Upfront premium
$6,755
Enter the price, the down payment and how long you keep the loan. The calculator prices the FHA insurance on that loan — the upfront premium, the annual rate your loan-to-value falls into, how many months it runs, and the total.
Assumptions this tool makes. The term is 30 years throughout: HUD's schedule for terms of 15 years or less carries different rates and a different duration column, and that table is not part of this page, so no term is offered rather than offering a choice that would be half counted. The upfront premium is 175 basis points of the base loan amount and is added to the balance, so the payment is computed on the larger figure and interest accrues on the premium as well; where a lender collects it in cash instead, the payment falls but the same money has left the buyer's pocket. Loan-to-value is the base loan over the price and is not reduced by the financed premium. The annual premium rate is chosen by loan-to-value and by whether the base loan exceeds the national conforming loan limit, which is why the higher pair of rates at 0.70% and 0.75% applies to loans this page can produce but cannot place: FHA also publishes its own maximum mortgage limits county by county, and a base loan above the conforming limit in one county may not be insurable at all in another, so treat the higher band as a rate table rather than as a case that will price. The annual premium is recalculated each year on the declining balance rather than fixed on the original amount, so the monthly figure falls over the life of the loan and the first-year figure shown is the largest one; the total is the sum of those monthly charges up to the point the premium stops. Costs counted are the premiums themselves. Interest is not included anywhere in the headline figure, so a larger loan that carries a financed premium does cost more than the premium alone, and this page does not add that back; principal is excluded because the balance is repaid from the sale. Property tax, homeowners insurance, HOA dues and closing costs are all absent, and so is the partial refund of the upfront premium that can arise on a refinance into a new FHA loan. Whether to take an FHA loan at all, whether to refinance out of one, and how the same loan would price on another program are different questions and none of them is answered here.
| Down payment | Loan-to-value | Annual rate | Annual premium runs for | Annual premium over the years you keep it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.5% down | 96.5% | 0.55% | 30y | $20,122 |
| 5% down | 95.0% | 0.50% | 30y | $18,008 |
| 10% down | 90.0% | 0.50% | 11y | $17,060 |
| 15% down | 85.0% | 0.50% | 11y | $16,112 |
| 20% down | 80.0% | 0.50% | 11y | $15,165 |
| Kept for | Annual premium paid |
|---|---|
| 5 years | $10,400 |
| 10 years | $20,122 |
| 15 years | $28,864 |
| 30 years | $43,781 |
An FHA loan carries two separate insurance charges, and they are collected in different shapes. The first is a single premium paid once, at 1.75% of the base loan amount, charged on every mortgage the program insures. The second is an annual premium, quoted as a rate and collected in monthly instalments, whose size depends on how much of the price is borrowed and on the size of the loan relative to a national limit. Both are federal insurance: the money goes to the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, not to the lender, and neither of them prices the borrower's credit score.
That is where FHA insurance parts company with the private insurance a conventional loan carries. Private mortgage insurance is priced by the insurer from the credit score, the down payment, the loan amount and the loan type, and it is the borrower's credit that decides where on that range the quote lands. The FHA annual rate is a published number in a table, the same for a borrower with a 580 score and one with an 800, and the table's rows are selected by loan-to-value and by loan size rather than by the person.
The calculator below takes the price, the down payment and the note rate, puts them through both charges, and reports what the insurance costs over the years the loan is kept. It answers a narrower question than a comparison page does: not whether FHA is the cheaper program, but what this program charges and for how long.
The upfront premium is 1.75% of the base loan amount, and the base loan amount is the price less the down payment. On a $400,000 purchase with 3.5% down the base loan is $386,000 and the premium is $6,755. At 20% down the base loan is $320,000 and the premium is $5,600. The charge is proportional to what is borrowed, so it falls as the down payment rises, but it never reaches zero — there is no down payment at which an FHA loan stops paying it, which is the cleanest way the program differs from the private insurance a conventional loan drops at 20% down.
In practice the premium is usually financed rather than paid in cash: it is added to the balance, so the loan that amortises is the base loan plus the premium. On the default figures that takes the balance from $386,000 to $392,755 and the payment is computed on the larger figure, which means interest accrues on the premium for as long as the loan is open. A lender may instead collect it at closing, in which case the monthly payment falls but the same money has left the buyer's account at the table.
