Earnest Personal Loans FAQ: Your Questions Answered

Our service is a free connector: you fill out one request, we share it with lenders in our network that may fit, and any lender that wants to make an offer presents its own terms for you to review.

What exactly does your service do?

We collect the details lenders need to review personal loans, such as the amount you want, your income and your state, and pass them to lenders that may be able to help. Lenders that can make a personal loan offer show it to you directly, usually on their own website. You compare, decide and sign only with the lender you pick.

Are you a lender?

No. We do not lend money, make credit decisions, set rates or service accounts. Every personal loan offered through our form comes from an independent lender that holds its own licenses, and that lender is responsible for the loan from approval to final payment.

Who are the lenders in your network?

Our network includes licensed online lenders and lending platforms that offer personal loans in the $500 to $5,000 range. Not every lender is available in every state, and the network does not include every lender in the market. Which lenders see a request for earnest personal loans depends on your state, amount and profile.

What can I use a personal loan for?

People commonly use personal loans for car repairs, medical or dental bills, home repairs, moving costs, funeral expenses or combining card balances. Most lenders do not allow personal loan funds to be used for tuition, business investment, gambling or illegal purposes. The lender's agreement lists any restrictions.

Is there anything your service does not cover?

Yes. Our network focuses on unsecured personal loans from $500 to $5,000, so mortgages, refinancing, home equity lines, auto purchase loans and student loans are outside what we offer. If you need one of those, a bank, credit union or specialist lender is a better starting point.

Submitting a request takes about five minutes, asks for basic personal, income and banking details, and leads either to one or more lender offers or to a message that no lender could match your request right now.

How long does the request form take?

Most people requesting earnest personal loans finish in about five minutes. You enter the personal loan amount you want, your contact details, income, housing costs and checking account basics. Having your monthly income and rent figure in mind before you start makes it quicker.

What do I need before I start?

Have a government-issued ID, your Social Security number or ITIN, an estimate of your monthly income, your employer or income source and an active checking account. The full list of what lenders look for is on our eligibility requirements page, including the age rule for Alabama and Nebraska.

What if no lender matches my request?

A no-match result means no lender in our network could make an offer for that amount, in your state, at that moment. It is not a credit decision and does not affect your credit score. You can try again later or with a different personal loan amount if your situation changes.

Can I submit more than one request?

You can, but it rarely helps to send several in a row. Repeated requests within a short time may lead lenders to run more inquiries, and multiple hard inquiries can lower your score. If your first request did not match, wait until something in your profile changes before trying again.

How fast could I receive money?

If a lender approves you and you sign the agreement, funds can arrive as soon as the next business day after approval, depending on the lender. Bank processing times, weekends and holidays can add a day or two. Our how it works overview walks through each step from request to funding.

Lenders in our network quote APRs from about 5.99% to 35.99% as a representative range, our service is free to use, and the total cost of any loan depends on the APR, fees and term a lender offers you.

Does it cost anything to use your service?

No. Submitting a request for earnest personal loans and reviewing offers costs you nothing, and you are never obligated to accept an offer. If you accept a personal loan, the lender charges the interest and any fees described in its agreement, not us.

How do you make money?

Lenders and partners pay us when we connect them with borrowers looking for personal loans, and sometimes when a borrower accepts a loan. That compensation can influence which offers appear and in what order, but it never changes the rate a lender charges you. Full details are on our advertiser disclosure page.

What APR should I expect?

The representative APR range across lenders in our network is 5.99% to 35.99%, and some lenders in some states may charge more. Your actual rate depends on your credit, income, debt, amount, term and state. Readers who look up earnest interest rates or earnest personal loan rates can see illustrative APR bands by credit tier on our personal loan rates page.

Can you show me what a loan might cost?

Here is our representative example: borrowing $2,000 over 12 months at 24.00% APR = 12 monthly payments of $189.12, total repaid $2,269.44, total interest $269.44 (estimate, no origination fee assumed). A different APR, term or fee would change those numbers, so always compare the total of payments on each real personal loan offer.

What is an origination fee, and do all lenders charge one?

An origination fee is a one-time charge, often 0% to 10% of the amount, that some lenders deduct from your funds before deposit. On a $2,000 personal loan, a 5% fee would mean $100 is deducted and you receive $1,900. Some lenders charge none, which is worth comparing alongside the APR.

