10 Best Student Loan Refinance Companies 2023 (With Rates)

Refinance Student Loans: Top 10 Lenders

Here are our picks for the best companies that offer student loan refinance in 2023:

• SoFi—Best overall and our pick for the top lender of 2023.
• Laurel Road—Best for medical and dental residents.
• Earnest—Best for flexibility and customization.
• NaviRefi—Best for borrower protections.
• Citizens Bank—Best for international students.
• College Ave—Best for unconventional loan terms.
• ELFI—Best for parents.
• RISLA—Best for income-based repayment.
• Brazos—Best for borrowers from Texas.
• PenFed—Best for married couples.

Compare Lenders to Refinance Your Student Loans in 2023

Student loan refinance companies: common features

Here’s what you should know about our selection of refinance companies—

• Good credit score is the absolute minimum requirement to qualify for refinancing. (A score in the mid-700s is what you should aim for.) 
• You must be a graduate (or a current student) of a Title IV school (an institution that offers federal student aid).
• You’ve got an option to prequalify (that is, to find out your rates without damaging your credit score).
• All top lenders offer a 0.25% autopay discount on your APR.
• None of these lenders have origination or pre-payment fees.
• You can refinance both federal and private loans (or any combination of the two types). 

Best Companies for Student Loan Refinancing: Our Reviews

Best overall and our pick—SoFi

Terms/Fees

Requirements

SoFi’s a pioneer—it was the first company to refinance private and federal student loans together. 

And it stays ahead of the curve, boasting some of the best student loan refinance rates and a wide range of terms. 

It will cover your student loan up to the full amount, no matter how monstrous it is (graduate students, rejoice). 

SoFi offers special terms for medical students—you’ll get 3.74% APR and monthly payments of $100 during residency.

With SoFi, you’ll never fear losing your job—you can apply for Unemployment Protection (your loan will go into forbearance for 3–12 months while you receive career guidance to get back on your feet). 

Pros

Cons

SoFi offers plenty of other loans and services—check out our review of SoFi’s personal loans.

Best for medical and dental residents—Laurel Road

Terms/Fees

Requirements

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) says the median debt of a medical school graduate is $200,000. 

That’s quite a burden to carry when you’re fresh out of med school—and Laurel Road can lift it off your shoulders. 

The company offers its lowest interest rates to healthcare professionals (including dentists, optometrists, and nurses). 

Like SoFi, Laurel Road sets monthly payments of just $100 while you’re in residency. (Fellows and residents can also opt in for a full deferment with a six-month grace period.)

Laurel Road has a bunch of booming banking products that pair well with your loan: 

Pros

Cons

Best for flexibility and customization—Earnest

Terms/Fees

Requirements

Earnest is an Olympic gymnast among lenders—as flexible as they come. 

You can personalize your loan so it fits you like a glove—choose a repayment plan, adjust the due date, and set your own monthly payments. 

Earnest is also like a top opera singer—no one else has this range. It offers 180 loan terms—and you can pick a precise number of months. 

Refinance companies don’t bombard you with fees, but most will sneak a late payment penalty. Not Earnest, though—you won’t pay a cent if you’re late on your monthly contributions.

No more talking to a robot on the phone (or worse—a chatbot). With Earnest you get in-house customer support for the duration of your loan. 

Pros

Cons

Other considerations

Earnest doesn’t allow you to use a co-signer on their loans—your financial situation and credit history have to be impeccable to qualify.

If you’re still in school or had to drop out of college, you might struggle with these conditions. 

Also check out— 

• EDvestinU if you’re currently pursuing a degree.
• MEFA if you won’t be getting a diploma. 

Best for borrower protections—NaviRefi

Terms/Fees

Requirements

If you fall down on your luck, it’s nice to have a safety net to catch you. 

Navient’s refinance product NaviRefi offers a ton of assistance to those who are struggling financially.

Need some time to land on your feet after college?—NaviRefi will match the grace period of your student loans up to nine months. 

When you experience hardships, you can apply for a rate reduction program—the lender will knock off both your interest and monthly payments for the next six months. 

After the first six on-time payments, you’ll be able to skip a payment once a year without negative consequences. 

Pros

Cons

Best for international students—Citizens Bank

Terms/Fees

Requirements

Citizens is one of the best banks for refinancing student loans. 

It has your back, even if you’re not a US citizen or permanent resident. (International students often have fewer opportunities—and have to pay higher interest rates—to finance their education in the US.)

To refinance as a foreigner, you’ll need a valid Social Security number and an American co-signer.

You might be interested in this bank if you’re looking to refinance a large loan balance. 

Citizens Bank sets a high ceiling:

1. $300,000—bachelor’s degrees.
2. $500,000—graduate degrees.
3. $750,000—professional degrees.

Citizens accepts refinance with an associate’s degree or no diploma at all—as long as you’ve made 12 on-time payments on your student loan.

Pros

Cons

Best for choosing unconventional terms—College Ave

Terms/Fees

Requirements

If you’ve graduated with a self-designed major (or love to order from a Starbucks secret menu) you’ll like College Ave. 

You can experiment with a nonstandard loan term (anywhere between 5 and 15 years).

College Ave might not be as generous as some lenders, but it covers all the basics. 

After you complete half of your term, you can release your co-signer.

You can request more than a year of forbearance during hardships, natural disasters, or active military service. (Parents can refinance their loans as well.)

Pros

Cons

Best for parents who consider refinancing their loans—ELFI

Terms/Fees

Requirements

Saving for your kids’ college fund isn’t enough nowadays. (One in three families has to use these savings to stay afloat.) 

Parents often prefer to bear the burden of soaring college costs, taking out education loans for their kids. 