The premium also does not come back when the loan ends early. Selling the property or refinancing into a conventional loan closes the FHA loan and stops the annual premium at that month, but the upfront premium has already been paid, and if it was financed it is repaid out of the sale proceeds along with the rest of the balance. Holding the loan for three years does not return two-thirds of it. The only path that recovers part of it is refinancing into a new FHA loan, and that refund is not modelled here.
The annual premium is a rate taken from HUD's published schedule for mortgage terms longer than 15 years. Two things select the row. The first is loan-to-value: the base loan divided by the price. The second is the size of the base loan relative to the national conforming loan limit, which is $832,750 for a one-unit property in most of the United States in 2026. Loans at or under that limit take the lower rate in each pair; loans over it take the higher one.
| Loan-to-value | Base loan within the conforming limit | Base loan above the conforming limit | How long the annual premium runs |
|---|---|---|---|
| At or below 90% | 0.50% | 0.70% | 11 years |
| Above 90%, up to 95% | 0.50% | 0.70% | The mortgage term |
| Above 95% | 0.55% | 0.75% | The mortgage term |
The three rate bands are narrow, and the top one is narrow on purpose. Where the base loan is within the conforming limit, the rate is 0.50% at or below 90% loan-to-value, 0.50% from there up to 95%, and 0.55% above 95%. Above the conforming limit the same three rows read 0.70%, 0.70% and 0.75%: the middle row repeats, so the higher pair is really two rates rather than three. Crossing from within the limit to above it adds 20 basis points to every row — four times the 5 basis points that separate the top band from the bottom one within a pair.
Because the rate is set by ratio and by loan size, the monthly charge is not a fixed number either. The premium is recalculated each year on the outstanding balance, so it falls as the loan is paid down even while the rate stays where it is. The first year is the most expensive one, and the monthly figure the calculator reports is that first-year charge: on the default loan, $176.92 a month.
The phrase most often attached to FHA insurance is that the annual premium lasts 11 years, and that is true of one band in the table and false of the other two. The Duration column gives 11 years to the rows at or below 90% loan-to-value, and the mortgage term to the rows above it. On a 30-year loan the term is 360 months, so a borrower whose loan-to-value is over 90% pays the annual premium for the entire life of the loan, and it stops only when the loan does.
The program's headline down payment of 3.5% puts a purchase at 96.5% loan-to-value and therefore in the top band: rate 0.55%, duration 360 months. Five per cent down lands at exactly 95%, which is inside the middle band at 0.50%, but the duration column does not change with the rate — 95% is still above the 90% line, so it is still 360 months. The duration and the rate move on different boundaries, and it is worth reading the two columns separately for that reason.
Ten per cent down is where the loan reaches exactly 90% loan-to-value and the duration falls to 132 months. Everything from there to 20% down sits at the 11-year figure, because loan-to-value is only falling further below the line. The table in the tool sets the five down payments side by side and shows the two columns moving independently: the rate steps down at 95% and the duration steps down at 90%, one band apart from each other.
This is also the reason FHA insurance does not come off when the balance reaches 80% of the price. That threshold belongs to private mortgage insurance, where the Homeowners Protection Act fixes automatic termination at 78% and a borrower's right to ask at 80%. FHA's annual premium is governed by its own schedule instead, and its duration is fixed when the loan is made — a borrower who reaches 80% equity in year nine on a 96.5% loan still pays the premium until month 360, because the duration for that band was never tied to the balance.
The two boundaries sit at different places, so the down payments between them do different amounts of work. Over a full 30-year term, the annual premium on the default loan — $400,000 at 3.5% down — totals $43,780.63. At 10% down it totals $18,619.11, because the same premium runs for 132 months instead of 360. That is a difference of $25,161.51, bought with $26,000 of additional down payment.
Past 10% down the return collapses. Going from 10% to 20% — another $40,000 of down payment, on the same $400,000 price — takes the annual premium over the term from $18,619.11 to $16,550.32, a difference of $2,068.79. The duration was already at its floor of 132 months, so the only thing the extra equity does is shrink the balance the rate is applied to, and the rate itself does not move at all below the 90% line.
