VA Loan Calculator

What is a VA loan?

A VA loan is a mortgage issued by a private lender and guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs under its home loan guaranty program. The VA does not lend its own money. It guarantees up to 25% of the loan against loss, and that guarantee is what allows a lender to advance 100% of the purchase price to a borrower with no cash down and no monthly mortgage insurance. The benefit belongs to the service member, not to the loan: it is earned through qualifying service, documented on a Certificate of Eligibility, and it can be used more than once over a lifetime.

The loan itself behaves like any other fixed-rate mortgage. On a $400,000 purchase with nothing down you sign a note for $400,000, make 360 monthly payments over 30 years, and watch the balance amortize to zero on the final payment. Interest accrues on the remaining balance, so the first payment is mostly interest and the last is almost entirely principal. What separates a VA loan from a conventional or FHA loan is what sits around that note: no private mortgage insurance at any point, no down payment requirement, a one-time funding fee instead of a monthly premium, and an underwriting test built on residual income rather than on a rigid debt-to-income ceiling.

Two features are worth stating plainly because they are the reason most borrowers choose this program. First, there is never mortgage insurance: VA caps its guaranty at 25% precisely so lenders do not need it, which on a $400,000 loan saves the $167 to $400 a month a conventional borrower would pay for private coverage at 95% loan-to-value. Second, the only program cost unique to VA is the funding fee, a one-time charge of 2.15% of the loan for a first use with no money down, which is $8,600 on $400,000 and can be rolled into the balance. Veterans receiving compensation for a service-connected disability, surviving spouses receiving DIC, and Purple Heart recipients on active duty pay nothing.

VA loan requirements for 2026

• Service: veterans qualify with 90 consecutive days of active service during wartime or 181 consecutive days during peacetime, or 24 continuous months for service that began after September 7, 1980. Currently serving active-duty members qualify after 90 continuous days. National Guard and Reserve members qualify after six years of qualifying service with at least 90 days of federal active duty, at least 30 of them consecutive.
• Surviving spouses: the unremarried spouse of a service member who died in the line of duty or from a service-connected disability, or who is missing in action or a prisoner of war, is eligible. Spouses receiving Dependency and Indemnity Compensation qualify, and those who remarry generally must do so at age 57 or older to keep the benefit.
• Certificate of Eligibility: the COE is the document that proves entitlement. Most veterans pull it in minutes through VA.gov or have the lender request it through Web LGY during pre-approval. The COE also shows how much entitlement is already attached to another property, which decides whether a county loan limit applies to you.
• Credit: the VA sets no minimum score. Most lenders want 580 to 620, and files at 640 and above price better and clear underwriting faster. The agency underwrites the whole file rather than a number, so a documented explanation of a 2021 collection with clean payment history since often carries more weight than fifteen points of score.
• Residual income: the VA-specific test. After the mortgage payment, taxes, maintenance, utilities, and all other debts are subtracted from gross income, a set amount must remain every month. For a loan above $80,000 the minimum is $441 for a one-person household in the South and Midwest, $450 in the Northeast, and $491 in the West; a family of four needs $1,003, $1,025, and $1,117 respectively, plus $80 for each member above five.
• Debt-to-income: the VA publishes no hard ceiling. Lenders commonly hold the file at 41% and allow higher ratios when residual income clears the guideline by 20% or more, which for a family of four in the South means $1,204 instead of $1,003. This is why two borrowers with identical ratios can reach opposite decisions.
• Occupancy and property: the home must be your primary residence, and you must certify intent to occupy it. The VA appraisal confirms value and checks the property against Minimum Property Requirements, but an appraisal is not an inspection, so budget $300 to $600 for your own.
• Loan limits: with full entitlement there is no VA loan limit in 2026. Only partial entitlement binds you to the county figure, and the 2026 baseline conforming limit that governs those counties is $832,750 for a single-family home, rising to $1,249,125 in high-cost areas.

How to use this calculator

1. Enter the home price. The default $400,000 is the figure used in every worked example on this page.
2. Set the down payment. Leave it at $0 to model the standard VA loan, or enter 5% or 10% to see the lower funding fee tiers do to the financed balance.
3. Enter the interest rate and the term. VA rates are quoted like any other mortgage; 6.5% over 360 months is the benchmark used here, and live quotes are on the rates page.
4. Select the funding fee percentage that matches your situation: 2.15% for first use with no down payment, 3.3% for subsequent use, 1.5% with 5% or more down, 1.25% with 10% or more down, or 0% if you are exempt through a service-connected disability.
5. Read the results: principal and interest, the one-time funding fee in dollars, the $0 mortgage insurance line, and total interest across the full term.

