Student Loan Refinancing Comparison

By Sanjesh G. Reddy, StudentLoanInfoZone Editor & Founder

I re-checked every lender on this page against its own website on August 9, 2026, the way this table gets maintained whenever the ranges drift. It was not a tidy morning. Citizens' refinance page had turned into a 404. Laurel Road's refinancing address now lands on KeyBank's site, with the Laurel Road name nowhere on the page. And the published floors ran from 3.95% at Earnest to 6.99% at College Ave, a three-point spread before anyone has pulled your credit. That spread is the argument for this whole page. With student loan debt above $1.8 trillion across federal and private balances (Federal Reserve G.19, August 2026), a percentage point one way or the other is real money, and the only rate that matters is the one a lender puts in front of you after a soft credit check. This guide compares the five lenders I verified on their own rate pages that day, plus College Ave, and walks through how to shop them without denting your credit. For the full decision framework, start with our refinancing guide.

Why Comparing Refinancing Lenders Matters

Refinancing replaces your existing student loans with a single new private loan at whatever rate your credit profile earns. The stakes are easy to put in dollars. Take $50,000 at 7% on a ten-year term: the payment is about $581 a month and the lifetime interest is about $19,700. The same balance at 4.5% costs about $518 a month and $12,200 in interest. That is roughly $7,500 saved by the rate alone, and the two offers can come from the same afternoon of prequalification.

The catch is that no lender will tell you where you fall in its range until you ask. Fixed APRs in this comparison span from under 4% to nearly 14% depending on the lender and the borrower, and the same person can get offers a full point apart from two companies on the same day. Prequalification runs on a soft credit pull, so finding out where you fall costs nothing except an afternoon.

Here is the pattern I keep seeing in the published numbers: the company with the lowest advertised floor is often not the company that extends the lowest offer to any given profile. The floor is a marketing number, reserved for top-tier credit, high income, a short term, and sometimes a stack of discounts. On verification day, SoFi's 3.99% floor already included two separate discounts, autopay plus a 0.125% member reduction.

The federal trade-off comes first, though. Refinancing federal loans into a private note permanently ends your access to income-driven repayment, Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and federal deferment and forbearance. The Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) took effect in July 2026 as the income-driven option for new federal borrowing, and a refinanced loan can never use it. If any forgiveness path could plausibly apply to you, run the numbers on keeping federal status before you chase a lower rate. Our refinance vs. keep federal calculator exists for exactly this question.

Lender Comparison — Verified August 2026

The table below compares six national refinancing lenders on published APR ranges, minimum loan amounts, and the feature that distinguishes each one. I read every figure off the named lender's own website on August 9, 2026.

Every figure read off the named lender's own website on August 9, 2026. The discount basis differs by lender: SoFi's floor bakes in two discounts, Earnest's and KeyBank's ranges include a 0.25% autopay reduction, and Splash says its lowest rate "may include" autopay. Ranges move weekly, so treat this as a snapshot and prequalify for your own number. Citizens appeared in earlier versions of this table; on verification day its refinance page returned a 404 and its student-loans hub an access-denied error, so it is out until its current offering can be confirmed.

Fixed vs. Variable Rates Explained

A fixed rate stays put for the life of the loan. Your payment in year nine is your payment in month one, which makes budgeting simple and protects you if rates climb. Fixed is the safer choice for anyone planning to take ten years or more to repay, and for anyone whose budget cannot absorb a surprise.

A variable rate is tied to a benchmark index, such as the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR), plus a fixed margin the lender sets. When the index moves, your rate and payment move with it, monthly or quarterly depending on the loan terms. Variable makes sense in a narrow case: you plan to pay the loan off inside 3 to 5 years, you have a cushion, and you are comfortable betting that rates hold or fall while you do it.

The August 2026 numbers argue against that bet unless you are squarely in the narrow case above. At every lender in the table that publishes both ranges, the variable floor sat above the fixed floor: Earnest posted 3.95% fixed against 5.88% variable, and SoFi 3.99% against 5.74%. When variable pricing starts higher and can still rise, you are paying more today for risk you carry yourself. Earnest does not even offer variable loans in eight states (Alaska, Illinois, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas). Ask yourself one question before choosing variable: if the payment rose $50 to $100 a month, would it strain you? If yes, take the fixed rate. For more on how lenders set these prices, see our interest rate guide.

