Loans above R50 000 and under R120 000

Covers R50 001 to R119 999.

At this size the question is almost never does a loan this big exist. It does — the banks and the large personal-loan houses all advertise well past R100 000. The question that decides your application is whether your income can carry the instalment once your living costs and your existing debt repayments are taken off.

So this page answers that one first. Every estimate below is worked at 28,00% a year, the legal maximum on an unsecured loan while the repo rate is 7,00%. The initiation fee and the monthly service fee are shown as their own lines, not buried in the instalment. Your real rate is set by the lender after a credit and affordability assessment, and it is usually lower than the legal maximum.

Before you go further

What is this for?

At this size the term shapes the cost as much as the amount. What the money is for decides which lender fits and how your application is assessed. Pick the one that matches your situation.

What you would need to earn

This is the monthly payment an affordability assessment would have to find room for. Each figure is the instalment at 28,00% a year plus the R69 monthly service fee, on a loan with the initiation fee added to the balance.

Read it the other way round and it tells you what to check on your own payslip. A lender does not ask "can you afford R2 597?" It works out your discretionary income first, and then sees whether the instalment fits inside it.

Under Regulation 23A the lender must start with your gross income, take off statutory deductions like tax and UIF, take off a prescribed minimum living-expense allowance for your income band, and take off every debt repayment showing on your credit-bureau record. What is left is your discretionary income. The instalment has to fit in there with room to spare — not fit exactly.

Two things follow that catch people out at this size. Your existing accounts count even if you never use them much, because the assessment reads them off the bureau record, not off your budget. And South Africa has no legal debt-to-income limit — some lenders work to their own internal guideline bands, but those are lender guidelines, not law, and they differ from lender to lender.

These are estimates at the legal maximum rate, not offers and not approvals.

What each amount costs, from R60 000 to R100 000

Every figure below assumes 60 months at 28,00% a year, with the initiation fee added to the balance and the R69 service fee charged every month. The monthly figure includes the service fee. Credit-life cover is charged on top — see the credit-life section.

One thing stays the same all the way down the ladder. The initiation fee is R1 208 at R60 000 and R1 208 at R100 000, because it is capped in rand. On this page the fee is a fixed cost; only the interest-bearing balance changes.

R60 000 loan

R60 000 is the first step into this band, and the step is a real one. At R50 000 you still had a mid-tier, mass-market non-bank option; Capfin's advertised ceiling is R50 000, so at R60 000 you are dealing with banks and the large personal-loan houses, all of which run a full affordability assessment. If you were looking a little lower, see loans above R10 000, up to R50 000.

The cost of the loan is where R60 000 stops feeling small. Over 60 months at the legal maximum rate the estimated repayment is R1 975 a month and the total repaid is R118 485 — close to twice the cash you asked for. Shortening the term to 36 months lifts the monthly to R2 601 and pulls the total down to R93 627.

R80 000 loan

At R80 000 over 60 months the estimated repayment is R2 597 a month, and the interest and fees come to R75 848 — very nearly what you borrowed. That is what the legal maximum rate does over five years, and it is the strongest argument for taking the shortest term you can genuinely sustain.

R80 000 is also where the lender's term ceiling starts to decide your instalment. A lender capped at 60 months and one that advertises 84 will quote you visibly different monthly figures on the same loan — which is why the term ceiling, not the brand name, is the column worth comparing.

R90 000 loan

R90 000 over 60 months works out at an estimated R2 909 a month. Treat that as the number the affordability assessment has to find room for after tax, after a prescribed minimum living-expense allowance, and after every debt repayment already on your credit record.

This is the amount where people most often ask for a longer term to make the instalment fit. It works — 72 months brings it to R2 696 — but the total repaid rises from R174 529 to R194 141. Lowering the instalment to pass an affordability check is a warning sign, not a solution.

R100 000 loan

A R100 000 loan over 60 months at the legal maximum rate is an estimated R3 220 a month, including the R69 service fee. Over the full term that is R193 211 repaid, of which R93 211 is interest and fees. The initiation fee is R1 208 — the same rand amount you would pay on R60 000, because it is capped long before you reach six figures.

