The VA loan is the most valuable mortgage benefit in American lending, and it rests on two promises no other loan makes at the same time: you can buy with zero down payment, and you will never pay monthly mortgage insurance. Not PMI, not MIP, not a substitute charge with a friendlier name — none. The benefit is earned through military service, guaranteed by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and issued by ordinary banks, credit unions, and mortgage companies. In exchange for those two promises, the program charges a single one-time price: the VA funding fee. This calculator exists so you can see that fee, financed into your balance, in plain dollars — because the funding fee is the entire cost of the zero-down, no-insurance structure, and it deserves the same scrutiny as the interest rate.

Who qualifies, in plain English.

Eligibility starts with service. Veterans, active-duty service members, members of the National Guard and Reserves, and certain surviving spouses can all qualify, with length-of-service rules that vary by era and type of duty. Your lender proves your eligibility with a Certificate of Eligibility, usually pulled electronically in minutes from VA records. The certificate does not approve your loan — your lender still checks your credit, income, and debts like any other mortgage — but VA underwriting is famously more forgiving about credit history than conventional lending, because the guarantee absorbs part of the lender's risk. The home must be your primary residence, it must pass a VA appraisal that checks value and a set of minimum property requirements covering safety and soundness, and while VA itself sets no maximum loan amount for a borrower with full entitlement, your lender's own limits and your income still decide what you can actually borrow.

The funding fee, rate by rate.

The funding fee is a percentage of the loan amount, paid once, at closing. It exists to keep the program running for future veterans without taxpayer appropriations, and it is the reason VA can offer zero down with no monthly insurance. The standard rates for purchase loans in the current fee structure work like this. For a first use of the benefit: with less than 5 percent down, the fee is 2.15 percent of the loan. With 5 percent down or more, it drops to 1.50 percent. With 10 percent down or more, it drops again to 1.25 percent. For a subsequent use — your second or later VA purchase loan — the zero-down rate is higher: 3.30 percent with less than 5 percent down. In the standard table, the subsequent-use rate steps down to 2.15 percent in the 5 percent down band and 1.25 percent at 10 percent down or more, matching the first-use rate at the top band. These rates are set in law and VA policy and they do change from time to time, so treat the numbers here as the standard current structure and have your lender confirm the exact rate on your own loan estimate — the funding fee field in this calculator is editable for exactly that reason. Other loan types carry different fees: a VA streamline refinance (an IRRRL) carries a much lower fee of 0.50 percent, and cash-out refinances price closer to purchase loans.

Financed or in cash — the one real decision.

Almost every VA borrower finances the funding fee, rolling it into the loan balance instead of paying it at the closing table. It is a rational default for a buyer whose entire strategy is preserving cash, but it is not free. On this page's standard example — a $400,000 home bought with zero down at 6.25 percent — the 2.15 percent fee is $8,600. Financed, it raises the principal-and-interest payment from $2,462.87 to $2,515.82, a difference of $52.95 a month. Hold that loan for the full 30 years and the fee will have cost you about $19,063 in payments, of which roughly $10,463 is interest charged on the fee itself. Pay the fee in cash at closing and you avoid that interest entirely — the cheaper choice over a long hold, if you have $8,600 that is not your emergency fund or your moving money. Caught in between? Remember the seller can also pay it: VA rules let the seller cover the funding fee as part of negotiated concessions, which makes the fee a legitimate bargaining chip in your offer rather than a fixed cost carved in stone.

A worked example, dollar by dollar.

Here is the full math for the standard case, using this calculator's defaults. Home price $400,000. Down payment: zero. Base loan amount: $400,000. Funding fee at 2.15 percent for a first use: $8,600, financed, for a total starting balance of $408,600. At 6.25 percent over 30 years, the amortization formula gives a principal-and-interest payment of $2,515.82 a month. There is no monthly mortgage insurance line — none this month, none any month, for the life of the loan. Add escrow: with annual property taxes of $4,800 ($400 a month) and homeowners insurance of $2,400 a year ($200 a month), the complete monthly payment is $3,115.82. Over the full 30 years, interest on this loan totals about $497,095. Ten years in, if you have made every payment, your balance stands at roughly $344,195 — meaning zero-down buying plus a decade of ordinary payments has still built about $55,800 of equity before any home-price appreciation, a result that surprises buyers who assume zero down means running in place.

The exemption most disabled veterans must not miss.

For a large group of VA borrowers, the funding fee is not 2.15 percent. It is zero. Veterans who receive VA compensation for a service-connected disability are exempt from the funding fee entirely, and the exemption also covers certain surviving spouses who receive Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, as well as service members awarded the Purple Heart in the circumstances VA rules describe. On the standard example in this article, the exemption deletes the entire $8,600 fee — the loan is simply $400,000, and the payment is $2,462.87 before taxes and insurance. If your disability rating decision arrives after you close, a refund path exists when the rating is retroactive to before closing, so ask your lender about it rather than assuming the money is gone. In this calculator, exempt borrowers should set the funding fee rate to 0 and watch how much of the payment was fee all along. If you are not sure whether you are exempt, that question — asked before closing, not after — is worth thousands of dollars.

What a down payment still buys you on a VA loan.