Understanding What Determines Your Rate

The wide ranges in the table exist because every lender prices by risk. Where you land inside a band comes down to a handful of inputs you can partly control.

Credit History

Your credit score is the biggest single input. Not one of the five rate pages I could open published a minimum score, which tells you something in itself: the cutoffs move, and the marketing pages would rather you prequalify than self-reject. What holds across lenders is the shape of the pricing. Strong scores with clean payment histories get quoted near the floor of the published range, and each tier down from there pays more. If your report has recent late payments or heavy card balances, the quote lands in the upper half of the band or the application is declined outright.

Debt-to-Income Ratio

Lenders weigh your DTI, the share of gross monthly income that goes toward debt payments, and a lower number reads as headroom. Paying down a credit card before you apply moves the number directly and can change the quote you receive.

Income and Employment

Underwriters want stable, verifiable income that covers the new payment with room to spare. Salaried applicants with a couple of years in their field have the easiest path. If you are self-employed or your income is irregular, expect to hand over two years of tax returns and answer more questions, and build that into your timeline.

Cosigner

A creditworthy cosigner lets you borrow closer to their risk tier than yours, which can move the offered rate by a point or more for a recent graduate with a thin file. The commitment is real for the cosigner, though: the loan sits on their credit report, and getting them off it later depends entirely on the lender's release policy. Read the next section before you ask anyone to sign.

Loan Amount and Term

Shorter terms carry lower rates because the lender's money comes back sooner. The term choice can swamp the rate choice, and it is easy to miss when you are shopping on the headline number. Refinancing $50,000 at 4.5% over ten years costs about $12,200 in interest. The same balance at 4.0% stretched over fifteen years costs about $16,600. The lower rate loses by roughly $4,400 because the balance sits out there five extra years accruing interest. Pick the shortest term you can pay comfortably, then let the rate follow.

Lender Profiles and Editorial Analysis

Rates aside, the six lenders run different models. What follows comes from what each lender's own site documents.

What SoFi's Membership Buys

SoFi prices aggressively and wraps the loan in a membership program: career services, financial planning sessions, and an ecosystem of banking and investing products. The floor rate assumes you join in, since it includes a 0.125% member discount on top of autopay. If you would use the ecosystem anyway, the package has real value. If you only want the loan, compare SoFi's actual quote against the others and ignore the perks.

Earnest — the lowest posted floor

Earnest published the lowest fixed floor of the six on verification day, 3.95% APR with autopay. It also documents a skip-a-payment option: one one-month forbearance in any 12-month stretch, available once you have made six consecutive on-time payments. That is a modest but genuine cushion for a private loan. Two cautions. Earnest publishes no cap on its rate page, so the floor tells you nothing about your own quote, and its variable product is unavailable in eight states.

KeyBank — what happened to Laurel Road

Laurel Road built its name refinancing for healthcare professionals, and both earlier versions of this page recommended it for doctors and nurses. That brand is now gone from the product: laurelroad.com's refinancing page forwards to KeyBank's site, and the Laurel Road name does not appear on it. What KeyBank posts instead is the most transparent rate sheet of the six, a full table of fixed and variable APRs for each term from 5 to 20 years, currently 4.74% to 9.75% fixed with autopay. If you value seeing the whole price list before you apply, this is the one lender that shows it.

Splash Financial Runs a Marketplace

Splash is not a single lender. One application goes out to its partner lenders, and quotes come back from companies you might not have checked on your own. Its published range, 3.99% to 10.24% fixed, spans those partners. Splash prints the state-by-state fine print where you can find it: minimum loan amounts of $3,001 in Georgia, $5,000 in New Mexico and Ohio, $6,000 in Massachusetts. A marketplace quote costs the same soft pull as a single-lender quote and covers more ground, which makes Splash an efficient second stop.

