Illinois Payday Caps and Fees: the Tiered Schedule, Worked
The one schedule that governs every licensed advance on this site: $600 at the ceiling, a tiered fee of 15/14/13/12/11% per $100 fixed by statute, a 31-day maximum term, no rollovers, and a worked cost example with the statute and regulator beside it.
Illinois answers the payday question with a closing, and the table below condenses what remains lawful: no licensed two-week product at any price, consumer finance installments capped at a 36% APR, credit union PALs at the 28% federal rule, and the sovereign market charted beside them at its disclosed rates. Short-term fees get annualized into APR so offers can be compared; remember what that annualized figure measures, the price of time, not a bill anyone actually owes for a year.
The Three Lines Behind Your Disclosure
- The 36% APR cap. The 36% small-loan cap (815 ILCS 123/ (Predatory Loan Prevention Act)) prices licensed consumer finance installments at 36% APR, and the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation licenses the lenders who sit under it. There is no payday schedule to quote, because there is no licensed payday lender.
- Structure. A two-week product concentrates every dollar of cost into one due date, whereas an installment loan spreads an APR across months. To put the two side by side, use the annualized figure and the total of payments, never the monthly payment alone.
- Credit profile. A thin or damaged file draws fewer licensed offers, which is precisely the gap the sovereign market prices; the vetting routine, not the APR alone, is what protects you there.
The Arithmetic in Detail
The licensed $1,300 installment, the workhorse comparison at the 36% cap:
| Structure | Rate | Monthly (12 mo) | Total repaid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Credit union PAL | 28% APR | $130.60 | $1,505.52 |
| Consumer finance installment | 36% APR | $130.60 | $1,567.21 |
| Bad-credit online installment | 136% APR | $198.65 | $2,383.80 |
| Tribal installment (sovereign) | 500% APR | $550.08 | $6,600.96 |
One shape worth noticing: the gap between the licensed rows and the sovereign row is not marginal, it is four to five times the total cost for the same $1,300. That spread is what the 2001 sunset bought, and it is why the licensed doors deserve the first look whenever they say yes.
A smaller need, priced honestly: a $300 installment at the 36% cap over six months runs about $54.46 a month and $326.76 in total, $26.76 of that interest. A two-week product at the market’s old $15 per $100 would have charged $45 for a single cycle and asked one paycheck to carry the whole balance.
Under the Military Lending Act, covered servicemembers and their dependents never pay above 36% APR no matter the product. The loan calculators reproduce every figure on this page in real time.
| State | Max loan | Fee regime | Term | Typical cost | Approx. APR | Source |
|---|
How we build this table
The row above is transcribed from the Illinois statute that governs consumer small loans and cross-checked against the regulator that licenses lenders, linked in the Source column. We do not recompute lender pricing: the fee column is the statutory regime, the worked example applies the caps to a standard advance over the 30-day maximum term, and the APR column shows the resulting annualized figure, which in Illinois is simply the cap itself.
Rules checked: October 2026 · table maintained by Claire Whitmore. Statutes change; if this row ever disagrees with the regulator's current publication, the regulator wins, and we would be grateful if you told us.