With a car loan calculator you'll got a valuable tool. You can apply an auto loan calculator in three very useful ways;

• determine a car loans total costs
• determine your estimated monthly car loan payments
• find the right auto financing alternatives for you.

A loan calculator is available for free on many loan websites. It contains a few fields like the loan amount, interest rate, payback time etc. All you have to do is to fill in these few cells of information and in a second you'll have a report about how much the car loan will cost you in total as well as your monthly payments. In such a loan calculator you'll virtually have the full control of the operations as well as your input. You can type in and change the values in any of the fields to check different financing scenarios. And this is a great feature when comparing offers from different auto lenders. Most of the loan calculators are user friendly loan amortization software.

As I said before, many online car lender websites provide a vehicle loan calculator which you can use for free. Be aware though that this is a part of the promotion of their own loans and that the rates they give or input as default is not the same as a loan quote. Therefore you should use this calculator as a guidance only before you have received any auto loan offers. However what you can do, while at the same time being very useful is to simulate different financial situations by manipulating or changing the various values of the calculator's fields. Let's say that you want to pay your car loan off in as short a time as possible. Then you can see how much you have to pay per month and compare this with the maximum amount you can pay for different levels of interest rates. If you have very little money right now, you can choose the max pay back time and see how little you have to pay per month at different interest rate levels, and thus see if you are able to take a loan at all right now. Later when your financial situation has changed you can adjust the pay back time for the loan.

After you have been searching on the internet, applied for a few car loans and received a few offers from various vehicle lenders, you can use the loan calculator to compare the different offers. You can even get a special comparison vehicle loan calculator. You now know the quotes from the various loan companies and this will therefore be a reliable comparison and it will also show your pay back plan with the monthly amounts exactly. This assures you that

• you do not have to pay more than you are able to
• you choose the best loan
• you can negotiate with other lenders when you already are backed with a good loan offer - if that is what you want

When you choose a vehicle loan calculator make sure it make it allows you to put in all the necessary information to calculate the real cost of the loan which means that all kind of fees and provisions are covered. It should also include options for extra, skipped and late payments as well as lump sum payments. Graphs are nice to have but not necessary. An export facility of data to HTML or CSV is a very useful feature though. Although most loan calculators are free, some offer a paid upgrade or free trial versions for more advanced features.