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How to Find Your Student Loan Balance

Whether you have private or federal student loans, here’s how to find and access your loan balance and servicer information.

Kat Tretina Kat Tretina Edited by Jared Hughes Updated November 28, 2022

Our goal is to give you the tools and confidence you need to improve your finances. Although we receive compensation from our partner lenders, whom we will always identify, all opinions are our own. Credible Operations, Inc. NMLS # 1681276, is referred to here as "Credible."

With the typical graduate having up to 12 different federal and private student loans, it can be difficult to keep track of them all. But finding out exactly how much you owe is essential for managing — and paying off — your debt.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to find your student loan balance:

  • It’s important to know what you owe
  • Find out how much you owe in student loans
  • How to figure out if your loan is federal or private
  • How to find your federal student loan balance
  • Find out your loan score
  • How to find your private student loan balance
  • Managing your student loans

It’s important to know what you owe

It’s vital that you stay informed about your student loan situation even if you’re not yet accruing interest or repaying your balance. Knowing what fees and interest are added to your principal balance, as well as any restrictions or rules you need to abide by as a loan holder, allows you to make the most responsible decisions for your financial future.

Find out how much you owe in student loans

When you took out your student loans, you agreed to borrow a set amount and to repay it with interest. Your interest rate can cause your loan balance to grow over time, so you could end up owing thousands more than you originally borrowed.

To make things even more confusing, your loans can sometimes change hands. Some lenders will sell your loans or transfer them to other loan servicers, so who you originally had as a loan servicer may no longer be the right one. Your loan servicer is who you make payments to and go to for questions, so it’s important to find out who your current servicer is.

How to figure out if your loan is federal or private

Federal student loans originate and are distributed by the federal government. Private student loans are originated and distributed by other lenders, such as financial institutions, state agencies, and the schools themselves.

You can find out if your loan is federal or private in two ways:

  • Logging into StudentAid.gov. The federal student aid website contains your information on all federal loans, balances, and disbursements. Log in with your FSA ID and select “My Aid” under your name.
  • Promissory notes and billing statements. The top of your federal loan promissory notes and billing statements state the name of your federal loan program or private lender.
Tip: Logging into the Federal Student Aid website is the easiest and most common option for finding out whether your loans are federal or private.

How to find your federal student loan balance

Here are a couple of different ways to track down your balance if you have federal student loans.

1. From the Federal Student Aid website

The Federal Student Aid website is the official website for the U.S. Department of Education. This website contains all the relevant information about all your subsidized and unsubsidized federal student loans. From reviewing or correcting your FAFSA form to learning about financial aid options, such as repayment and forgiveness, the Federal Student Aid website is a comprehensive resource you can rely on.

To find information about which company services your loan and how much you owe, you’ll need to log in on the Federal Student Aid website with your FSA ID. If you don’t have an FSA ID yet, you can easily create one on the website, or you can log in with your email address or phone number. Once you log in, you can access your loan balance and information.

2. Contact your school’s financial aid office

Another option is to contact your school’s financial aid office. The staff there can look up your past loan information, including what you originally borrowed, and who the loan servicer was. With that information, you can contact the servicer to get your current loan balance.

Find out your loan score

If you’re wondering how competitive your loan is, the loan score tool below can help. Just enter your APR, credit score, monthly payment, and remaining balance (estimates are fine) to see how your loan stacks up.

Loading widget - loan-score-tool

How to find your private student loan balance

Because StudentAid.gov is only for federal loans, your private student loans won’t show up on your dashboard. If you refinanced any federal loans, those won’t show up either because once you refinance your student loans, they become private loans.

To find any private student loan balances (or check who your lender is):

  1. Get your credit report from each of the three credit reporting agencies — Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion — at AnnualCreditReport.com (you can do this once a year for free).
  2. Check your credit report to see a list all of your current obligations, including student loans. It will list how much you borrowed and who the loan servicer is.
  3. Contact the loan servicer to start making payments or start the student loan refinancing process.

Check Out: The Best Student Loan Refinancing Companies

Managing your student loans

Once you know how much you owe and who your loan servicers are, you can come up with a repayment plan that works for you.

Tip: If you want to pay off your debt as quickly as possible, check out these strategies that can help you pay off your student loans faster.

If you’re wondering how long it’ll take to pay off your student loans, enter your current loan information into the calculator below to find out. Use the slider to see how increasing your payments can change the payoff date.

Enter loan information

? Enter the remaining balance of your loans $
? Enter the average annual interest rate of your loans %
? Enter the amount of time left to repay your loan years

+ $0
Total Payment $
Total Interest $
Monthly Payment $

If you increase your payments by $ monthly on your $ loan at %, you will pay $ a month and pay off your loan by Jan 2021.


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Nick Dauk contributed to the reporting for this article.

About the author
Kat Tretina
Kat Tretina

Kat Tretina is a freelance writer who covers everything from student loans to personal loans to mortgages. Her work has appeared in publications like the Huffington Post, Money Magazine, MarketWatch, Business Insider, and more.

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