Read the two steps together and the 90% line does most of the work: it is worth roughly twelve times what the next ten percentage points of down payment are worth, in premium alone. Inside the 90% to 96.5% corridor the position is worse than either end, since a borrower there pays the top rate without getting the shorter duration, and a buyer deciding whether to stretch to 10% down is choosing on that corridor.
Two things belong next to that comparison and are not in it. The $26,000 of extra down payment is not spent, it is equity in the property, and it also reduces the balance the interest is charged on — so the premium difference is not the whole story in either direction. And the borrower who keeps the loan for five years rather than 30 pays $10,399.56 of annual premium at 3.5% down, so a shorter holding period shrinks every figure above without changing which band the loan is in.
The default figures can be reproduced with the four steps in the method note, and doing that is the fastest way to see which input moves which answer. Take a $400,000 price with 3.5% down, a 7.40% note rate and ten years of ownership.
The down payment is $14,000, so the base loan is $386,000 and the loan-to-value is 96.5%. The upfront premium is 1.75% of $386,000, which is $6,755, and financing it takes the balance to $392,755. Loan-to-value of 96.5% is above 95%, so the annual rate is 0.55% and the duration is the full term: 360 months. The first year's premium is $386,000 at 0.55% a year, or $176.92 a month, and it declines from there as the balance falls.
Running the monthly charges for ten years and adding the upfront premium gives $26,876.63: $6,755 of upfront premium and $20,121.63 of annual premium. Running them to the end of the loan instead gives $50,535.63, and the annual part alone, with the upfront premium left out, is the $43,780.63 quoted in the section above. Changing the down payment to 10% and leaving everything else alone moves the rate to 0.50%, the duration to 132 months and the ten-year figure to $23,360.26.
The note rate changes none of the rules. The band and the duration are read from loan-to-value and from loan size, and no note rate appears in either, so a borrower comparing two lenders at 7.40% and 6.90% is quoted the same premium rate and the same number of months by both. What the note rate does move is the running total, because the annual premium is charged on the outstanding balance and a lower rate leaves that balance falling more slowly: on the default loan, dropping the note rate to 6.90% takes the ten-year insurance cost from $26,876.63 to $26,782.25. The rules are indifferent to the rate and the total is not, and that distinction is worth keeping when the figures are compared.
The FHA upfront premium is 1.75% of the base loan amount — the price less the down payment — and it is charged on every mortgage the program insures, at every down payment. On a $400,000 purchase with 3.5% down the base loan is $386,000 and the premium is $6,755; at 20% down it is $5,600. It is normally added to the balance rather than paid in cash, so the loan that amortises is the base loan plus the premium.
It depends on the loan-to-value, and the answer is in the Duration column of the same table that sets the rate. At or below 90% loan-to-value the premium runs for 11 years. Above 90% it runs for the mortgage term — 360 months on a 30-year loan. The program's minimum 3.5% down payment produces a 96.5% loan-to-value, so it falls in the second case and the annual premium is paid for the whole term unless the loan is closed early.
No. The 80% and 78% thresholds are rules for private mortgage insurance under the Homeowners Protection Act: automatic termination at 78% of the original value, and a borrower's right to request cancellation at 80%. FHA's annual premium is set by its own schedule, and its duration is decided by the loan-to-value at the time the loan is made rather than by the balance later. A loan that starts above 90% loan-to-value pays the premium until the term ends.
Because the two down payments fall on opposite sides of the 95% loan-to-value boundary. At 3.5% down the loan-to-value is 96.5%, which takes the top rate of 0.55%. At 5% down it is exactly 95%, which is inside the middle band at 0.50%. The five-basis-point step is the whole difference between the bands, and it applies to the rate only — the duration is 360 months in both cases, because both are above the 90% line.
The size of the base loan against the national conforming loan limit, which is $832,750 for a one-unit property in most of the United States in 2026. A base loan above that figure takes 0.70% at or below 90% loan-to-value and 0.75% above 95%, rather than the 0.50% and 0.55% charged below the limit. FHA also publishes maximum mortgage limits by county, which this page does not check, so a loan that lands in the higher band here may not be insurable in every area.