Zero down is the headline, but it is not always the smartest setting. Money down attacks the loan from three directions at once. It shrinks the balance you pay interest on. It cuts the funding fee rate itself: on a $400,000 purchase, moving from zero down to 5 percent down drops the first-use fee rate from 2.15 percent to 1.50 percent, and at 10 percent down the fee falls to 1.25 percent — on a $360,000 base loan, that is a $4,500 fee, a $364,500 total balance, and a payment of $2,244.29 at 6.25 percent. And it builds starting equity, which matters if you may need to sell or refinance within a few years, because a zero-down loan plus selling costs can leave a short-horizon seller underwater. The second example in this calculator shows the middle path: a $350,000 home with 5 percent down ($17,500) at 6 percent produces a $332,500 base loan, a $4,987.50 funding fee at the 1.50 percent rate, a $337,487.50 total balance, and a principal-and-interest payment of $2,023.41. Run your own numbers at zero, 5, and 10 percent down before you decide — the right answer is the one that leaves you with reserves after closing, not the one with the smallest possible payment.

Entitlement: the account behind the benefit.

Behind every VA loan sits entitlement — the amount of your loan the VA promises to guarantee, which is what makes a lender comfortable offering zero down. Think of it as an account rather than a one-time coupon. A purchase uses part of your entitlement; paying the loan off and selling the home generally restores it, which is why veterans can use the benefit again and again across a lifetime of moves. Things get more intricate when entitlement is still tied up in a home you keep: you may be able to buy again with remaining entitlement, sometimes with a down payment on the portion above what your remaining entitlement covers, and rules about loan limits based on county apply in those partial-entitlement cases even though a borrower with full entitlement faces no VA-imposed loan limit at all. A prior VA foreclosure also consumes entitlement until it is restored or repaid. None of this is math this calculator does — it is status your lender verifies against your Certificate of Eligibility — but it explains why two veterans with identical incomes can get different answers, and why a conversation about your specific entitlement belongs in the very first call with a VA lender, not at the closing table.

VA versus FHA versus conventional.

All three loans can put you in the same house; they charge for the privilege in completely different shapes. FHA asks for 3.5 percent down, charges a 1.75 percent upfront insurance premium, and then bills an annual premium monthly — 0.55 percent a year in the standard minimum-down case, which on a $337,750 loan is $154.80 a month, and for borrowers under 10 percent down it lasts the entire life of the loan. A VA borrower in the same house pays no down payment, pays a comparable one-time fee, and then pays nothing monthly, ever: against that FHA structure, the VA loan saves the full monthly premium every single month. Conventional loans flip the logic. With 20 percent down there is no insurance at all and no funding fee, making conventional the cheapest structure for a cash-rich, strong-credit buyer. Below 20 percent down, conventional PMI is priced by credit score — cheap for excellent credit, expensive for weaker credit — and cancels at 78 to 80 percent loan-to-value. So the practical ranking writes itself: if you are eligible for VA, it beats FHA for most buyers on total cost, and it beats conventional whenever your down payment is small or your credit is mid-range. Conventional only reclaims the crown when you bring both a large down payment and top-tier credit to the table. Interest rates follow the same story — VA rates are frequently the lowest of the three for comparable borrowers, because the government guarantee reduces lender risk, though the only rate that counts is the one on your own written loan estimate.

The third-use warning and the repeat-buyer math.

The one place VA pricing quietly punishes you is the subsequent-use, zero-down combination: 3.30 percent. On a $300,000 purchase at 6.75 percent — this calculator's third example — that is a $9,900 fee, a $309,900 balance, and a $2,010.01 principal-and-interest payment. A repeat buyer holding meaningful equity from a previous home should look hard at the 5 percent band, where the standard subsequent-use rate falls to 2.15 percent, or at paying the fee in cash, before defaulting to zero down out of habit. The zero-down habit made sense on a first purchase with thin savings; on a third home with a funded bank account, it can be the most expensive option on the menu. Run the repeat purchase both ways — fee financed at the higher rate versus cash deployed as down payment — and compare five-year costs, not just the monthly payment.

How to use this calculator well.

Set the home price, then enter the down payment you are genuinely weighing — zero is a legitimate answer, not a failure. Enter the interest rate from a real loan estimate, and set the funding fee rate to match your situation exactly: 2.15 percent for a first use with little down, 1.50 percent at 5 percent down, 1.25 percent at 10 percent down, 3.30 percent for a subsequent use at zero down, and 0 if you are exempt because of a service-connected disability rating. Adjust taxes and insurance to your area so the total payment includes escrow. Then read the results in this order: the funding fee in dollars, the total loan amount it creates, the principal-and-interest payment, and only then the all-in monthly total. Finally, hold the VA result up against the FHA calculator and the conventional mortgage calculator with the same price and rate. The VA benefit usually wins that comparison clearly — but seeing by how many dollars a month, and over how many years, is exactly the knowledge your service already paid for.

With the pre-filled defaults — Home Price $400,000, Down Payment $0, Interest Rate (APR) 6.25%, Loan Term 30 yrs, VA Funding Fee Rate 2.15%, Annual Property Tax $4,800, Annual Home Insurance $2,400 — the VA Loan Calculator returns Down Payment 0.00%, Base Loan Amount (before funding fee) $400,000.00, VA Funding Fee (financed) $8,600.00, Total Loan Amount (with fee financed) $408,600.00, Principal & Interest $2,515.82, Monthly Property Tax $400.00, Monthly Insurance $200.00, Total Monthly Payment $3,115.82, Total Interest Paid $497,095.37, Total Cost (P&I + Down) $905,695.37. Change any input and those results update instantly, so you can see exactly how each number you enter moves the answer.