Many companies don’t offer any options to refinance parent loans. Education Loan Finance (ELFI) provides two—parents can refinance themselves or the child can step up and take over the loan. 

ELFI’s interest rates start twice as low as what parent PLUS has set up for 2023. 

Understanding the ins and outs of your student loans refinance can take forever—so ELFI pairs you with a student loan advisor who will curate the whole process and make it child’s play for you. 

Pros

Cons

Best for income-based repayment—RISLA

Terms/Fees

Requirements

Equality is when everyone gets the same opportunities and support. Equity acknowledges that people require different resources to thrive—and some may need more help than others. 

Rhode Island Student Loan Authority (RISLA) gets this.

Income-based repayment is the cornerstone of refinancing with this provider. If you go for this program, RISLA will adjust your monthly payments based on your income and family size. 

In times of financial stress, RISLA also provides up to two years of forbearance.

If you’re still in school, you have a choice to begin deferred refinance—lock-in a low interest rate now and repay after graduation (with a six-month grace period).

Pros

Cons

Best for borrowers from Texas—Brazos

Terms/Fees

Requirements

Howdy Y’all! We’re here to spill the sweet tea—

If you live in Texas, you’re in luck (and not just because of the best BBQ in the country). 

Brazos Higher Education—a non-profit lender—offers some of the lowest student loan refinance rates. (Even the interest cap is below average.) 

There’s just one catch—you must live in Texas. 

Brazos also has a wide range of loan terms and forbearance options. 

If you’re a Texan with a stable job—you’ll struggle to find a better option. 

Pros

Cons

Best for married couples—PenFed

Terms/Fees

Requirements

What’s the next step after marriage? Opening a joint bank account, taking out a mortgage, trying for a baby? 

No, the best way to start off your life together is by combining your student loans. 

Pentagon Federal Credit Union—aka PenFed—offers this unique opportunity. 

A third of Americans between 25 and 34 have student debt—chances are you and your partner have to juggle multiple student loans. PenFed will simplify repaying your shared debt to the maximum.

PenFed’s also your choice if you have strong family ties. Using a successful co-signer to qualify for better loan terms is a top-notch strategy. You don’t need to wait for years (or re-refinance) to release your co-signer—you can do it after only 12 months.

Pros

Cons

Our Methodology

To select the best place to refinance student loans, we’ve graded 15 companies across dozens of data points. 

Here are the four broader categories we based our final scores upon: 

• Affordability: how high are the interest rates? 
• Availability: what are the requirements to qualify for refinance, and is it available nation-wide?
• Benefits: co-signer release, referral bonuses, perks for medical students—and everything extra the loan has to offer. 
• Variety: how broad are the loan terms and amounts?

Student Loan Refinance Companies—The More You Know

There’s a Greek myth of Sisyphus who had to roll a giant boulder up the hill in Hades (aka hell). Every time he’d reach the top, the rock would roll down, and the poor guy had to start again—bearing that heavy weight and repeating the task for all eternity. 

That’s what repaying your student loans may feel like—you graduate from college, but with your hard-earned diploma comes a huge debt that you have to carry with you for years (sometimes decades). 

And not only do you have to pay hundreds of dollars every month, you might also need to keep track of multiple student loans at once. 

Refinancing your student loans can reduce your suffering: cut the period of your Sisyphean labors, bring down the amount you’ll pay monthly, and combine all your loans into one. 

In a word, turn the boulder into your lucky gemstone. 

How to Refinance Student Loans

What is student loan refinancing?

When you refinance your student loans, you take out a new loan with a private lender. 

The lender then pays off your existing debt and offers you new terms. 

Refinancing student loans can lower your interest rate and monthly payments. 

(If you play your cards right—you’ll end up paying thousands of dollars less.)

Examples of education loan refinancing 

Check out how refinancing your student loans can affect the total interest and monthly payments—

*The terms, monthly payments, and total interest shown here are approximations. Check the actual numbers with your provider. 

Pros and cons of refinancing your loans

Fixed and variable interest rates

There are two types of student loan refinance rates—fixed and variable. 

(This might be a bit confusing if you only knew how personal loans charge interest.) 

Fixed APR

A fixed interest rate doesn’t change for the life of your loan. 

You get exactly what you’ve signed up for—including monthly payments set in stone. 

It’s easy to plan for the future and calculate all the expenses upfront.

All federal student loans have fixed interest rates.

Variable APR

Refinancing with a variable interest rate is a bit of a gamble—a variable rate will fluctuate with the market and can change every month.

But the starting interest rate is usually lower than the fixed APR. 

If you are planning to repay your loan quickly, you can save a significant amount of money in interest.

Student loan refinancing vs. consolidation 

These are two terms many people use interchangeably when talking about combining student loans into one. 

Yet refinancing and consolidating student loans isn’t the same process. 

Consolidating student loans

When you consolidate your student loans, you replace several federal ones with a Direct Consolidation Loan from the government.

You’ll get a new interest rate (a weighted average of all your existing rates). 

However—unlike refinance—consolidation can’t lower your overall interest. Saving money isn’t the goal here. 

You can minimize your monthly payments, though—by stretching out this loan for up to thirty years.

You’ll get to keep access to Public Service Loan Forgiveness and various income-driven repayment plans. (Applying is easy and won’t lower your credit score, as there’s no credit check.)

Important: Federal student loan payment pause has been extended until June 30, 2023—payments will resume 60 days after that.

Biden administration proposed a Debt Relief program, including a one-time student loan forgiveness of up to $20,000. (Several courts have recently blocked this program, but the litigation will continue.) 

Consult Federal Student Aid to learn more—and don’t rush to refinance your federal loans.

Frequently Asked Questions