College Ave — verify before you rely on it

College Ave is a major in-school lender whose refinancing arm now takes some finding. The old refinance URL forwards to a calculator page, the product page would not load past a security check when I tried it, and the topline range in the site's own menu, 6.99% to 13.99% APR, starts three points above Earnest's floor. A College Ave offer can still win for a given profile. Get its current product in front of you before you compare it to anything else.

ELFI Dates Its Own Floors

Education Loan Finance posts floors of 4.29% fixed and 4.74% variable, and unusually, prints the date those rates were set (May 28, 2026) right on the page. The minimum loan is $10,000, the highest of the three in this table that publish one, so smaller balances go elsewhere. One structural note: ELFI handles cosigner changes by refinancing the loan again rather than through a release program, so a cosigner stays on until the borrower can qualify alone on a fresh application.

Rate Shopping and Applying for the Best Rate

Checking rates with several lenders does not damage your credit, provided you run the process in the right order.

Step 1: Prequalify with at least 3 to 5 lenders. Each lender's prequalification tool takes a few minutes and asks for basics: income, loan balance, employment. The rate check at this stage is a soft pull, which never appears on your report. Cast a wide net here; a third or fourth quote costs nothing more than the first.

Step 2: Compare APR to APR. The APR folds any fees into the price, so it is the honest basis for comparison. Splash's disclosure spells out that there is no penalty for early payoff, and the fee section of each offer deserves the same close read. If a lender wants an upfront fee, walk.

Step 3: Submit formal applications inside a 14-day window. Formal applications trigger hard inquiries, but credit-scoring models bundle student loan inquiries made inside a short shopping window into one event. Fourteen days is the number that works everywhere: VantageScore and the FICO models lenders pull all honor it, and newer FICO versions stretch the window to 45 days. FICO's own materials put the cost of one added inquiry at under five points for most people. Apply to your top 2 or 3 inside two weeks and your report takes a single, small hit.

Step 4: Read the final offers side by side. Line up APR, monthly payment, total interest over the term, and the protections covered in the next section. A quarter point sounds like nothing; on $40,000 over ten years it is about $600 in interest. Our payoff calculator will give you the total-cost picture for each offer in a minute or two.

Step 5: Accept, then keep paying the old servicer. Once you sign, the new lender pays off your existing loans directly, and the handoff runs 2 to 4 weeks. Do not stop paying the old servicer until you have written confirmation the balance is zero. A missed payment during the transition is a real credit wound, and it happens to people who assumed the payoff was instant.

What to Look for Beyond the Rate

Two offers with the same APR are not the same loan. Before signing, check how each lender handles the years when something goes wrong.

Cosigner release. If a cosigner helps you qualify, find out before signing how they ever get off the loan. Policies are thin on the marketing pages: no release program appeared on any rate page I read, and ELFI documents cosigner changes only by refinancing the loan again in the borrower's name alone. The gap matters because the loan sits on your cosigner's credit report the entire time and counts against what they can borrow. Get the release terms in writing before anyone signs. For the broader cosigner decision, see our private loan guide.

Hardship options. A refinanced loan has no federal safety net, so the lender's own forbearance policy is the only cushion you get. Earnest documents a skip-a-payment option after six on-time months. What the others will do if you lose your job lives in the fine print, and it differs by lender and by situation. The answer belongs in your comparison next to the rate, because federal deferment and forbearance will no longer apply to you.

Death and disability discharge. Federal loans discharge automatically if the borrower dies or becomes permanently disabled. Private policies vary, and the difference lands on your family or your cosigner. Ask each finalist lender what happens to the balance in both cases and get the answer in writing.

Autopay and relationship discounts. Autopay knocks 0.25% off at the lenders here that name a figure, and it is free money; enroll the day the loan funds. The stacking varies: SoFi adds a 0.125% member discount on top of autopay. When you compare quotes, check which discounts each one already assumes, or you will compare a discounted floor against an undiscounted offer.

Term flexibility and prepayment. Terms come in fixed steps; KeyBank's published table prices 5, 7, 10, 15, and 20 years. The spread across terms dwarfs the spread across rates: $50,000 at 5% costs about $6,600 in interest over five years and about $29,200 over twenty. Whatever term you pick, confirm there is no prepayment penalty, then send extra principal when you can. If a lender charges for early payoff, it does not belong on your shortlist. For repayment strategy past the signing, see pay off student loans fast.