Sixty months is the term most lenders default to at this amount, and it is worth knowing what the alternatives do before you accept it. Over 36 months the instalment is R4 255 and the total is R153 191. Over 72 months it is R2 984 a month and R214 881 in total.

This is the amount our published working uses end to end, so you can check every step of it against your own quote.

Why our numbers look different from other sites

Search a six-figure loan amount and you will find repayment figures that cannot be right.

One pattern is a page that divides the loan by the number of months and calls the answer the instalment, with the interest left out entirely. Another applies 5,00% a month — a rate that exists only for short-term credit of R8 000 or less over six months or less — to a loan ten times that size. A third quotes a monthly fee in the thousands, when the service fee an NCR-registered lender may charge is R69 a month including VAT.

We would rather publish the method than the confidence. Here is the whole of it, in five steps, using R100 000 over 60 months:

1. You ask for R100 000 in cash.
2. The initiation fee is added to what you owe. At this size it is capped, so it is R1 208 including VAT — the same fee you would pay on R60 000.
3. Interest is charged on the whole balance, including that financed fee, at 28,00% a year.
4. The R69 service fee is added every month for the full term. It is not part of the interest-bearing balance, which is why we show it separately.
5. That gives R3 220 a month, R193 211 repaid over the full term, and R93 211 in interest and fees.

The step-by-step working, to the cent, is in the how-we-work-this-out section at the bottom of this page. Check it against your own quote. If a lender's figure is lower than ours, that is expected — we work at the legal ceiling and most approved rates sit below it. If it is much higher, ask why in writing.

What the extra years actually cost

Stretching the term is the easiest way to make a big loan look affordable. It is also the most expensive. Here is R100 000 at four terms, with both numbers shown the same size.

At 72 months you pay R2 984 a month instead of R4 255. You also pay R114 881 in interest and fees instead of R53 191. Both of those are true at once, and a lender will usually lead with the first one.

The useful rule at this size is simple. Take the shortest term whose instalment you could still pay in a bad month — not the shortest term you can pay in a good one. A term you cannot sustain turns into arrears, and arrears cost far more than the extra months would have.

If the reason for the loan is to combine debts you already have, the same trade-off applies with an extra trap: the new instalment can be lower than the accounts it replaces while the total you repay goes up. Read the full consolidation trade-off, with the numbers before you decide. Consolidation is not automatically the cheaper choice.

Credit life insurance is a separate line, and nobody shows it

Credit-life cover is commonly required on unsecured credit and is charged in addition to these figures. Ask each lender what it costs.

Our estimates exclude it deliberately, because we cannot know your premium — and because folding an unknown into an instalment is how comparison pages end up wrong. Here is what the law fixes, so you can price it yourself.

There is a legal maximum. On an unsecured credit agreement the premium may not exceed R4,50 per R1 000 of the amount you still owe (Credit Life Insurance Regulations, 2017). On a loan of this size that is a real monthly number — ask for it in rand, in writing, before you sign.

There is a minimum you must get for it. A compliant policy settles the outstanding debt if you die or are permanently disabled, and pays your instalments for a limited period if you are temporarily disabled or lose your income through retrenchment.

You can bring your own policy. A lender may require you to have cover, but under section 106(4)(a) of the National Credit Act you must be told of your right to waive the policy the lender proposes and substitute one of your own. The National Credit Regulator's Guideline 003/2024 confirms you can do that at any time after signing, not only on the day.

You may not be charged for cover you cannot claim on. If you were not employed when the policy started, the retrenchment portion may not be charged to you. If you are a pensioner, the occupational-disability portion may not be charged.

One live question worth asking: does the premium reduce as your balance reduces? The National Credit Regulator issued an opinion in 2026 that the premium should track the reducing balance rather than being fixed at the opening balance. That opinion is reported second-hand rather than confirmed by us, so treat it as a question to put to the lender, not a rule to quote at them.

Shopping the rate, and getting out early

28,00% is a ceiling, not a quote. Two lenders can price the same application differently, because the rate is set against your credit record and your affordability, not against the amount.