A realistic set of inputs for 2026: home price $400,000, down payment $0, rate 6.50%, term 360 months, funding fee 2.15%. That returns a $400,000 base loan, an $8,600 funding fee, a financed balance of $408,600, and principal and interest of $2,582.63 a month before escrow. Pay the fee in cash instead and the payment falls to $2,528.27, a $54.36 difference. Add property tax at roughly 0.9% to 1.2% of value a year, which is $300 to $400 a month on $400,000, and homeowners insurance at $1,200 to $2,000 a year, or $100 to $167 a month. With $650 of car and student loan payments, the $3,040.96 housing payment needs about $9,000 of gross monthly income to hold a 41% back-end ratio, and a family of four in the South needs $1,003 of residual left after that payment. Check your own figures in the debt-to-income calculator and price the cash side in the closing cost calculator.

How a VA payment is calculated

The principal-and-interest portion uses the standard amortization formula. The VA-specific work happens around it: the funding fee is added to the balance before the formula runs when you finance it, and nothing is appended afterward because VA loans never carry a monthly mortgage insurance premium.

M = P × [ i (1 + i)ⁿ ] ÷ [ (1 + i)ⁿ − 1 ]

Here M is the monthly principal and interest payment, P is the financed loan amount including any funding fee you roll in, i is the monthly interest rate (annual rate divided by 12), and n is the number of payments. The funding fee is not a monthly charge: it is a percentage of the loan amount assessed once at closing, and the only decision attached to it is whether you pay it in cash or let it amortize over 360 months.

Worked example: $400,000 home, $0 down, first use, 6.5%, 30 years

Step 1: with no down payment the base loan equals the purchase price, $400,000. Step 2: the funding fee is 400,000 × 0.0215 = $8,600, and because it is financed the amount that amortizes is 400,000 + 8,600 = $408,600. Step 3: the monthly rate is 6.5% ÷ 12 = 0.005416667 and n = 30 × 12 = 360. Step 4: the compounding factor is 1.005416667 to the 360th power = 6.991798, so M = 408,600 × 0.005416667 × 6.991798 ÷ 5.991798 = $2,582.63. Step 5: there is no mortgage insurance line to add, so the payment before taxes and insurance is $2,582.63.

Step 6 prices the fee three ways. First use with no down payment: 400,000 × 0.0215 = $8,600. First use with 5% down of $20,000: the base loan drops to $380,000 and the fee rate drops to 1.5%, so 380,000 × 0.015 = $5,700. Subsequent use with no down payment: 400,000 × 0.033 = $13,200. Step 7 works the schedule: month one's interest is 408,600 × 0.005416667 = $2,213.75, leaving $368.88 of principal; total repayment is $2,582.63 × 360 = $929,747, which makes lifetime interest $929,747 − $408,600 = $521,147. Financing the fee costs $54.36 a month against the $2,528.27 unfinanced payment, or $19,570 across the term, of which $10,970 is interest on $8,600 of borrowed money. Compare that with the conventional alternative: 0.7% private mortgage insurance on a $400,000 loan is $233.33 a month and runs until you reach 80% equity, which is $84,000 of payments a year against a fee VA charges once.

Worked scenarios

Three variables move a VA payment: how much you borrow, what the funding fee does to that balance, and the rate the lender quotes. The tables below change one at a time and hold the rest constant. Every figure is principal and interest at 6.50% over 360 months; taxes and insurance are separate escrow lines.

Down payment and funding fee: $400,000 home, 6.50%, 30-year, first use

Five percent down changes two things at once: it removes $20,000 from the loan and it drops the fee from 2.15% to 1.50%, so the financed balance falls $22,900 and the payment falls $144.74. The fee saving alone is $2,900. Ten percent down removes $44,100 from the financed balance and $278.75 from the payment, but it ties up $40,000 of cash to do it. Whether that trade is right depends on what the cash is worth elsewhere: model it in the down payment calculator. The exempt row is the single biggest line in the table, $8,600 of fee and $54.36 a month, and it applies to every veteran receiving compensation for a service-connected disability.

First use versus subsequent use: $400,000 home, 0% down, 6.50%, 30-year

A second VA purchase with nothing down costs $4,600 more at closing and $29.07 more every month, which is $10,465 across the term, because the subsequent-use tier sits at 3.3% instead of 2.15%. That gap is the whole argument for putting 5% down on a second use: the fee falls from 3.3% to 1.5%, which on a $380,000 base loan is $5,700 instead of $13,200, a $7,500 saving that beats most of what the $20,000 of cash could earn. The exemption row costs nothing and is not a favor, it is compensation for a rating the VA has already documented. The IRRRL row shows why refinancing an existing VA loan with a rate reduction carries the smallest fee in the program.