Why did I get a higher rate than I expected?

Lenders that offer personal loans price risk differently, so a recent late payment, a high debt-to-income ratio, a short credit history or a longer term can all push an APR up. State rules matter too. People comparing earnest personal loans often find that a smaller amount or a shorter term brings the quoted rate down.

Repayment happens directly with the lender you choose, usually in fixed monthly installments over 6 to 60 months, and any questions about payments, due dates or hardship go to that lender rather than to us.

Who do I make payments to?

You pay the lender that funded your personal loan, not our service. Most lenders offer automatic payments from your checking account, and many give a small APR discount for autopay. Your loan agreement and the lender's online account show your due dates and balance.

Can I pay off my loan early?

Many lenders allow early payoff of personal loans without a prepayment penalty, which can save you interest. Check the agreement before you sign, because a few lenders charge a fee or calculate interest in a way that reduces the savings. Paying extra toward principal each month also shortens the loan.

What happens if I miss a payment?

The lender may charge a late fee, and a payment that is 30 days or more past due can be reported to the credit bureaus and lower your score. If you expect to miss a personal loan payment, contact the lender before the due date; many offer a one-time due-date change or a short hardship plan.

Can you change my loan terms or a lender's decision?

No. Because we are not the lender behind earnest personal loans requests, we cannot change an approval, a decline, a rate, a fee or a payment schedule. If you have a question about your account, contact the lender using the details in your agreement. We are glad to help you find the right contact if you are unsure.

We collect only the information lenders need to review a request, share it with lenders in our network when you submit, protect it with encryption, and explain your choices in our privacy policy.

What information do you collect?

The form asks for contact details, date of birth, income, housing costs, employment or income source, the last four or full digits of your Social Security number depending on the step, and checking account basics. Lenders need these to check identity and estimate what personal loan payment you can afford.

Who sees my information?

When you submit a request for earnest personal loans, we share it with lenders and partners in our network that may be able to make you an offer. Each lender handles your data under its own privacy policy once it receives it. Our privacy policy explains sharing, cookies and your rights in detail.

Will submitting a request hurt my credit score?

Submitting the form does not affect your score by itself. Many lenders run a soft inquiry first, which is invisible to other lenders. A hard inquiry usually happens only if you accept an offer and continue with that lender, and it may lower your score by a few points for a while.

How is my data protected?

The request form uses encrypted connections, and access to stored data is limited to people and systems that need it. No method of transmission is perfectly secure, so when you compare personal loans online we also recommend using a private device and a secure network when you submit financial details.

How do I spot a scam using a lender's name?

A real lender will never ask you to pay an upfront fee with gift cards, wire money to "release" a loan or send documents by text message. We will never call asking for your full bank password. If someone contacts you claiming to offer earnest personal loans and asks for money first, stop and report it to the FTC.

We are not affiliated with any lender or company named Earnest, including the well-known lender that uses that name, and the rates and offers shown through our form come only from independent lenders in our network.

Are you connected to the lender called Earnest?

No. We are an independent request service with no ownership, partnership or affiliation with any lender or company named Earnest. If you have an account with that lender, contact it directly through its own official channels, because we cannot see or manage its accounts.

Why does your site mention earnest personal loans?

Many people type earnest personal loans into a search engine when they are looking for a small personal loan, and some find our site that way. We use the phrase to answer what those readers are searching for, while making clear that we are a separate service connecting them with independent lenders.

Do earnest interest rates on your site come from that lender?

No. When readers search for earnest interest rates or earnest personal loan rates and land here, the APRs they see come from lenders in our network, never from the company named Earnest. Each lender in our network sets its own pricing on a personal loan based on your profile and state.

Where can I read earnest personal loans reviews about your service?

Our reviews page collects ratings from borrowers who used our request form, and those ratings describe the matching experience, not any lender's loan. When you read earnest personal loans reviews elsewhere, check whether the reviewer is talking about our service or about a different company with a similar name.

What should I do if I meant to reach a different company?

If you were looking for a specific lender's website or customer service, search for that lender's official site directly and check its address carefully before entering any details. If you would still like to compare a personal loan from several lenders at once, our request form remains available at no cost.