Cambodia Loan Offer Comparison Calculator (2026)

About this tool

The Loan Offer Comparison Calculator puts two to four loan offers side by side on the same principal and the same term, so you can see what each one actually costs rather than what its headline rate says. For every offer you set the interest method — reducing balance or flat — the annual rate, an upfront fee, a financed fee and a recurring monthly fee, and the page returns the monthly payment, total interest, total fees, total repaid, cash needed at signing, total cash cost and an effective annual rate computed from the cash flows. It exists because the two methods are not comparable: a 6% flat offer can cost thousands of dollars more than an 8% reducing-balance offer on the same amount, and a low rate with a large upfront fee can lose to a higher rate with none. It is written for a borrower holding two or three written offers from banks, microfinance institutions or a dealer, and for the consumer-protection question of which one is cheaper in total. It does not recommend a lender, does not assess eligibility or affordability, does not model variable rates, insurance or late fees, and is not credit advice.

How it works

The page calls `computeLoan` in `web-static/lib/finance/loan-calculations.ts` once per offer, and the arithmetic differs by method. Reducing balance builds a month-by-month schedule in which each month charges interest on the opening balance and the fixed payment is the annuity formula M = P × r × (1+r)ⁿ ÷ ((1+r)ⁿ − 1). Flat interest is computed once as P × rate × years and divided evenly, so every month carries the same interest charge and the same principal charge even though the balance is falling. A financed fee is added to the principal before either schedule is built, an upfront fee is cash paid at signing and is not financed, and a monthly fee is added to each payment and totalled separately. The effective annual rate is solved with Newton-Raphson on the cash flows — the principal received minus the upfront fee at month zero, then each payment plus the monthly fee — and the page prints "N/A" rather than a number when the solver does not converge. The offer with the lowest total cash cost is labelled as such; the label is arithmetic on the numbers you entered, not a recommendation. All amounts are in the currency you select, which is a display setting and not a conversion.

Use cases

• A borrower holding a bank offer at 8% reducing and an MFI offer at 6% flat on the same 50,000 dollars
• A car buyer checking whether a 1,000 dollar financed fee is worse than a 500 dollar upfront fee
• A family comparing a 60-month and a 72-month offer from two lenders on the same principal
• A small business owner seeing how a 5 dollar monthly fee compounds over a five-year term
• An NGO or consumer-advice worker showing a client why the lowest advertised rate is not the cheapest loan
• A borrower testing whether paying a fee upfront to get a lower rate actually saves money
• An accountant documenting the effective annual rate of two offers for a client file

Frequently asked questions

• Which method does this tool compute — flat or reducing?

  Both, one per offer, because the point of the page is to compare them. Each offer has a Reducing and a Flat button and the method is stored with that offer, so you can put a reducing-balance quote beside a flat one and see the difference in total interest, total cash cost and effective annual rate. The other two lending tools on this site, the loan calculator and the home and auto loan calculator, compute reducing balance only.

• What is the difference between reducing balance and flat interest?

  Reducing balance charges interest on the balance still outstanding, so the interest falls each month as the principal is repaid. Flat interest is calculated once on the original principal and spread evenly, so the interest is the same in the last month as in the first even though almost nothing is still owed. For the same advertised percentage, flat always costs more, and the gap widens with the term. National Bank of Cambodia Prakas №B-7-01-115 requires microfinance institutions and rural credit operators to charge on the outstanding balance.

• What is the effective annual rate and why is it higher than the quoted rate?

  It is the annual cost of the loan derived from the actual cash flows rather than from the rate printed on the offer. The page solves for the rate that makes the present value of what you receive equal the present value of what you pay: principal minus upfront fee at month zero, then every payment plus the monthly fee. It comes out above the quoted rate because fees are paid earlier than the loan is repaid, and money paid at signing costs more than the same money paid over five years. That is why it is the fairest single number for comparing offers with different fee structures.

• Why does an offer show N/A for the effective rate?

  Because the solver did not converge. It starts from a 10% guess, allows 100 iterations and rejects any step that leaves a rate below −99.99% or above 1000%, which is what happens when the cash flows cannot be discounted to zero — for example when the total repaid is not greater than the amount received, or when a fee configuration produces all-positive or all-negative flows. Rather than print a misleading figure, the page shows N/A. Check the fees and the rate on that offer; a loan that cannot produce a solution usually has an input problem.

• How are the three fee types treated?

  An upfront fee is money you pay at signing, so it is added to the cash needed at disbursement and to the total cash cost, but it is not borrowed and no interest is charged on it. A financed fee is added to the principal, so you pay interest on it for the whole term and it raises the monthly payment. A monthly fee is added to every payment and counted once in the total fees line. The three are kept separate, so the same fee is never counted twice, and the total cash cost is the upfront fee plus everything repaid.

• Does the tool tell me which offer to take?

  No. It labels the offer with the lowest estimated total cash cost, which is a comparison of the numbers you typed, and nothing more. It does not know your income, your other debts, the collateral, the lender reputation, the prepayment terms or the fine print of either contract. It never calls a lender best, safe or approved, and it does not decide eligibility. Use the comparison to narrow the field, then read both agreements and ask each lender what the total repayment is in writing.

• Can I compare a riel offer against a dollar offer?

  Not directly, because the currency selector changes the display for all offers at once and does not convert anything. To compare across currencies, convert both principals and both payments at the same reference rate first — the currency converter on this site uses the National Bank of Cambodia bulletin — then enter the converted figures in one currency. Keep in mind that a dollar loan and a riel loan carry different rate levels and different exchange-rate risk over the term, which this page cannot price.

• Is this an official calculation or a credit decision?

  Neither. It is an unofficial calculator built from standard amortisation and present-value mathematics, it fetches no lender data, and it does not connect to any bank or credit bureau. The rates and fees are the ones you type from the offers in front of you, and an error in transcription produces a confident wrong answer. Confirm every figure against the written offer, and treat the contract each lender issues as the only figure that binds either side.

Data and accuracy

Content last reviewed 21 October 2026