Loans above R10 000, up to R50 000

Covers R10 001 to R50 000.

The short answer

Above R10 000 your loan is priced under the ordinary unsecured-credit rules. The short-term rules that allow 5,00% a month stop at R8 000, so nothing on this page is priced that way.

At the legal maximum of 28,00% a year, R20 000 over 36 months comes to an estimated R946 a month, including the R69 monthly service fee. Over the full term that is R34 064 repaid, of which R14 064 is the cost of the credit.

That is a ceiling, not a quote. Your actual rate is set by the lender after a credit and affordability assessment, and is usually lower than the legal maximum. Read every figure here as the worst realistic case, then compare it against what you are actually offered.

Coverage: R10 001 to R50 000. Borrowing less? See loans above R8 000, up to R10 000. Borrowing more? See loans above R50 000 and under R120 000.

On this page

Before you go further

What is this for?

Amount matters less than purpose. Tell us what the money is for and we will send you to the page written for it, not to a general application.

Check what you may qualify for

What it costs at 12, 24, 36, 48 and 60 months

The term you choose changes your instalment more than anything else you control. Below is what each amount in this range would cost at the 28,00% ceiling, worked out the same way every time. The monthly figure includes the R69 service fee.

Estimated monthly payment

Estimated total repaid over the term

Read the two tables together, because they pull in opposite directions. On R20 000, moving from 12 months to 60 months drops the payment from R2 116 to R729 — but the cost of the credit rises from R5 388 to R23 759. On R50 000 the same stretch takes the payment from R5 011 down to R1 663, while the total repaid climbs from R60 130 to R99 803.

The honest way to use this is backwards. Find the payment you could still make in a bad month, then read across to the amount and term that fit it. That is the same question an affordability assessment asks, and it is why this table sits at the top of the page instead of the bottom. It is an estimate of what your budget would need to carry — never a sign that you would be approved.

More on how the total cost of credit adds up.

What each amount costs over 36 months

R20 000 loan

R20 000 over 36 months is an estimated R946 a month, R34 064 repaid in total, of which R14 064 is the cost of the credit. It is the most searched amount in this range, and the one where the field is still mixed. R20 000 sits under Unifi's R24 000 ceiling, which applies to returning customers only, so a short-term specialist can still be in play here if you have borrowed from them before and repaid well. Fasta cannot reach it — its advertised maximum is R15 000 paid to a bank account.

R30 000 loan

R30 000 over 36 months is an estimated R1 360 a month, R48 955 repaid, and R18 955 of that is the cost of the credit. R30 000 is past every short-term lender's advertised ceiling, including Unifi's R24 000 returning-customer limit, so from here up the page is banks, the large personal-loan houses and Capfin only. In practice that means longer minimum terms and a full affordability assessment as standard — nobody in this part of the range prices a loan over a few weeks.

R40 000 loan

R40 000 over 36 months is an estimated R1 773 a month, R63 846 repaid, and R23 846 in credit costs. This is the one amount in the range where we cannot tell you the field with confidence. FinChoice publishes two different maximums on its own two websites, so whether FinChoice reaches R40 000 is genuinely unresolved — ask them: ____. Everyone else at this amount is a bank, a large personal-loan house, or Capfin, all of which advertise past it.

R50 000 loan

R50 000 over 36 months is an estimated R2 187 a month and R78 737 repaid, with R28 737 of that being the cost of the credit. R50 000 is the top of this range and it is also Capfin's advertised maximum, which makes it the last point where a mid-tier, mass-market non-bank lender takes part. Above it the field is banks and the large personal-loan houses. If R50 000 is the number you need and you have been declined before, it is worth reading the affordability section above before you apply, because this is the amount where the assessment gets strictest inside the range.

What lenders ask for, and what they are actually testing

At this size no lender decides from a form alone. Expect to hand over four things:

• Your South African ID — green book or smart card.
• Your latest payslip, or three months' bank statements if you are not on a payslip.
• Three months' bank statements, showing the income arriving.
• Proof of address, dated recently.

Have them ready as files on your phone before you start. A missing statement is the most common reason a loan of this size stalls for days. See the full list in documents needed for a personal loan.

What the lender is testing is not your salary — it is what is left of it. Regulation 23A of the National Credit Act requires the lender to work out your discretionary income: gross pay, less statutory deductions like PAYE and UIF, less minimum living expenses, less every debt repayment already showing on your credit record. The new instalment has to fit in what remains. That is a rand-amount test, not a percentage test.

South Africa has no legal debt-to-income limit. Individual lenders use their own internal guidelines, and those differ from lender to lender — commonly something like under about 30% of income going to debt seen as comfortable, 30% to 40% seen as stretched, and above about 40% treated as a problem. Those are lender guidelines, not law, and no lender is bound by another's. You can work out your own debt-to-income ratio before you apply, but treat the result as a rough signal.