Ask each lender for the pre-agreement quotation. For a loan this size it comes on the prescribed Form 20.1 and it must set out the principal debt, the interest rate, the fees and the total. It is binding for five business days — if you come back inside that window and ask for the agreement, the lender must give it to you at the quoted rate or better. That five-day window is what makes comparing worth doing.

Two practical cautions. Enquiries are recorded on your credit record, and a bureau may display them for up to a year, so gather quotes over a short period rather than drifting from lender to lender for months. And a "pre-approval" is not a quotation — it is only a statement that the lender is willing to consider you. If your credit record is the thing you are worried about, read what lenders check when your credit record is thin or damaged before you apply.

Now the part that is unusually good news at exactly this size. Under the National Credit Act a loan between R15 000 and R250 000 is an intermediate agreement. Early-termination charges on settlement are written into the Act only for large agreements — those at or above R250 000. Every amount on this page sits below that line, so settling early costs you the balance, the interest and the fees up to the settlement date, and nothing extra.

So the rest follows. You may settle at any time, with or without notice. You may pay in extra amounts at any time without penalty, and the lender must accept the payment. Ask for a settlement statement whenever you want one — it is free, and the lender has five business days to give it to you. Any payment you make is applied first to unpaid interest, then to unpaid fees, then to the principal debt, which is why extra payments early in the term do the most work.

Which lenders still lend at this size, and what changes

Below R50 000 you have a genuine mid-tier, mass-market option. Capfin stops at R50 000, and from R50 001 the field is the banks and the large personal-loan houses. Several of those houses are not banks — but they assess much the way a bank does, so the practical difference is smaller than the label suggests. Two of them, DirectAxis and WesBank CashPower, lend under FirstRand Bank Limited's own NCR registration, NCRCP20.

What genuinely differs between them is the term ceiling, and at this size that moves real money. RCS stops at 60 months. Absa, Nedbank and Sanlam advertise up to 84. DirectAxis will not go shorter than 24 months, so a borrower who wants this repaid quickly should look elsewhere.

We stop our estimates at 72 months on purpose. Some lenders will go to 84, and the instalment does fall further — but the pattern in the table above is already clear, and an extra year of interest on a six-figure balance is not a small thing.

The delta table below shows only what changes at this boundary. The full row-by-row comparison lives once, on the full personal loan comparison table.

the full personal-loan lender comparison table

When the number you need is R120 000 or more

This page stops at R119 999. From there you are on loans from R120 000 to R300 000.

Nothing in the law changes at that line. The rate ceiling is the same 28,00%, the initiation fee is still capped at the same rand amount, and the service fee is still R69 a month. What changes is the size of the instalment, how hard a lender looks at your income, and how much of your working life the term takes up.

Compare the lenders that actually lend this much

How we work these figures out

How we work this out

Every rand figure on this page comes from one published method, and the same method is used on every one of our loan-amount pages. All rand figures include VAT at 15,00%.

• The rate. We use 28,00% a year, the legal maximum on an unsecured loan — the repo rate of 7,00% plus 21,00%. It 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.
• The initiation fee. R165, plus "10 per cent of the amount in excess of R1 000", capped at R1 050 — all three excluding VAT — and never more than 15,00% of the principal debt. On every amount on this page the cap applies, so the fee is R1 050 excluding VAT, which is R1 207,50 including VAT. Reading the caps as VAT-exclusive is National Credit Regulator guidance and standard market practice, not the wording of the regulation itself.
• The fee is financed. We assume the initiation fee is added to what you owe rather than deducted from the cash you receive, so interest is charged on the loan plus the fee. Some lenders deduct it instead — that is a lender-by-lender choice, and it changes the figures slightly.
• The service fee. R60 excluding VAT, which is R69 including VAT, charged every month of the term. It is not part of the interest-bearing balance, so we always show it as its own line.
• Credit life is excluded. Credit-life cover is commonly required on unsecured credit and is charged in addition to these figures. Ask each lender what it costs.
• Rounding. The 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.

The full working, R100 000 over 60 months

These are estimates, not offers, quotes or approvals. Figures checked 2 August 2026.

Questions people ask about this range

Back to top