Free Debt-to-Income (DTI) Ratio Calculator
Your debt-to-income ratio is the number lenders look at first — before your credit score tells them how you handle debt, your DTI tells them whether you can afford any more of it. Enter your income and monthly payments below to see your front-end and back-end DTI instantly, along with what lenders make of those numbers. Everything runs right here in your browser: no signup required, and nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Monthly debt payments — use the minimum required payment on each, not what you actually pay.
Credit cards: if you don't know the exact minimums, 2–3% of your combined balances is a reasonable estimate. Other debt: personal loans, child support, alimony, and any other court-ordered or contractual monthly obligation. Don't include utilities, groceries, phone bills, or insurance — those aren't debt.
The fastest way to lower your DTI? Pay off a debt.
Every debt you retire removes its entire minimum payment from your ratio. A free Undebt.it account builds a payoff plan around your real numbers, shows your debt-free date, and watches your DTI drop with every payment.
Build my free payoff planTakes about a minute. No credit card needed.
What is a debt-to-income ratio?
Your debt-to-income ratio (DTI) is the percentage of your gross monthly income that goes to required debt payments. If you earn $5,000 a month before taxes and your rent plus loan minimums total $1,800, your DTI is 36%. Lenders use it to answer one question: after everything you already owe, is there room in your income for the payment you're asking for?
Front-end vs. back-end DTI
The front-end ratio counts only housing — rent or your full mortgage payment with taxes and insurance. The back-end ratio adds every other required debt payment on top: credit card minimums, auto loans, student loans, personal loans, and court-ordered obligations like child support. When a lender or an article says "DTI" without qualifying it, they almost always mean the back-end number, which is why it's the headline result above.
What lenders look for
The traditional mortgage guideline is the 28/36 rule: front-end at or below 28% and back-end at or below 36%. In practice, 43% is the meaningful ceiling — it's the general limit for a qualified mortgage, though lenders can and do approve higher DTIs with compensating factors like strong credit or cash reserves. Above 50%, approvals of any kind get rare and expensive, and more importantly, day-to-day money gets tight: more than half your paycheck is spoken for before you buy a single grocery.
How to lower your DTI
There are only two levers: raise income or shrink required payments. The second one is more within reach than most people think, because your DTI counts minimum payments — so paying a debt off entirely removes its whole minimum from the math, even if the balance was small. That's one of the quiet advantages of the debt snowball method: by clearing smallest balances first, it eliminates minimum payments (and lowers your DTI) faster than any other payoff order. If a mortgage application is in your future, knocking out a couple of small debts first can move your ratio more than months of extra saving.