One more question worth asking each finalist: whether it will match a documented competing offer. A written quote from a rival is real leverage, and it costs one email to find out whether a given lender will honor it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I compare student loan refinancing offers?

Start by prequalifying with at least 3 to 5 lenders using soft credit checks, which take a few minutes each and do not affect your credit score. Compare the APR rather than the bare interest rate, the available loan terms, borrower protections such as hardship forbearance and cosigner release, and any fees. Then submit formal applications to your top 2 or 3 choices within a 14-day window so the hard inquiries count as one. Choose the offer with the best combination of rate, terms, and protections for your situation.

Does prequalifying for refinancing affect my credit?

No. Prequalification uses a soft credit inquiry, which does not appear on your credit report and has no impact on your credit score. You can prequalify with as many lenders as you want without any negative effect. A hard credit pull only occurs when you submit a formal loan application, and even then, multiple student loan applications within a 14-day window are treated as a single inquiry by FICO and VantageScore models.

Should I choose a fixed or variable rate?

Choose fixed if you want payment predictability, plan to take more than 5 years to repay, or are concerned about rising rates. Choose variable if you plan to pay off the loan within 3 to 5 years and can absorb a payment increase, since variable rates adjust with market conditions. In August 2026, published variable floors sat above the best fixed floors at every lender in this comparison that broke the two out, which weakens the usual case for taking variable-rate risk.

Which lender has the lowest refinancing rates?

On August 9, 2026, the lowest published fixed floor among the lenders in this comparison was Earnest's 3.95% APR, with SoFi and Splash at 3.99% and ELFI at 4.29%. Floor rates go to borrowers with excellent credit, high stable incomes, and short terms, and published floors change frequently. The lender with the lowest advertised floor is often not the one that offers you the lowest rate, so prequalify with at least three lenders and compare the offers themselves.

Can I refinance student loans if I have bad credit?

Refinancing approval leans on your credit history, income, and existing debt load, and not one of the rate pages I could open published a minimum credit score. If your credit is thin or bruised, you can often still qualify by applying with a creditworthy cosigner. The alternative is to spend six months paying every bill on time and reducing card balances before applying, which raises both your approval odds and the rate tier you land in. See our default recovery guide for rebuilding credit after missed payments.

How long does student loan refinancing take?

Prequalification takes a few minutes per lender and uses a soft credit pull. Once you submit a formal application, approval can come back within a few business days. Plan on 2 to 4 weeks from application to your old loans being paid off, depending on how quickly your previous servicer processes the payoff request. Keep making payments to the old servicer until you have written confirmation the balance is settled.

Will I lose federal loan benefits if I refinance?

Yes. Refinancing federal student loans with a private lender permanently converts them to private loans. You lose access to income-driven repayment plans, including the Repayment Assistance Plan that took effect in July 2026, as well as Public Service Loan Forgiveness, federal deferment and forbearance, and any future federal relief. Only refinance federal loans if you are confident you will not need those protections and the interest savings justify the trade.

Can I refinance Parent PLUS loans?

Some refinancing lenders accept Parent PLUS loans. Confirm two things with each lender before applying: whether it takes Parent PLUS loans at all, and whether the loan can be refinanced into the student's name instead of the parent's. Policies on the student-takeover question in particular vary by lender and are not always spelled out on the marketing page. Refinancing a Parent PLUS loan also gives up its federal repayment protections permanently. For the federal-side options, see our Parent PLUS loan guide.

Prequalification results are snapshots of one moment in one credit file. Your exact rate offers may differ based on timing, credit mix, and employment verification. Editorial and risk notice →

For guidance on comparing lender offers and understanding loan terms, see the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). For federal loan alternatives to private refinancing, visit Federal Student Aid — Repayment; for current federal rates, see Federal Student Aid — Interest Rates. For consumer credit conditions, see the Federal Reserve G.19 Consumer Credit release, and for the Treasury auction data that sets federal student loan rates, TreasuryDirect.

Lender rates re-verified and page reviewed: August 9, 2026