Most U.S. doctors graduate with well over $200,000 in student loan debt, and many spend a decade or more paying it back. Refinancing can cut your interest rate and shorten your repayment timeline, but it also means giving up federal protections like income-driven repayment and Public Service Loan Forgiveness. For a physician, that trade-off deserves more thought than it does for almost any other borrower.
The federal side of that decision changed a lot in 2026. The SAVE plan is gone, the new Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) charges high earners 10% of income with no payment cap, and PAYE is closing to new enrollment in July 2027. We cover what that means for doctors further down, and our article on when medical loan refinancing makes sense walks through the math.
If you've decided refinancing is right for you, these are the lenders we recommend for medical school loans. Several of them let you pay as little as $100 per month during residency, which is the feature that matters most if you're still in training. You can also compare offers side by side with our student loan refinancing tool.
Best Medical School Student Loan Refinancing
Here are our top choices to medical school student loan refinancing. These choices may vary slightly from our regular list of student loan refinancing companies because physicians typically have higher incomes and higher loan balances.
Our team checks the rates below every weekday, Monday through Friday. These rates are accurate as of September 11, 2026.
Credible
Credible is our favorite marketplace for comparing student loans. They have almost a dozen different lenders that you can easily shop and compare on their platform. As a result of being a marketplace, you can get great rates and terms because you're seeing the best offers from a variety of lenders.
Right now, they offer the following rates:
- Fixed Rate: 3.98% - 10.99% APR
- Variable Rate: 3.65% - 10.99% APR
And as a College Investor reader, no matter what lender you actually choose - if you refinance on their platform you'll get:
- $1,000 gift card bonus if you refinance at least $100,000 in student loans.
- $300 gift card bonus if you refinance less than $100,000 in student loans.
Read our Credible review here.
Earnest
Earnest is one of the best-known online refinance lenders, and it wins on flexibility once you're in repayment. It's a lender for attendings and senior residents with a signed attending contract rather than for interns, since there is no reduced-payment program during training. Read our full Earnest student loan refinance review.
Rates
- Fixed: 3.94% - 9.99% APR (includes 0.25% autopay discount)
- Variable: 5.88% - 9.99% APR (includes 0.25% autopay discount)
Loan Terms: 5 to 20 years, and Earnest lets you pick a custom term in one-month increments, so you can match your payment to your budget rather than choosing from four or five preset options. Loan amounts run from $5,000 to $550,000, and the minimum credit score is 650. Refinancing isn't available in Nevada, and variable rates aren't offered in Alaska, Illinois, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio, Tennessee, or Texas. Sources: Earnest refinance, Credible's Earnest disclosure, NerdWallet.
What sets Earnest apart is what happens after you sign. You can skip one payment every 12 months once you've made six consecutive on-time payments, split your bill into biweekly autopay installments, and change your due date. Cosigners are allowed, but must be added after the rate check and before you submit the full application. Earnest also doesn't require a finished degree if you're within six months of graduation with a job or signed offer, and as of May 2026 it will match your remaining federal grace period for up to nine months.
ELFI
ELFI has a long track record of helping doctors and others in the medical field refinance their student loans. Plus, they are consistently at the top of "best rate" charts and customer service rankings.
The ELFI loan minimum is $10,000 for refinancers, with the maximum being your outstanding loan balance. This can be a huge win for borrowers with high student loan debt, especially doctors.
ELFI doesn’t have specific credit minimums posted, but they do require borrowers to be creditworthy (or have a creditworthy cosigner). One of the few downsides of ELFI, however, is that it's one of the few lenders on this list that does not offer a cosigner release program.
Right now, they offer the following rates:
- Fixed Rate: 4.29% - 8.44% APR
- Variable Rate: 4.74% - 8.24% APR
ELFI is offering an awesome bonus to our readers:
- $599 bonus when you refinance at least $100,000 in student loans.
- $550 bonus when you refinance less than $100,000 but at least $50,000 in student loans.
Student Choice
Student Choice is a platform that connects students with credit union student loan opportunities. It originally opened in the late 2000s with a group of credit unions looking to provide a resource for students to find more affordable student loan options.
One of the things we really like about them is since they are credit union backed, they tend to offer some of the lowest rates in the marketplace.
Right now, they offer the following rates:
Splash Financial
Splash Financial is a student loan refinancing marketplace that works with a few major lenders including Nelnet Bank, Laurel Road, and PenFed.
We highly recommend Splash to medical residents as they offer $100 payments on your refinanced loans during your residency and for up to 6 months afterward.
They also consistently have some of the lowest rates. Right now, they offer the following rates:
- Fixed Rate: 3.99% - 11.24% APR¹
- Variable Rate: 4.74% - 11.24% APR¹
Splash is currently offering College Investor readers a $500 bonus if you refinance a loan over $50,000⁴.
