Origination Fees and Prepayment Penalties, Decoded
What an origination fee actually deducts from your loan, what a prepayment penalty would cost you if a lender charged one, and a lender-by-lender table of who charges what as of September 2026.
Two line items can shrink what you actually get from a personal loan, or raise what it costs to pay one off. An origination fee is a one-time charge a lender deducts from your loan proceeds before the money reaches you — you receive less cash than you borrowed, but you still owe and repay the full principal plus interest on it. A prepayment penalty is a separate charge some lenders add if you pay a loan off ahead of schedule, which is why “no prepayment penalty” is worth checking before you plan to pay extra toward principal. You can test a fee against your own amount and term in the personal loan calculator.
Both numbers matter more than they look like they should, because an origination fee doesn’t show up as a separate line on your monthly statement — it’s baked into the APR a lender quotes you. Federal Truth in Lending rules require that: the APR restates your total cost of credit against the amount you actually received, not the amount you asked for. That’s why comparing loan offers by APR, not by the interest rate printed next to it, is the fair comparison. It also means you can’t tell how much cash will land in your account from the APR alone — for that, you need the fee itself, which is what the table below pulls together.
What each lender charges (September 2026)
As of September 2026, here’s what each lender states about its origination fee and prepayment penalty. Where a lender doesn’t publish a figure or a position, the table says so rather than guessing.
| Lender | Origination fee | Prepayment penalty | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| Avant | up to 9.99% (administration fee) | None | Avant review |
| Best Egg | 0.99%-9.99% (at least 4.99% on terms of four years or more) | None | Best Egg review |
| CashNetUSA | Not stated | None | CashNetUSA review |
| Discover | None (states it charges no fees of any kind) | None | Discover review |
| Integra Credit | Not stated | None | Integra Credit review |
| LendingClub (Happen Bank) | 0%-8% | None | LendingClub review |
| LendingPoint | 0%-10%, deducted from proceeds | None | LendingPoint review |
| LightStream | None (Florida adds a state documentary stamp tax of a bit over 0.35%, added to the loan amount, not deducted) | None | LightStream review |
| Mariner Finance | Not stated | Not stated | Mariner Finance review |
| NetCredit | Not stated on the personal loan (the line-of-credit product charges a separate 10% cash advance fee per draw) | None | NetCredit review |
| OneMain Financial | flat $25-$500 or 1%-10% of the loan, by state | None | OneMain review |
| OppLoans | 0% (does not charge an origination fee) | None | OppLoans review |
| Personify Financial | 5%-5.99%, added to your balance rather than deducted from proceeds | None | Personify Financial review |
| Possible Finance | Not stated (prices as a fee per $100 borrowed rather than an origination fee; Alaska adds a separate $5 origination fee) | Not stated | Possible Finance review |
| Prosper | 1%-9.99% | None | Prosper review |
| RISE | 0% (does not charge an origination fee) | None | RISE review |
| SoFi | Optional; percentage not published (some offers carry no fee, others trade a one-time fee for a lower rate, folded into the loan amount) | None | SoFi review |
| Upgrade | 1.85%-9.99% | None | Upgrade review |
| Upstart | Not stated as a range (representative example: an 8.15% fee on a $10,000 loan) | None | Upstart review |
A few of those cells need a second look. NetCredit’s personal loan prices purely through its APR with no separate origination fee stated, but its line-of-credit product is a different structure entirely — a 10% cash advance fee comes out of every draw, so don’t read that figure as an origination fee on the installment product. Possible Finance doesn’t call its charge an origination fee at all; it prices loans as a flat fee per $100 borrowed that varies by state, and the only place the phrase “origination fee” appears in its own disclosures is a $5 add-on specific to Alaska. Upstart deducts a fee from your proceeds but doesn’t publish the range that fee can span, so the only number it states publicly is the 8.15% figure from its own representative example — treat any other percentage you see quoted for Upstart as a third-party estimate, not the lender’s own disclosure.
How to read the fee on an offer
The origination fee comes off the top, before the money reaches your account, but you still repay the full amount you borrowed plus interest. Here’s what that looks like on a representative loan: you borrow $10,000 over 60 months at a 20% APR, with an 8% origination fee.
- Fee deducted at funding: $10,000 x 8% = $800, so you receive $9,200 in cash.
