Canadian Mortgage Calculator
Calculate your mortgage payment the Canadian way, with semi-annual compounding. Choose monthly, bi-weekly or weekly payments, including accelerated payments, and see the full amortization schedule.
Calculated in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Optional
Enter the rate quoted by your lender. We do not assume one.
The Interest Act allows yearly or half-yearly calculation.
Optional. Goes straight to principal.
Enter the amount and your interest rate to see the payment.
Nothing is calculated until you give a rate. Use “Load an example” to see how the page works.
Indicative estimate, not financial or tax advice.
How the calculation works
Canadian mortgages are quoted with a nominal annual rate, but the interest is not compounded monthly. Section 6 of the federal Interest Act requires interest on a mortgage to be calculated yearly or half-yearly, not in advance. Semi-annual compounding is the default here and you can switch to annual compounding. We could not verify what each lender applies, so check the compounding in your own contract.
To get the rate for each payment, the calculator converts the quoted rate: periodic rate = (1 + rate ÷ 2)^(2 ÷ payments per year) − 1. For monthly payments that gives a slightly lower monthly rate than the quoted rate divided by 12, which is why the same advertised rate costs a little less per month in Canada than under US-style monthly compounding.
Payment frequency changes both the installment and the payoff time. Bi-weekly means 26 payments a year, weekly means 52. Accelerated bi-weekly sets each payment to half the monthly payment, and accelerated weekly to a quarter. Because that adds up to a little more than twelve monthly payments a year, the extra goes to principal and the mortgage is repaid sooner.
Worked example
A $500,000 home with $100,000 down leaves a $400,000 mortgage. We use 5% and a 25-year amortization only to illustrate the arithmetic. It is not a current market rate.
- Monthly payment, semi-annual compounding
- $2,326.42
- Same rate with US-style monthly compounding
- $2,338.36
- Bi-weekly payment (26 a year)
- $1,072.54
- Accelerated bi-weekly payment
- $1,163.21
- Accelerated bi-weekly payoff time
- 21.5 years
- Total interest, monthly payments
- $297,925.98
- Total interest, accelerated bi-weekly
- $249,577.12
Your lender’s own quote can differ slightly, for example in how it rounds or whether it compounds semi-annually or monthly on a variable-rate product.
Short glossary
- Amortization period
- The total number of years it takes to pay the mortgage off completely.
- Term
- The length of time your interest rate and conditions are fixed before renewal. Not the same as amortization.
- Compounding
- How often interest is added to the balance and starts earning interest itself.
- Accelerated payment
- A bi-weekly or weekly payment set at half or a quarter of the monthly payment.
- Nominal rate
- The advertised annual rate before compounding is taken into account.
What this calculator does not do
- The compounding of your actual contract is not verified: the law allows yearly or half-yearly calculation, and semi-annual is the default here.
- Default insurance, prepayment penalties, provincial land transfer taxes and the federal stress test are not modeled.
- A fixed rate and constant payments for the whole amortization period are assumed.