Published 14 July 2026 · Last reviewed 14 July 2026
Key takeaways
- Our bridging loan calculator gives you an indicative read — a figure close enough to plan around, sourced from our lender panel’s engine. It is not a quote.
- The figure that catches people out is the gap between the gross loan (the headline facility) and the net loan (what actually reaches your solicitor’s account after the deductions come out). Reading the input label carefully is what keeps you from under- or over-borrowing.
- How the interest is treated — retained, serviced or rolled-up — changes the net loan, the monthly cost and the total cost. The right choice depends on your exit timing and your cash position, not on the headline rate.
- Change one input — loan-to-value, entity, regulation status, or whether works are involved — and the indicative rate moves, because the lender shortlist behind that input moves.
- Between the calculator figure and a real offer, the lender adds four things: your confirmed credit profile, a surveyor’s valuation, evidence of your exit, and your solicitor’s report on title. That is the broker-judgment layer the calculator cannot see.
What this article does
People run a bridging calculator and then are not quite sure what they are looking at — which number is the money they receive, which is the money they repay, and how close any of it is to a real offer. This article walks through every figure the calculator returns, explains what changes when you change an input, and names the four pieces of information the lender adds before an indicative figure becomes a real offer. Read it once and you will know exactly what you are looking at. As always, this is general information, not advice on your situation.
What the calculator gives you
When you run the bridging calculator you get a handful of core figures plus some supporting fields:
- Gross loan — the headline facility size. This is what the lender writes the loan against; it includes the arrangement fee and, depending on the interest treatment, the interest, both rolled into the facility.
- Net loan — what actually arrives in your solicitor’s account on completion, after the arrangement fee, retained interest, valuation fee and lender legal fees are deducted from the gross.
- Monthly cost — the monthly interest cost at the indicative rate, shown for the term you selected. Some lenders bill this monthly (serviced), others deduct it up front (retained), others let it accrue and bill at exit (rolled-up).
- Total cost — the sum of all interest plus the arrangement fee plus other deductions over the full term. This is the all-in cost, not just the interest.
- Fee basis indicator — whether the arrangement fee is calculated on the net loan or on the grossed-up facility (more on this below).
Supporting fields will typically include the loan-to-value at which the indicative rate is sourced, the entity flag (personal or limited company), the regulation flag, and the works flag (purchase-only or refurbishment). Every one of these moves the rate band the calculator returns.
Gross loan vs net loan — why the difference matters for what hits your account
This is the one that catches people out. The instinct is to read “loan amount” the way you would on a residential mortgage — money you receive. In bridging it is not that simple.
When a lender quotes you a facility, they quote the gross loan — the headline figure. You do not receive the gross loan. Several things come out of it before any money reaches your purchase:
- The arrangement fee — the lender’s facility fee, usually deducted from the gross loan.
- Retained interest — on most bridging facilities the interest for the term is held back from the advance rather than paid monthly, so the lender keeps the interest for the agreed number of months out of the gross figure.
- Lender legal and valuation costs — depending on the lender, some of these come out of the advance too.
What is left after all of that is the net loan — the money that actually lands. So you borrow the gross, you receive the net, and you repay the gross plus any interest not already retained. This is why a bridging calculator asks whether you want to enter the figure you need to receive or the facility size you want written — it back-solves differently depending on which you mean.
Get the input label wrong and the result is misleading: put the gross figure where the calculator wants the net and you under-borrow and have to top up at completion; put the net figure where it wants the gross and you over-borrow. Read the input label carefully — and if you are unsure which one your case needs, work backwards from the net you actually require and let us check the gross facility that supports it. The calculator shows the indicative gross and net side by side so you can see the gap before you call.
Arrangement fee on net or gross — the small difference that adds up
Lenders calculate the arrangement fee on one of two bases:
- Fee on net loan — the percentage is applied to the cash you need to receive; the fee is added on top, and the gross is the sum of the two.
- Fee on gross loan — the percentage is applied to the grossed-up facility, which includes the fee itself.
The difference is easy to miss but real, and it grows with the size of the facility. If you are comparing two lenders’ headline rates and one is “on net” and one is “on gross”, you are not comparing like-for-like. The fee-basis field on the calculator tells you which basis the indicative figure is sourced against, so you can read the two on the same footing.
Retained, serviced, rolled-up interest — how the calculator handles each
There are three ways the interest is paid, and the calculator lets you select which one you want and shows the net loan, monthly cost and total cost for each:
- Retained interest — the lender calculates the interest for the full term up front and deducts it from the gross loan. Your net loan is lower, but you have nothing to pay monthly. It suits borrowers who want zero monthly cost and have a confident exit; the trade-off is a smaller net.
- Serviced interest — the lender pays you the full net loan and bills you monthly for the interest, like a standard mortgage. Your net is the highest of the three; your monthly cash flow has to absorb the payments. It suits borrowers with strong income coverage.
- Rolled-up interest — the interest accrues against the loan over the term and is paid at redemption. Your net is high and you pay nothing monthly, but the total cost at exit is higher because interest builds on a larger balance through the term.
The right choice depends on your exit timing and your monthly cash position — not on the headline rate. We help you choose at the fact-finding stage.