- Monthly payment: an APR already includes the origination fee by definition, so we amortize the cash you actually receive at the APR rather than counting the fee a second time. Amortizing $9,200 at a 20% APR (a monthly rate of 20% / 12) over 60 payments, using the standard loan-payment formula, works out to a payment of about $243.74 a month.
- Total paid over the term: 60 x $243.74 = about $14,624.
- Total cost of the loan: the $14,624 you’ll pay back minus the $9,200 you actually received, or about $5,424 — the interest on the full $10,000 principal and the $800 fee you never saw, counted once.
That last number is the one to compare across offers, because it captures both pieces of cost at once: the interest that accrues on the full principal and the fee that reduced what you actually received. A lender with a lower fee but a higher rate, or the reverse, can land at a very different total-cost figure even with a similar APR on paper, which is why checking the total of payments on your actual Truth in Lending disclosure matters more than eyeballing either number alone.
Prepayment penalties: why “none” matters
Every lender in the table above that states a position on prepayment says it charges none, which means paying extra toward principal, or paying the loan off entirely ahead of schedule, doesn’t trigger an added charge. That matters because interest on an installment loan accrues on the declining balance: every dollar of extra principal you pay today is a dollar that stops accruing interest for every remaining month on the loan. On a fee-heavy loan like the ones in this table, a prepayment penalty would claw back some of that savings — without one, paying ahead of schedule is close to a pure win for the borrower, limited only by whatever cash you can put toward it.
Two rows in the table above don’t state a prepayment position at all: Mariner Finance and Possible Finance. Neither lender publishes a statement either way, so the table reflects that rather than assuming the industry-typical “none.” If you’re weighing either lender and plan to pay extra toward principal, confirm the prepayment terms directly with the lender before you count on that strategy lowering your cost.
The fee-versus-rate tradeoff
A lender that charges a lower origination fee isn’t automatically the cheaper loan, and a higher fee isn’t automatically the worse one. The fee is a one-time cost; the interest rate compounds over every month you carry a balance. A loan with a meaningfully lower APR and a higher fee can cost less by the time it’s paid off than one with a smaller fee and a higher rate, especially over a longer term where the rate has more months to compound. The reverse also holds on a short loan, where a bigger fee has less time to be offset by a rate advantage. There’s no shortcut around running the actual numbers on the specific offers in front of you — the fee percentage alone, taken out of context, doesn’t tell you which loan is cheaper.
Before you apply
The fee and the prepayment terms are only two inputs into what a loan actually costs. Our guide to how installment loan interest actually works explains why the total repayment figure matters more than the monthly payment, and why a longer term isn’t automatically the cheaper choice. If you’re not sure which lenders are even worth checking, what credit score you need for a personal loan covers the published minimums and what each lender weighs instead.
Once you’ve compared the fee, the APR, and the total of payments across the lenders you qualify for, the next step is to check your actual offer rather than estimate from a published range — you can start a loan request and see the fee, rate, and payment a specific lender puts in front of you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does an origination fee mean I pay back less than I borrowed?
No. An origination fee is deducted from the cash you receive, not from the balance you owe. Borrow $10,000 with an 8% origination fee and you receive $9,200 in your bank account, but you still owe and repay the full $10,000 plus interest. The fee is a cost of borrowing, not a discount on the loan.
Is the origination fee already included in the APR a lender quotes me?
Yes. Federal Truth in Lending rules require it. The APR restates your total cost of credit, fee included, against the amount you actually received, which is why comparing offers by APR rather than by interest rate is the fair comparison — the interest rate alone leaves the fee out.
Which lenders charge no origination fee?
Among the lenders reviewed on this site, Discover, LightStream, OppLoans, and RISE all state they do not charge an origination fee, and SoFi's fee is optional rather than automatic. Several others don't publish an origination fee at all, which isn't the same thing as confirming there isn't one — check your specific loan agreement before you sign.
If a lender charges no prepayment penalty, does paying early actually save money?
Yes, as long as interest is accruing on a declining balance, which is how every installment loan in the table works. Extra principal paid today is balance that stops accruing interest for every month remaining on the loan, so paying early or paying more than the minimum lowers your total cost whenever there's no prepayment penalty to offset it.
Why would I ever choose a loan with a higher origination fee over one with a lower fee?
Because the fee is only one part of the total cost — the interest rate matters more the longer you hold the loan. A higher fee paired with a meaningfully lower rate can cost less over a multi-year term than a lower fee paired with a higher rate. Compare the APR and the total of payments on your actual offers rather than the fee percentage alone.
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