Pay smallest balance first for momentum, or highest rate first to save the most. See both, side by side.
How this is calculated Embed on your siteUpdated October 2026
The debt snowball and the debt avalanche are two ways to decide which debt to attack first. Both start the same way: pay the minimum on everything, then put every extra dollar toward one target debt. When that debt is gone, its payment rolls into the next one, so the amount you are throwing at your debt keeps growing. The only difference is the order.
The default inputs use three common debts and a $1,000 monthly budget:
| Debt | Balance | Rate | Minimum |
|---|---|---|---|
| Car loan | $4,200 | 7% | $180 |
| Credit card | $9,500 | 24% | $285 |
| Student loan | $18,000 | 5.5% | $200 |
The minimums add up to $665, leaving $335 extra each month. The avalanche sends that extra to the 24% credit card. The snowball sends it to the $4,200 car loan, because it is the smallest balance.
Both plans finish in 37 months. The avalanche pays $4,429 in interest and the snowball pays $5,043, so the avalanche saves $614. The snowball clears the car loan in month 9, while the avalanche does not finish off its first debt, the credit card, until month 19.
So the real question is whether getting a debt out of your life ten months sooner is worth about $600 to you. For some people it clearly is. For others, the extra interest is the deciding factor.
The more you can pay each month, the faster you finish either way, and the smaller the gap between the two methods tends to be:
| Monthly budget | Avalanche | Snowball | Avalanche saves |
|---|---|---|---|
| $800 | 48 months, $6,378 | 49 months, $6,895 | $517 |
| $1,000 | 37 months, $4,429 | 37 months, $5,043 | $614 |
| $1,500 | 23 months, $2,625 | 24 months, $3,062 | $436 |
When your smallest debt also has the highest rate, both methods choose the same order and there is nothing to decide. The calculator will tell you when that is the case.
If you are confident you will stick with the plan, the avalanche is the better deal on paper, and the gap gets large when one debt has a much higher rate than the rest, such as a credit card at 25% next to a student loan at 5%.
If you have tried to pay down debt before and lost steam, the snowball's early wins are a real advantage. Research backs this up. A study by David Gal and Blakeley McShane of Northwestern's Kellogg School (Journal of Marketing Research, 2012) found that closing out individual accounts predicted getting out of debt, and research summarized in Harvard Business Review in 2016 found that people who focused on one balance at a time paid down debt faster than those who spread payments across all of them. A plan you follow beats a better plan you abandon.
A middle path also works: start with the snowball to knock out one or two small balances quickly, then switch to the avalanche for the larger, higher-rate debts.
To see the payoff date for a single credit card, use the credit card payoff calculator.
Both pay minimums on all debts and put extra money toward one debt at a time. The snowball targets the smallest balance first, and the avalanche targets the highest interest rate first.
The avalanche always pays the same or less total interest. In the example on this page it saves $614 over the snowball. The snowball pays off its first debt sooner, which can help motivation.
Yes. It costs a bit more in interest, but research has found that paying off whole balances one at a time helps many people stay committed, and staying committed matters more than the order.
Usually not. Most people use these methods for consumer debt like credit cards, car loans, personal loans and student loans, and handle the mortgage separately.
Its minimum payment does not disappear. You add it to the payment on your next target debt, so the amount going to each new debt keeps growing. That rollover is what gives both methods their speed.
The calculator simulates both orders month by month: interest accrues, every debt gets its minimum, and the remaining budget goes to the target debt. Research cited: Gal and McShane, Journal of Marketing Research, 2012 (consumer debt management); Harvard Business Review, "Research: The Best Strategy for Paying Off Credit Card Debt," 2016.