No. The rate is read from a published table and is selected by loan-to-value and by loan size, so two borrowers with the same loan and the same down payment pay the same annual premium whatever their credit scores. That is the structural difference from private mortgage insurance, whose range for 2022 runs from 0.58% to 1.86% a year and which insurers price from the credit score, the down payment, the loan amount and the loan type.
FHA Loan Costs Calculator lists each external figure it uses once, with the publisher that issues it and the date it was retrieved. The calculator takes these as its defaults, so any of them can be replaced with a number of your own; a figure that is not in the list is one this page did not take from anywhere.
| Figure | Value | Published by | Retrieved |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30-year fixed mortgage national average | 7.40% | Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS) | 2026-10-08 |
| FHA upfront mortgage insurance premium | 1.75% | HUD, Mortgagee Letter 2023-05, Appendix 1.0 — Mortgage Insurance Premiums | 2026-10-10 |
| National conforming loan limit, one-unit property, 2026 | $832,750 | Federal Housing Finance Agency, Conforming Loan Limit Values for 2026 | 2026-10-10 |
| FHA annual premium, loan at or below the conforming limit, LTV 90% or less | 0.50% | HUD, Mortgagee Letter 2023-05, Appendix 1.0 — Mortgage Insurance Premiums | 2026-10-10 |
| FHA annual premium, loan above the conforming limit, LTV 90% or less | 0.70% | HUD, Mortgagee Letter 2023-05, Appendix 1.0 — Mortgage Insurance Premiums | 2026-10-10 |
| FHA annual premium, loan at or below the conforming limit, LTV above 90% and at most 95% | 0.50% | HUD, Mortgagee Letter 2023-05, Appendix 1.0 — Mortgage Insurance Premiums | 2026-10-10 |
| FHA annual premium, loan at or below the conforming limit, LTV above 95% | 0.55% | HUD, Mortgagee Letter 2023-05, Appendix 1.0 — Mortgage Insurance Premiums | 2026-10-10 |
| FHA annual premium, loan above the conforming limit, LTV above 95% | 0.75% | HUD, Mortgagee Letter 2023-05, Appendix 1.0 — Mortgage Insurance Premiums | 2026-10-10 |
| Annual PMI premium, low end of the published range | 0.58% | Fannie Mae, What to Know About Private Mortgage Insurance | 2026-10-09 |
| Annual PMI premium, high end of the published range | 1.86% | Fannie Mae, What to Know About Private Mortgage Insurance | 2026-10-09 |
Values are the ones this page is built with, not a live feed. Where a figure is revised on a schedule, the retrieval date above is when it was read, and the next scheduled refresh is shown at the top of the page.
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Cluster us/mortgage · Unit us-mortgage-fha-loan-costs · Engine amortizing-loan / fha · Method: The base loan is the price less the down payment, and the upfront premium is 175 basis points of that base loan, charged on every mortgage and added to the balance, so the loan that amortises is the base loan plus the premium and the payment is the standard amortising payment on that larger balance over 30 years. Loan-to-value is the base loan divided by the price, before the financed premium is added. The annual premium rate comes from HUD's schedule for terms longer than 15 years and is selected by the loan-to-value and by whether the base loan exceeds the national conforming loan limit: at or below 90% loan-to-value the rate is 0.50% for a base loan within the limit and 0.70% above it, above 90% and up to 95% the rates are 0.50% and 0.70%, and above 95% they are 0.55% and 0.75%. The duration comes from the same table's Duration column: 11 years for the rows at or below 90% loan-to-value, and the mortgage term for the other two rows, which on a 30-year loan is 360 months. The annual premium is recalculated each year on the outstanding balance and charged monthly at one twelfth of that year's figure, so the running total is a sum over months rather than a level charge, and where the premium stops before the end of the term the sum stops with it. Insurance cost is the upfront premium plus the annual premiums charged up to the end of the comparison, which is the shorter of the term and the years entered; interest is not included, and principal is not either, because the balance is repaid when the property is sold and only the premium buys nothing that survives the sale.