That's a great bonus and you can apply here to get started.
Read our full Splash review here.
Before You Refinance Medical School Loans
Refinancing is permanent. Once your federal loans become a private loan, there is no way back into income-driven repayment or PSLF. Before you apply anywhere, work through these four steps, and if you're unsure on any of them, our article on when medical loan refinancing makes sense covers the trade-offs in detail.
Know what loan types you have. Federal and private loans play by different rules. Refinancing private loans costs you nothing in protections; refinancing federal loans costs you all of them. Log in to StudentAid.gov to see exactly what you hold, and use our federal vs. private student loans breakdown if the loan names are unfamiliar.
Understand your current and future career goals. If there's a realistic chance you'll work at a nonprofit hospital, academic medical center, or the VA, PSLF can forgive your entire federal balance after 120 payments. Our PSLF strategy for 2026 explains how to keep that option open.
Check for loan forgiveness or repayment assistance. Many states and the federal government (through the NHSC and NIH programs) offer physician loan repayment assistance, and some of it applies even to private loans. Our list of student loan forgiveness programs for doctors has the details by state.
Know your financial numbers. The best refinance rates go to borrowers with credit scores above 740 and a low debt-to-income ratio. Pull your credit score, gather proof of income (or your signed attending contract), and know your total balance. If your score needs work, see how to improve your credit score before you apply.
Should You Refinance Medical School Loans?
Student loan refinancing is when you take out a new private student loan to replace your existing loans, ideally at a lower interest rate. For doctors, it makes sense in three situations, and our refinancing tool can tell you quickly whether you're in one of them.
You have private student loans. It almost always makes sense to refinance private student loans to get the lowest rate possible, since you aren't giving anything up. Compare current offers on our best student loan refinance lenders page.
You're certain you won't qualify for PSLF or another forgiveness program. If you'll spend your career in private practice or a for-profit health system, the value of federal protections drops. Even then, read our PSLF checklist first, since some for-profit employers still route through qualifying nonprofit entities.
You can pay the loans off aggressively. The best refinance rates are on 5-year terms. If your attending income lets you clear the balance in five to seven years, a refinance at 4% to 5% will save you tens of thousands compared to RAP at 10% of income. Our student loan calculator shows the difference.
What Changed For Physicans In 2026?
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) rewrote federal repayment starting July 1, 2026, and the changes hit high earners hardest. If you're deciding between keeping federal loans and refinancing, this is the new baseline. Our federal student loan changes timeline tracks every deadline.
SAVE is gone. The SAVE plan ended, and servicers began sending 90-day notices on July 1, 2026 telling borrowers to pick a new plan or be moved to a standard plan. Everyone must be out of SAVE by March 31, 2027. Time in the SAVE forbearance did not count toward PSLF or IDR forgiveness, and interest has accrued since August 2025. See our SAVE plan timeline and the 90-day switch notice coverage.
RAP replaced it. The Repayment Assistance Plan launched July 1, 2026. Payments run from 1% to 10% of adjusted gross income depending on your bracket, with everyone above $100,000 paying the full 10%, minus $50 per dependent. There is no payment cap. A physician earning $300,000 pays $2,500 a month, which on a $250,000 balance is roughly what a 10-year refinance at 3.9% would cost, without the forgiveness. Unpaid interest is subsidized, forgiveness comes at 30 years, and RAP payments do count toward PSLF. Run your own numbers with our RAP calculator and read how RAP works.
PSLF is intact. The Education Department's rule letting it disqualify employers for a "substantial illegal purpose" was vacated by two federal courts on June 30, 2026. The department appealed on August 27, 2026, and the existing employer rules stay in effect during the appeal. Nonprofit hospital employment still qualifies. Read our coverage of the PSLF employer rule appeal.
Don’t Forget To Consider Alternative Physician Student Loan Repayment Options
If you're keeping your federal loans, the two plans worth comparing are PAYE (while it's still open) and RAP, with IBR as a backstop for older loans. For a resident, any of them will produce a low payment. For an attending, PAYE's payment cap is the reason to grab it before July 2027. Our RAP vs. IBR, PAYE, and SAVE comparison shows the payment differences at physician incomes.
Married physicians with a high-earning spouse should look at filing taxes separately. Under both PAYE and RAP, filing separately means only your income counts toward the payment calculation. The trade-off is a higher combined tax bill, and some OBBBA tax breaks aren't available to separate filers, so run both scenarios with a tax professional. Our article on the math behind married filing separately shows how to compare.
If you want a professional to model the whole decision, Student Loan Advice by the White Coat Investor specializes in physician loan planning and will compare PSLF, RAP, PAYE, and refinancing against your actual contract.
Final Thoughts
For attendings in private practice with strong credit, refinancing medical school loans is one of the highest-return financial moves available, and Credible is the fastest way to see whether ELFI, Earnest, or another lender will beat your current rate.
