Personal Loan Online: See the Real Cost Before You Apply

A personal loan is unsecured: nothing is pledged, so the lender prices its risk into the rate and decides mainly on your income and your credit report. You receive a lump sum, minus any fee, and repay it in equal monthly instalments over a fixed term, usually one to five years. Most personal loans in India are fixed-rate, so the EMI stays the same for the life of the loan.

The EMI is computed on a reducing balance: each month, interest is charged only on what you still owe, and the rest of the EMI repays principal. The formula is EMI = P × i × (1 + i)^n ÷ ((1 + i)^n − 1), where P is the amount borrowed, i is the annual rate divided by 12 and then by 100, and n is the number of months. Take ₹3 lakh over 36 months at an illustrative 12 percent. Here i is 0.01 and the EMI is ₹9,964. Over three years you repay ₹3,58,715, of which ₹58,715 is interest: 19.6 percent of what you borrowed.

Every EMI below uses one illustrative rate, 12 percent a year, so the only things that change across the table are the amount and the tenure. Your offer will carry its own rate; put it into the formula above, or scale the table: EMIs are proportional to the amount, so a ₹7 lakh loan's EMI is seven times the ₹1 lakh row at the same rate and tenure.

Put three illustrative rates side by side on the same ₹5 lakh over 48 months: a 9.99 percent floor, 13 percent for a typical salaried profile, and 16 percent for a thinner credit file or a smaller employer. Then add what most loans deduct before the money reaches you. A 2 percent processing fee is ₹10,000, GST at 18 percent adds ₹1,800, and ₹4,88,200 lands in your account while every EMI is computed on ₹5 lakh.

The effective rate on cash received answers the question that matters: what are you paying on the money you actually got? It is the rate at which the 48 EMIs are worth exactly ₹4,88,200 today. Solve it by bisection: guess a rate, check whether the EMIs discounted at it are worth more or less than the cash, halve the gap, repeat. A spreadsheet's RATE function, times 12, does the same.

The usual criteria, as typical ranges that vary by lender: age from about 21 to about 60 for salaried applicants; a minimum monthly income that the lender sets, often differently by city and employer; a minimum time in the current job and in total work; an employer the lender can verify; and a credit report with no current overdue account. Self-employed applicants are usually assessed on filed income tax returns and years in business instead of a payslip.

Here is FOIR on one salary: ₹50,000 take-home, an existing ₹8,000 EMI (16 percent of income already committed), and an illustrative 50 percent cap. The maximum loan is the amount whose EMI equals the room left: P = EMI × ((1 + i)^n − 1) ÷ (i × (1 + i)^n).

What lenders ask for is broadly the same everywhere; what varies is how much is collected digitally. Most online applications complete KYC with PAN and an Aadhaar-based check, by OTP or a video call, fetch or ask you to upload bank statements, and verify employment against the salary credits in them.

Applications rarely stall because a document is missing. They stall on mismatches: a name spelt one way on PAN and another on Aadhaar, an application address that is not the one on KYC, salary credits that do not match the payslip, an employer's name that reads differently in the bank narration. Checking those before you apply takes ten minutes and avoids a second round of verification.

Interest is the largest cost and the one everyone compares. The others are smaller, and they are where two offers at the same rate actually differ. The processing fee is a percentage of the loan, usually deducted from the disbursal, with 18 percent GST on top. Credit insurance is often offered at disbursal as a single premium, and sometimes added to the loan so that you pay interest on it too; it can make sense if nobody else could repay the loan, it is usually optional, and you can ask for the loan without it. A failed EMI debit brings a bounce charge plus GST and a penal charge on the overdue amount, and once the EMI is overdue it is reported to the credit bureaus.

On prepayment, RBI's Pre-payment Charges on Loans Directions, 2025 (https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=12878) bar lenders from levying pre-payment charges on floating-rate loans to individuals for purposes other than business, for loans sanctioned or renewed on or after January 1, 2026. Most personal loans are fixed-rate, where that bar does not apply and the lender's policy sets the charge; the same Directions say a charge on a term loan must be based on the amount being prepaid, and must be disclosed in the sanction letter, the loan agreement and the KFS.

Instant personal loan offers and online applications change the paperwork, not the order in which a careful borrower does things. The decision can come quickly, especially on a pre-approved offer from a lender that already sees your salary. The money follows verification, and that depends on your documents matching each other.

Comparing offers correctly means comparing the rate on the cash you receive. Offer A is 12.5 percent with a 3 percent fee; offer B is 13.5 percent with a 0.5 percent fee. Both are on ₹5 lakh over 48 months.

Three things on this page are hard to do by hand: knowing what your credit report says before a lender reads it, pricing offers on the cash you would receive, and knowing whether a loan you already hold costs more than it should. Unyfy's loan eligibility check pulls your Equifax credit report as a soft enquiry, which does not affect your score, and shows you the score and the accounts behind it, including any overdue, settled or written-off account, before any application goes to a lender. It then compares the offers you are eligible for from 15+ banks and NBFCs, so you apply to one lender rather than several, and only that lender runs a hard enquiry.

If you already have a loan, the app flags it when it is priced above what you would be offered today, and says whether switching is worth it after the new loan's processing fee. Where switching does not pay, it says so, because a fee paid to save nothing is still a loss.

Unyfy is not a lender: the lender decides the rate, the amount and whether to approve, and Unyfy earns a commission from lenders on loans taken through it. The diagnosis is free and is not gated behind a recommendation. To start, check your eligibility with the form on this page. Install Unyfy on Android, or use the web app at app.unyfy.co.in on an iPhone.