One practical consequence at R15 000 to R50 000: your existing store card, phone contract and vehicle instalment are all counted, whether or not you mention them. They are on your credit record. Listing them yourself costs nothing and makes the assessment faster. If you have been turned down before, read borrowing when your credit record is poor first — it explains what usually causes the decline, and how an affordability assessment works explains the rest.

Which lenders change inside this range

the full personal-loan lender comparison table

Where the easier-access options run out

R50 000 is where the mid-tier, mass-market non-bank lenders stop. In our checked set, Capfin advertises up to R50 000 and is the last of them.

That is not the end of non-bank lending, and anyone who tells you it is has oversimplified. Old Mutual Finance, Sanlam, DirectAxis, RCS and WesBank CashPower are all non-banks and all advertise well past R50 000. What changes is how they assess you. Above this range the field is banks and the large personal-loan houses, and the large houses assess much the way a bank does — full affordability check, full credit-record check, and a rate set to your own profile.

So the honest version is this. If a bank has already declined you, R50 000 is roughly where the easier-access options run out. Asking for more does not open a friendlier door; it usually opens a stricter one. If you are close to the ceiling and unsure, borrowing a little less at a lender that already serves your profile is often the better application than borrowing a little more at one that does not.

One larger loan, or two smaller ones

People in this range often already have one loan running and are wondering whether to take a second rather than replace the first. The fee arithmetic is worth knowing before you decide.

The initiation fee is capped in rand, not in percentage. It reaches its ceiling of R1 050 excluding VAT — R1 208 including VAT — at R9 850, and it does not rise again at any amount on this page. R15 000 carries the same R1 208 as R50 000.

That cuts both ways:

• One loan carries one capped initiation fee and one R69 monthly service fee. Two loans carry two of each, for every month both are running.
• Because the fee stops growing, the fee cost of asking for R50 000 instead of R30 000 is nothing at all. The interest cost is very real — R30 000 over 36 months costs R18 955 in credit, R50 000 costs R28 737 — so this is an argument about fees, not a reason to borrow more.

The useful conclusion is narrow and it is still worth stating: if you genuinely need a further amount and you would qualify either way, one larger agreement is usually the cheaper structure than two running side by side. If you do not need it, the cheapest fee is the one you never pay. How initiation and service fees are set has the full rule.

If you are thinking about combining debts

Combining several accounts into one loan can lower what you pay each month. It can also raise what you pay in total, because the new loan usually runs longer than the accounts it replaces. R50 000 over 36 months is an estimated R2 187 a month and R78 737 repaid. The same R50 000 over 60 months is R1 663 a month and R99 803 repaid. The lower instalment is real, and so is the higher total.

Neither number is automatically the right answer — that depends on whether the lower instalment buys you breathing room you will actually use, or simply more time in debt.

The question worth asking yourself is this one: am I consolidating, or am I refinancing a problem? If the accounts you want to combine are behind, or if a new loan would only free up room you expect to fill again, a consolidation loan is not the tool. Debt review is a better fit for that situation than more credit.

Work the numbers on your own accounts before you commit — the comparison and the calculator live on our consolidation page, not here. Read how debt consolidation actually works.

Compare the lenders that cover this whole range

Questions about borrowing R15 000 to R50 000

How we work these figures out

How we work these figures out. Every rand figure on this page is produced the same way, so you can check it.

• All rand figures include VAT at 15,00%.
• The rate is the legal ceiling, not a quote. Above R8 000 the most a lender may charge on an unsecured loan is the repo rate plus 21,00% — 28,00% a year at the current repo rate of 7,00%. We work the instalment as an ordinary monthly-compounding annuity at that ceiling, taking the annual rate and dividing it by twelve. Your actual rate is set by the lender after a credit and affordability assessment, and is usually lower than the legal maximum.
• The initiation fee follows the whole statutory rule, not part of it. R165, plus "10 per cent of the amount in excess of R1 000", capped at R1 050 — all three excluding VAT — and it may never exceed "15 per cent of the principal debt". At every amount on this page the R1 050 cap is what binds, which is R1 208 including VAT.
• We assume the initiation fee is added to the loan. You receive the cash; the fee is added to what you owe, and interest is charged on that combined balance. Some lenders deduct the fee from the payout instead. That is a lender-by-lender choice, and it changes the figures slightly.
• The service fee is R69 including VAT a month, charged every month of the term. It is added to the instalment, not built into the interest, and we show it inside the monthly figure.
• Credit-life cover is excluded from every figure here. It is commonly required on unsecured credit and is charged in addition to these amounts. Ask each lender what it costs.
• Rounding. All arithmetic is carried at full precision and only the displayed figures are rounded, to the nearest rand. Where a total does not divide evenly by the term, the final instalment absorbs the remainder.
• These are estimates, not offers. No figure on this page is a quote, an approval, or a promise of what any lender will give you.

Lender list checked 2 August 2026. Rates and fees change when the Reserve Bank moves the repo rate — see what a lender checks before it approves you for the rest of the process.

Ready when you are

Back to top