For residents, Splash Financial, SoFi, KeyBank, and Citizens all let you refinance now and pay $100 a month until you finish training. For anyone with a shot at PSLF, don't refinance federal loans at all; our student loan forgiveness for doctors article explains why. Whatever you choose, compare at least three offers, and check our refinancing bonuses page before you sign.
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Methodology
The College Investor is dedicated to helping you make informed decisions around complex financial topics like finding the best student loan refinancing offers. We do this by providing unbiased reviews of the top banks and lenders for our readers, and then we aggregate those choices into this list.
We have picked student loan refinancing lenders based on our opinions of how easy they are to use, their interest rates, any bonuses provided, and a variety of other factors. We believe that our list accurately reflects the best student loan refinancing options in the marketplace for consumers.
Splash Financial
Splash Financial, Inc. (NMLS #1630038), licensed by the DFPI under California Financing Law, license # 60DBO-102545
Terms and Conditions apply. Splash reserves the right to modify or discontinue products and benefits at any time without notice. Products may not be available in all states. Rates and terms are subject to change at any point prior to application submission. The information you provide is an inquiry to determine whether Splash’s lending partners can make you a loan offer. To qualify, a borrower must be a U.S. citizen or other eligible status and meet lender underwriting requirements. Lowest rates are reserved for the highest qualified borrowers and may require an autopay discount of 0.25%. Splash does not guarantee that you will receive any loan offers or that your loan application will be approved. If approved, your actual rate will be within a range of rates and will depend on a variety of factors, including term of loan, creditworthiness, income and other factors. This information is current as of January 17, 2026. You should review the benefits of your federal student loan; it may offer specific benefits that a private refinance/consolidation loan may not offer. If you work in the public sector, are in the military or taking advantage of a federal department of relief program, such as income-based repayment or public service forgiveness, you may not want to refinance, as these benefits do not transfer to private refinance/consolidation loans.
1Autopay Discount. Rates listed include a 0.25% autopay discount.
Annual Percentage Rate (APR) is the cost of credit calculating the interest rate, loan amount, repayment term and the timing of payments. Fixed APR options range from 4.96% (with autopay) to 11.24% (without autopay). Variable APR options range from 4.99% (with autopay) to 11.14% (without autopay). Variable rates are derived by adding a margin to the 30-day average SOFR index, published two business days preceding such calendar month, rounded up to the nearest one hundredth of one percent (0.01% or 0.0001).
2Payment Disclosure. Fixed loans feature repayment terms of 5 to 20 years. For example, the monthly payment for a sample $10,000 with an APR of 5.47% for a 12-year term would be $94.86. Variable loans feature repayment terms of 5 to 20 years. For example, the monthly payment for a sample $10,000 with an APR of 5.90% for a 15-year term would be $83.85.
3Credit Pull Disclosure. To check the rates and terms you qualify for, Splash Financial conducts a soft credit pull that will not affect your credit score. However, if you choose a product and continue your application, the lender will request your full credit report from one or more consumer reporting agencies, which is considered a hard credit pull and may affect your credit.
4Bonus Disclosure. Terms and conditions apply. Offer is subject to lender approval. To receive the offer, you must: (1) be refinancing over either $50,000, $100,000 or $200,000 in student loans depending on the channel partner that is providing the bonus offer (2) register and/or apply through the referral link you were given; (3) complete a loan application with Splash Financial; (4) have and provide a valid US address to receive bonus; (5) and meet Splash Financial’s underwriting criteria. Once conditions are met and the loan has been disbursed, you will receive your welcome bonus via a check to your submitted address within 90-120 calendar days. Bonuses that are not redeemed within 180 calendar days of the date they were made available to the recipient may be subject to forfeit. Bonus amounts of $600 or greater in a single calendar year may be reported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as miscellaneous income to the recipient on Form 1099-MISC in the year received as required by applicable law. Recipient is responsible for any applicable federal, state or local taxes associated with receiving the bonus offer; consult your tax advisor to determine applicable tax consequences. Splash reserves the right to change or terminate the offer at any time with or without notice. Bonus Offer is for new customers only.
Editor: Colin Graves Reviewed by: Chris Muller
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Robert Farrington is the founder of The College Investor and is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading voices on student loan debt and saving for college. He holds an MBA from UC San Diego Rady School of Management and has spent over 15 years researching, writing, and advising on student loans, 529 plans, financial aid programs, and saving and investing for young professionals.
Robert has been featured in the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NBC News, and Forbes, where he has been a regular personal finance contributor for over a decade. His work combines both professional expertise and personal experience – he successfully navigated his own student loan repayment journey and has helped thousands of readers do the same.
He is committed to making the intersection of personal finance and education transparent and accessible. You can learn more about Robert on the About Page or on his personal site RobertFarrington.com.