Rate scenarios: $408,600 financed, 30-year term

Half a point of rate is worth $132.87 a month at this balance, and the other half point costs $135.80, so a single same-day rate shopping session covering 6.00% to 7.00% spans $268.67 a month and $96,721 of lifetime interest. The funding fee does not change with the rate, which makes the rate the only negotiable number on the page. The mechanics behind the total interest column are in the amortization guide, and live pricing sits on the rates page.

VA loan costs and fees

• Funding fee, first use: 2.15% of the loan amount with less than 5% down, 1.50% with 5% or more, and 1.25% with 10% or more. On a $400,000 loan those are $8,600, $6,000, and $5,000. The fee is charged on the loan amount rather than the purchase price, so a $20,000 down payment on a $400,000 home makes the base $380,000 and the 1.50% fee $5,700.
• Funding fee, subsequent use: 3.3% with less than 5% down, then 1.50% at 5% or more and 1.25% at 10% or more. The 3.3% tier is $13,200 on a $400,000 loan and is the largest single cost in the program for a repeat buyer.
• Funding fee exemptions: veterans receiving compensation for a service-connected disability, veterans eligible for that compensation but on retirement or active-duty pay instead, surviving spouses receiving DIC, Purple Heart recipients on active duty, and service members with a proposed or memorandum rating issued before closing. More than half of VA buyers pay no fee.
• Refinance fees: an Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loan carries 0.5% of the loan amount, which is $2,000 on $400,000, regardless of how many times you have used the benefit. A cash-out refinance follows the purchase schedule at 2.15% first use and 3.3% subsequent use.
• Mortgage insurance: none, at any loan-to-value ratio, for the entire life of the loan. A conventional borrower at 95% loan-to-value on $400,000 commonly pays $167 to $400 a month in PMI, and an FHA borrower pays $239.24 of monthly MIP on a comparable balance with under 10% down.
• Lender and third-party charges: VA caps the origination fee at 1% of the loan amount, which is $4,000 on $400,000, and prohibits a list of administrative add-ons such as document preparation. Appraisal runs $400 to $900 depending on market, a home inspection $300 to $600, and title, escrow, and recording fees are actual and reasonable. Seller concessions may cover customary closing costs plus up to 4% of the loan amount.
• Prepaids: escrow for property tax and homeowners insurance, plus per diem interest. At 6.50% on $408,600, interest accrues at $72.76 a day from the closing date to the end of the month.

VA loan tips for 2026

• Pull the Certificate of Eligibility before you shop. VA.gov issues most veterans a COE in minutes, and a lender can pull it through Web LGY during pre-approval. The COE also reports entitlement status: full entitlement means no county loan limit applies in 2026, while partial entitlement ties your zero-down capacity to the county figure of $832,750 in most markets.
• Confirm your funding-fee status in writing. Ask the lender to document the fee percentage on the Loan Estimate. If you receive, or are eligible to receive, service-connected compensation you should be at 0% rather than 2.15%, a difference of $8,600 on a $400,000 loan. If a fee was paid before a later disability award, apply to the VA regional loan center for a refund.
• Price the 5% down tier before dismissing it. Putting $20,000 down drops the fee from 2.15% to 1.50% and cuts the financed balance by $22,900, lowering the payment by $144.74. Compare that against what the $20,000 would otherwise do: pay off a car loan charging 7% and the car wins, hold it in a savings account earning 4% and the loan wins.
• Shop three lenders inside a two-week window. Credit inquiries inside a 14-day window count as one, and VA pricing varies by at least a quarter point between lenders on the same day. A quarter point on $408,600 is about $66 a month, or $23,900 across 360 payments, before any origination fee differences.
• Test residual income, not just the ratio. A family of four needs $1,003 left over each month in the South and Midwest, $1,025 in the Northeast, and $1,117 in the West, and above 41% debt-to-income the target becomes 20% higher, or $1,204 in the South. Lenders estimate maintenance and utilities at 14 cents per square foot, so a 2,000-square-foot house subtracts $280 before you see a dollar of cushion.
• Order a home inspection even though VA orders an appraisal. The appraisal tests value and Minimum Property Requirements, which catches a failing roof or unsafe wiring, but it does not evaluate a 20-year-old HVAC or a slab foundation. $300 to $600 today is cheap insurance against a $6,000 surprise in month three.
• Keep credit quiet between pre-approval and closing. A $400-a-month car or furniture payment added in the first year is 5.7 percentage points of debt-to-income on $7,000 of monthly income, and it can break a 41% ceiling the file was approved against. Fund reserves, avoid new applications, and let the loan close first.