Why the rate changes when you change LTV, entity, regulation, or works
The single most useful thing you can do is run the calculator twice and watch the indicative rate move when you change one input at a time. Each input change cascades through the lender shortlist:
- Loan-to-value up — the shortlist of lenders willing to lend at that LTV narrows, and the indicative rate tends to move up.
- Entity changes (personal to limited company SPV, or the reverse) — the lender shortlist swaps materially. Not every bridging lender lends to limited companies; not every limited-company-capable lender lends to newcos without personal guarantees. The rate band moves with the shortlist. We cover this in detail in how brokers frame your bridging case.
- Regulation flag changes — the shortlist changes again. Regulated-mortgage permissions are a sub-set of the bridging panel, and regulated principal-residence bridging often prices competitively against unregulated bridging at the same LTV, for the reasons we set out in the FCA-regulated bridging article.
- Works flag changes — light-refurbishment funding routes come into play, each with a different day-one LTV and a different specialist sub-panel.
Run the calculator with your case as you think it sits, then run it again changing one input. The difference in the result is exactly the difference a different lender shortlist produces — engine-sourced work the spreadsheet on your kitchen table cannot do.
What the calculator can’t see — the broker-judgment layer
The calculator is honest about its limits. It works from engine-sourced indicative rates against standard case shapes. It cannot:
- See your credit file. The lender’s decision-in-principle will. Adverse credit, recent missed payments, CCJs or a thin file move you to a different sub-set of the panel that the calculator does not pre-filter for.
- Assess your exit-route plausibility. A bridge with “remortgage onto a buy-to-let” as the exit is only as strong as the buy-to-let the borrower can actually qualify for at exit. A broker stress-tests the exit before recommending the bridge.
- Identify special conditions of sale or title issues. Auction packs, restrictive covenants, short leases, defective titles — none of this is visible to the calculator. The valuation surveyor and your solicitor surface these; the broker reads them.
- Pre-qualify against lender appetite for your specific case shape. Lenders publish criteria and exercise discretion within them. Knowing which lender will stretch on which feature for which borrower is judgment, not a lookup table.
- Match unusual security types or vulnerability considerations. Mixed-use buildings, semi-commercial, ex-local-authority blocks, borrowers with capacity considerations — these go to specialists. The calculator returns a generic-case rate band; the broker fits the specialist.
In short, the calculator gives you the indicative cost of money for a standard-shaped case. The broker layer adds the probability of completion for your actual case. Both matter.
From indicative to real offer — the four data points the lender adds
Between the indicative figure on the calculator and an actual offer of advance, the lender adds four pieces of information:
- A confirmed credit profile, via a soft search or a full decision-in-principle. This either confirms the indicative rate band or moves you to a sub-band.
- A confirmed valuation from a RICS surveyor. The calculator works from the figure you typed in; the lender works from the surveyor’s number. If those disagree, the LTV moves and the rate may move with it.
- A confirmed exit — for a refinance exit, a buy-to-let or residential decision-in-principle from the exit lender; for a sale exit, evidence of marketing or an agreed offer.
- A confirmed legal pack — your solicitor’s report on title. Special conditions, covenants, lease issues and planning issues all surface here.
Once those four are in, the indicative rate either holds or moves to a confirmed offer rate. In the cases we see, the indicative figure tends to track the offered figure reasonably closely when the inputs were accurate — and the gap usually opens when an input was wrong (a regulated case typed in as unregulated, an LTV that turned out higher after the valuation, or a credit profile worse than the borrower remembered).
Frequently asked questions
Is the figure on the bridging loan calculator the actual cost I’ll pay?
It is the indicative cost. The engine sources the rates from our lender panel against a standard case shape that matches the inputs you typed. The actual cost is confirmed once the lender has your credit profile, the surveyor’s valuation, your exit evidence and your solicitor’s title report. In the cases we see, the indicative figure tends to land reasonably close to the offered figure when the inputs were accurate.
Why is the rate higher when I tick “limited company SPV”?
Because the lender shortlist for SPV borrowers is a different sub-set of the panel, and that sub-set tends to price a little wider on average — particularly for newco SPVs without trading history. There is no rule that limited-company is automatically more expensive; there are cases where it is the same or close. But the typical movement across the panel when you flip the entity flag is upward.
What’s the difference between the gross loan and the net loan on the calculator?
The gross is the facility the lender writes — it includes the arrangement fee and, depending on the interest treatment, the retained interest. The net is what actually arrives in your solicitor’s account after those deductions. You borrow the gross, you receive the net, and you repay the gross plus any non-retained interest.
Can I trust an online bridging calculator if I haven’t spoken to a broker?
You can trust it as an indicative read — treat it the way you would treat the indicative monthly cost on a residential mortgage comparison site: a sighting shot, not an offer. The figures move once the lender adds the four data points named above. The honest thing for a calculator to give you is a figure close enough to plan around, with the limits named, which is what ours does.
How close is the indicative rate to what I’ll be offered?
Reasonably close, in the cases we see, when the inputs are accurate. The gap usually opens when an input was wrong — a regulated case typed in as unregulated, an LTV that turned out higher after the surveyor’s valuation, or a credit profile worse than the borrower remembered. The checklist in our bridging-case framing article is designed to keep the inputs accurate.