Business Funding Calculator: Estimate Your Advance and Daily Payment
Calculator
See Your Estimated Funding Options
Enter your approximate monthly revenue and time in business to see estimated offer ranges and payment amounts.
These are estimates only and are not an offer of financing. Actual advance amounts, factor rates, and payment amounts depend on funder underwriting, your business's bank statement history, and other factors. Factor rates shown do not represent APR. Commera is a broker and does not set rates.
How to use the calculator above
The calculator takes two inputs: your average monthly revenue (the dollar amount that hits your business checking account in a typical month) and your time in business. From those two numbers it produces three estimates — your likely advance range, the factor rate range you'd be priced at, and the range of daily payments you'd send to a funder during repayment.
The outputs are estimates, not offers. They are calibrated against the actual underwriting models Commera's funder panel uses, so the numbers are in the right ballpark for a real application. The exact offer you'd receive depends on details the calculator can't see: NSF history on your most recent month, deposit consistency, industry, owner credit profile, and whether you're carrying any existing advances.
Use the calculator to size your expectations before applying. If the advance range comes in below what you actually need, that's important information — it usually means the math points at a different product (a bank line of credit, an SBA loan, or equipment financing) rather than an MCA.
What your advance range tells you
Funders typically advance somewhere between 0.5x and 1.5x of monthly revenue, with the multiplier driven primarily by time in business and deposit consistency. A business with 2+ years of operating history and steady revenue can usually qualify for the full 1.0x–1.5x range. A newer business (6–12 months) typically lands between 0.5x and 0.8x.
The range matters more than the single number. If your calculator shows $35,000–$55,000, the conservative funders on the panel might offer $35,000 at a tighter factor rate and the more aggressive funders might offer $55,000 at a higher factor rate. The right offer is rarely the biggest one — a larger advance you can't comfortably repay turns a tool into a problem.
A practical sizing rule: take the lower end of the calculator's advance range and double-check it against your immediate use of funds. If the lower number covers the actual need, take it. Stretching to the upper number to fund 'nice to have' uses is the most common pattern that leads to a stacked-position problem 90 days later.
Understanding the factor rate the calculator shows
The factor rate range shown by the calculator (e.g., 1.20–1.38) is the multiplier applied to your advance to calculate total repayment. A $50,000 advance at a 1.30 factor rate produces a total repayment of $65,000 — that's the dollar figure the funder will collect through daily or weekly deductions before the advance is satisfied.
Factor rates are not the same as APR (annual percentage rate) and the two numbers are not directly comparable. A 1.30 factor rate paid back over 6 months produces an effective APR of approximately 60%. The same 1.30 factor paid back over 12 months produces a roughly 30% effective APR. Faster repayment = higher effective APR, even though the total dollars repaid stay the same.
For the full math on converting factor rates to APR-equivalents — and what counts as a 'good' factor rate for your profile — see our companion explainer, What Is a Factor Rate? An Honest Explainer.
Daily payment vs. a traditional loan's monthly payment
Most business loan calculators on the internet show a monthly payment number. That's because they're modeling traditional bank loans, which use APR-based amortization and have fixed monthly payments. Our calculator instead shows a daily payment range, because that's how merchant cash advances actually work — the funder pulls a small fixed percentage of your daily bank deposits, not a fixed monthly check.
If you searched for a calculator that shows you 'monthly payment on a $50,000 business loan' and landed here, here's the translation. The daily payment range shown above multiplied by 22 (average business days in a month) approximates the monthly cash outflow you'd see during repayment. A daily payment of $400 corresponds to roughly $8,800 per month in cash going to MCA repayment — significantly more than a $50,000 SBA loan would extract per month (typically $1,000–$1,200 at 12% APR over 5 years).
This is the honest version of the MCA tradeoff. The advance funds in 24–48 hours, but the monthly cash impact during repayment is materially larger than a slower bank product. For a deeper side-by-side on this exact tradeoff, see Merchant Cash Advance vs. SBA Loan: An Honest Side-by-Side.
What's a sustainable daily payment for your business?
A useful rule of thumb: the daily payment should not exceed 12% of your average daily revenue, and the holdback percentage (the slice of deposits the funder takes) should not exceed 18%. The calculator's daily payment range is calibrated against these benchmarks — it pulls from a 12% to 18% range of your monthly revenue divided across business days.
If the daily payment estimate looks uncomfortably high, two things to check before signing any offer. First, your real average daily revenue — pull your last 90 days of bank statements and divide total deposits by 65 business days. Use that number, not the calculator's estimate, to stress-test the daily payment. Second, your other fixed costs — payroll dates, rent due dates, supplier payments — and the days of the month when those land. If a high-payment day coincides with a payroll day, that's a cash-flow squeeze you want to know about in advance.
Funders structure offers around a payment-to-revenue ratio because they want repayment to be sustainable. A daily payment that strangles cash flow leads to NSF events, which lead to default, which leads to recovery actions neither side wants. The calculator's range reflects what's actually fundable, not what's theoretically possible.
From calculator to real offer
The calculator is a sizing tool. A real offer requires a real application — 3 to 4 months of business bank statements, a one-page application, and a soft credit pull (no impact on your score). The full application takes about 5 minutes and produces a written offer in 2 to 4 hours during business hours.
Three things change between the calculator estimate and a real offer. Your actual NSF history on the most recent month affects both the advance amount and the factor rate — clean statements get the better end of the calculator's ranges. Your industry matters — auto repair, HVAC, contracting, restaurants, and trucking all have established underwriting models with predictable pricing; less common industries may price wider. Your existing positions matter — if you're already carrying an active advance, the new offer will be sized to fit the combined daily payment burden, not the headline numbers.
If the calculator's numbers look workable for your situation, the next step is a real application. The pre-approval doesn't commit you to anything and the soft credit pull doesn't affect your score. The only way to know what's actually fundable is to ask.
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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not legal or financial advice. Contact a qualified advisor before making financing decisions. Consult with a lawyer if you have specific legal questions about commercial financing.