Common VA loan mistakes

• Assuming you are not eligible. Guard and Reserve members with six years of service and a single 90-day federal activation qualify, as do surviving spouses of those who died in the line of duty or from a service-connected disability. Many veterans never request the COE because a recruiter told them years ago that a short enlistment would not count.
• Comparing principal and interest while ignoring the funding fee. The calculator shows $2,582.63 against a conventional borrower's $2,528.27, but the real comparison includes the $8,600 fee, and if it is financed it also carries $10,970 of interest over 360 payments. Run both the monthly and the lifetime number before choosing a program.
• Treating $0 down as $0 cash. Closing costs run 1% to 3% of the loan and prepaids add tax and insurance reserves, so budget $6,000 to $15,000 on a $400,000 purchase. Ask the seller to pay customary closing costs plus up to 4% in concessions, which VA expressly permits, and use the closing cost calculator to size the amount.
• Skipping the residual income check. A file can clear 41% debt-to-income and still fail the VA test, because the agency wants to see $1,003 for a family of four in the South and more in the Northeast and West. Calculate it with your real payment and debts before applying, not after the underwriter asks for a letter of explanation.
• Letting new debt appear before closing. Opening a store card or financing a vehicle between pre-approval and funding adds a payment the file was never underwritten against, and it can push a 40% ratio past the lender's overlay. Close the loan first; the furniture can wait one month.
• Accepting the first quote and the first appraisal. Origination fees vary by up to 1% of the loan, which is $4,000 on $400,000, and you may reopen an appraisal you disagree with through the Notice of Value process when the facts support it. Take the same loan amount, same points, and same lock window from three lenders on one day.

Frequently asked questions

How much is the VA funding fee in 2026? First use with no down payment is 2.15%, which is $8,600 on a $400,000 loan; 5% or more down drops it to 1.50%, and 10% or more to 1.25%. Subsequent use with no down payment is 3.3%, or $13,200 on the same loan. An IRRRL refinance carries a flat 0.5%. Veterans receiving compensation for a service-connected disability pay no fee at all.

Do I need a down payment for a VA loan? No. The VA guarantees up to 25% of the loan, which lets lenders finance 100% of the purchase price with no cash down and no mortgage insurance. A down payment is optional, and its only practical function is lowering the funding fee tier from 2.15% to 1.50% at 5% down or 1.25% at 10% down.

What credit score do I need? The VA sets no minimum, so the rule is your lender's. Most VA lenders want 580 to 620, files at 640 and above price better and clear underwriting faster, and the agency underwrites the whole file rather than a single number. Documented payment history and residual income usually carry more weight than fifteen points of score.

Is there a VA loan limit in 2026? Not with full entitlement. The VA guarantees 25% of any loan amount when your entitlement is intact, so no county ceiling applies to your purchase. Partial entitlement does bind you to the county figure, which is $832,750 for a single-family home in most counties for 2026 and rises to $1,249,125 in designated high-cost areas.

Can I use my VA loan more than once? Yes. Entitlement is restored when a previous VA loan is paid off and the property is sold, or when another eligible buyer assumes the loan and substitutes their own entitlement in its place. There is no lifetime cap on the number of uses, although only one Certificate of Entitlement claim can be outstanding on a property at a time.

Do VA loans have mortgage insurance? Never. The VA caps its guaranty at 25% precisely so lenders do not require PMI, at any loan-to-value ratio and for the full term of the loan. On a $400,000 conventional purchase at 95% loan-to-value, private mortgage insurance commonly runs $167 to $400 a month; the VA equivalent is the one-time funding fee.

What is residual income? The money left over each month after gross income is reduced by estimated taxes, the full housing payment, every other monthly debt, and maintenance and utilities figured at 14 cents per square foot. For loans above $80,000 a family of four needs $1,003 in the South and Midwest, $1,025 in the Northeast, and $1,117 in the West, plus $80 for each member above five.

How do I get my Certificate of Eligibility? Most veterans download it in minutes from VA.gov, and lenders pull it directly through Web LGY during pre-approval. The COE shows whether entitlement is full or already attached to another property, which decides whether a county loan limit applies to your purchase and how much zero-down capacity you have. No COE, no closing.

Related calculators

• VA Eligibility Checker — confirm service requirements and your path to a Certificate of Eligibility
• Mortgage Calculator — full PITI with taxes, insurance, and an amortization schedule
• FHA Loan Calculator — the 3.5%-down alternative when entitlement is not available
• USDA Loan Calculator — the other zero-down program, for eligible areas and incomes
• Closing Cost Calculator — the $6,000 to $15,000 of cash a VA loan still requires
• Debt-to-Income Calculator — size the 41% ceiling before a lender tests it