We teach personal-loan math. In English.
Learn Personal Loans is a no-spin teaching site for personal-loan shoppers. We review every major lender — SoFi, LightStream, Upgrade, Discover, OneMain, Best Egg, Upstart, LendingClub, Achieve — and we teach the math behind the offers. APR vs APY, origination fees, hard pulls vs soft pulls, when consolidation actually saves money, when neither a personal loan nor a HELOC is right. We earn affiliate commissions on some links; rankings are independent.
How we got here
Learn Personal Loans grew out of a frustration that personal-loan content online is overwhelmingly written for the affiliate clickthrough — not for the borrower. Lenders are graded on superficial signals (a fast website, a celebrity endorsement) rather than the four numbers that actually determine whether a loan is good for you: APR, origination fee, term, and prepayment terms.
We do it differently. Every lender review on this site includes a real amortization example. Every loan-math lesson shows its work. We rank lenders by who you'd want to be in a five-year contract with — not by who's running the highest commission rate this quarter.
Editorial standards
- Independent ratings. No lender, affiliate network, ad agency, or PR firm sees a review before publication. Period.
- Math, shown. If we say a loan costs $X in interest, you can see exactly how we calculated it.
- Updated when terms change. When a lender raises its APR floor or changes its origination structure, we update the review and re-grade.
- Corrections, labeled. When we get something wrong, we publish a correction at the top of the article — visibly, dated.
Affiliate disclosure
Learn Personal Loans earns affiliate commission on some links to lenders and lender-comparison marketplaces. When you click through and complete an application, we may receive a referral fee. This never changes our editorial ranking — every lender we cover, including ones we've graded poorly, may have an affiliate link.
We disclose specific lender relationships on each individual review. Where a lender does not have an affiliate program, we say so plainly. We never accept editorial input from lender partners.
The faculty
Former bank-product manager. Likes amortization tables and cold weather.
Spreadsheet purist. Wrote our APR-vs-APY explainer that's still our most-read piece.
Reports on the messy, real-life situations behind why people borrow.
Re-reads every contract clause so you don't have to. Allergic to origination fees.
ⓘ Bylines are pseudonymous; staff is small. Do not confuse this with anonymity — every byline corresponds to a single person.
Contact
- Editorial: editor@learnpersonalloans.com
- Privacy: privacy@learnpersonalloans.com
- Corrections: Email the editorial address with "correction" in the subject. We'll respond within two business days.