Debt Payoff Planner & Tracker

Review by eFreeware

Debt Payoff Planner is a free finance app from OxbowSoft LLC, published on Google Play since January 2015 and updated as recently as February 2026. It takes the balances, interest rates and minimum payments you enter and turns them into a repayment schedule, then lets you log payments as you make them. The appeal is straightforward: it answers the question of when you will be debt free and in what order you should tackle each account.

What separates it from a plain spreadsheet is the strategy layer. You tell the app how much extra you can put toward debt each month, pick a method, and it recalculates the schedule around that budget. It has been installed more than 500,000 times and holds a 4.5 average from 4,735 ratings, which suggests it does the core job well enough that people keep it around.

Building a plan from three numbers per debt

Getting a payoff date out of the app does not require much. For each loan or card you enter the current balance, the annual percentage rate and the minimum payment, and the calculator works out how long the debt will take to clear. That is a deliberately small set of inputs, and the developer pitches that simplicity as the point: fewer fields to fill in, less reason to put the whole exercise off.

The part that changes the answer is the extra monthly budget you enter. Once that figure is in, the app determines an optimum payment plan and shows a payoff chart with two scenarios side by side: paying only the minimums, and paying more than the minimum every month. Seeing the gap between those two lines is the argument for finding extra money each month, and it is a more persuasive nudge than a lecture about interest.

The app also acts as a tracker rather than a one-off calculation. You record a payment by entering the amount and the date, and the app updates the projected debt-free date accordingly. That combination of plan plus running record is what keeps the estimate honest, since a schedule you never revise stops reflecting reality the moment you miss a month or pay extra.

Choosing how to attack the balances

Four approaches are available. The Debt Snowball clears the smallest balance first, the Debt Avalanche targets the highest interest rate first, the Debt Snowflake applies a one-time extra payment to a loan, and there is a custom option for people who want to set their own order. The developer recommends the snowball method, on the reasoning that finishing off individual accounts keeps you focused on the goal.

That recommendation is a judgment call rather than a mathematical one, and the app does not hide the alternatives. Avalanche usually saves more in interest because it attacks the most expensive debt first; snowball tends to produce quicker wins. Which matters more depends on whether you need the psychological momentum or the smaller total. Having both in the same app means you can run the numbers both ways before committing.

The snowflake option covers the irregular money that arrives during the year, such as a work bonus, a tax refund or an extra payday. Applying a lump sum to a specific debt and watching the schedule shorten is a reasonable use for cash you might otherwise absorb into general spending. The custom ordering, meanwhile, suits anyone who already has a firm view about which account goes first and does not want the app to decide.

Sorting debts into the right categories

Eight categories are available for organizing what you owe: credit cards, student loans, auto loans, medical debts, mortgages, personal loans to friends or family, taxes, and an other category for anything that does not fit. The split matters because these debts behave differently. A mortgage runs for decades at a comparatively low rate, while a credit card balance can carry a rate that makes it the obvious first target.

The categories also drive the visualization, so keeping them accurate makes the charts more useful. Someone with a student loan, a car payment and two cards gets a picture of how the four relate rather than a single undifferentiated total. For households with a mortgage plus revolving debt, that separation is the difference between a plan that makes sense and one that treats everything as equally urgent.

Beyond arithmetic, the app offers articles on clearing student loans, car loans and card balances sooner, along with material on balance transfers and debt consolidation strategies. These are reading rather than tools, but they cover the decisions that sit alongside a repayment plan, such as whether moving a balance to another card is worth the trouble.

Setting up and keeping your figures

The basic setup is entering your debts, adding an extra monthly payment figure if you have one, and choosing a strategy. You can create an account to store your payoff and payment information, which the developer says allows access across multiple devices and app stores, provides a secure backup, and makes your information available straight away on a new device. Recent work has gone into currency prediction, so the app is quicker to recognize the currency you are working in.

The app is free to download and carries ads, with in-app purchases also offered. It is rated for Everyone, which fits a tool about household budgeting. The account is presented as an option rather than a requirement, so it is worth deciding early whether you want your figures tied to a login.

Because the plan is only as good as the numbers behind it, the tracking habit is what holds everything together. Updating the app when a payment goes out, or when a rate changes, keeps the projected debt-free date realistic. A schedule that nobody maintains drifts away from the truth within a couple of months.

Who gets the most from this planner

This suits someone carrying several debts at once who wants a defined order and a date to aim at. If you have been paying minimums across a handful of accounts without a sense of whether it is working, the two-scenario chart is the clearest reason to install it. The small input set also helps anyone who has avoided budgeting tools because they look like work.

It fits people who respond to visible progress. The snowball approach the developer favors is built on that idea, and the payment tracking exists to show movement over time. If seeing a balance fall matters more to you than squeezing out the last dollar of interest, the app is arranged around your instincts rather than against them.

The articles and the consolidation and balance-transfer material extend the usefulness to anyone weighing a bigger restructuring move. It is a planning and tracking tool rather than a lender or a credit monitor, so it works alongside whatever accounts you already hold. For a household working through a mix of card debt, a car loan and a mortgage, that is the right scope.

A workable plan for people with several debts

Debt Payoff Planner does one job and does it without demanding much from you: enter your balances, rates and minimums, state what extra you can afford, and get a schedule with a debt-free date attached. The four strategies, the eight categories and the payment log give it enough depth to stay useful past the first calculation, and the supporting articles answer the questions that come up once a plan is in place.

The trade-offs are the ones you would expect from a free app: ads are present and there are in-app purchases. The developer's preference for the snowball method is a recommendation, not a rule, and the avalanche and custom options are there if you would rather prioritize interest.

I would suggest it to anyone juggling multiple debts who wants a specific order of attack and a running record of progress. If you have a single loan and a clear payoff date already, the planning layer adds little. For the messier situation most people are in, it is a sensible place to start.

What's new in version 2.54

Improvements to currency prediction to make getting your payoff plan as simple as possible