up example keeps the cash, rate and loan length the same. The dated lender checks below cover one fee, not the full loan cost.
Start with the cash you need
An origination fee is a fee for making the loan. In this example, the lender takes 5% of the full loan amount before sending your money.
Borrowing $10,000 would leave you short. A 5% fee on that amount is $500, so you would receive $9,500. To get the full $10,000, divide it by 0.95.
The fee adds about $629 over 36 months
You borrow more to cover the fee, so both the payment and interest rise. Here is the difference when the interest rate and loan length stay the same.
The fee is already part of the loan you repay. It is not added to the total a second time.
The monthly payment rises by $17.48. The $526.32 fee also adds about $103 in interest over the full loan.
Figures assume on-time scheduled payments, no early payoff, no late fees and no optional extras. Calculations keep full precision; displayed amounts are rounded to cents. A lender’s final payment schedule may differ.
Seven providers whose pages list no origination fee
We checked these providers’ own pages on September 26, 2026. Each supported a no-origination-fee statement. This is a check of one fee, not a ranking or a claim that these are the lowest-cost loans.
Alliant
No origination fee
Citi
No origination fee
Discover
No origination fee
PenFed
No origination fee
PNC
No origination fee
U.S. Bank
No origination fee
Wells Fargo
No origination fee
Listed alphabetically. Rates, other charges, state availability and eligibility are outside this check. Review the terms of your own offer.
See how we worked it out
To find the loan before a deducted fee, divide the cash needed by one minus the fee rate. For this example: $10,000 ÷ 0.95 = $10,526.32.
We use the fixed interest rate to estimate payments. An APR that already includes fees is not a substitute for that rate.
Payment formula and rounding
Monthly payment = P × r ÷ [1 − (1 + r)−n]. P is the loan before fees, r is the annual interest rate divided by 12, and n is the number of monthly payments. When r is zero, payment = P ÷ n.
Total paid is the unrounded payment multiplied by the number of months. Borrowing cost is total paid minus cash received. This model does not calculate APR.
Codex assisted with preparation and calculation checks. The examples are illustrative; no provider supplied their rates or fee assumptions.
Loan-versus-card calculator: dated benchmark reference