The 600% gap: highest and lowest payday loan APR by US state

There is no national price for a payday loan. The annual rate a borrower pays runs from roughly 114% in the most restrictive states that still allow the product, past 650% in the states with no cap at all, to zero in the states that have closed it down. The number is set almost entirely by which state line you are standing behind.

Why It Matters

Payday loans are regulated at both federal and state levels, and each state treats them differently. There’s no single cost lenders charge across the U.S., but some states may set APR and maximum lender fee caps or completely ban payday lending to protect residents. Knowing your state’s specific rules is one of the most useful things you can do before borrowing.

Payday loans come with real trade-offs: high fees and short repayment terms that require a clear plan to manage well. According to CFPB research, 4 in 5 payday loans are rolled over or renewed. Without a solid understanding of the terms — or in states with looser regulation — it’s easy to end up paying more in interest than the amount originally borrowed. That’s exactly why we think borrowers deserve clear, state-specific information.

Part of the challenge is that the real cost of a payday loan isn’t always obvious. Fees are often quoted as $10–$30 per $100 borrowed, which can look small until it’s translated into an annualized rate. And for people with limited credit history or irregular income, options can already feel narrow, which makes understanding the full cost of what’s available even more important.

This leaves room for debate. On the one hand, strict loan regulations and APR caps of 36%, which are considered a safe threshold for small loans, would help reduce the financial burden. On the other hand, this would only appear to solve the problem. Underserved and vulnerable consumers would still lack access to most traditional credit products, leaving them exposed to unexpected expenses and financial emergencies.

At 1F Cash Advance, we believe in a comprehensive approach that begins with a general understanding of how payday loans operate across states. We reviewed questions recently submitted by borrowers and found that many people want more clarity on the terms and real costs involved before they commit. This research is meant for anyone weighing a short-term loan as an option — to help them understand how these loans work, what they cost, and how to use them wisely.

Executive Summary

A payday loan in the United States does not have one price. The advertised annual percentage rate on the same small, short loan ranges from about 114% in Colorado to roughly 652% in Idaho, and in the states that cap rates at 36% the product simply does not exist.^1,5 The national figure most often quoted, near 391%, comes from the standard $15-per-$100 fee on a two-week loan, but few borrowers actually live at that average.⁹

The split is regulatory, not regional. States with no rate cap, including Idaho, Utah, Texas, Nevada, and Missouri, let the fee structure push APRs well past 500%.^1,7 A growing block at the other end, around 18 states plus the District of Columbia, holds small loans to 36% or less, which prices the two-week payday model out of the market entirely.^5,6 The same $300 borrowed for two weeks costs about $16 in Colorado and about $70 in Texas.⁸ Where you borrow decides what you pay, by a factor of more than five.

Our Research Approach

The 1F Cash Advance team conducted thorough research to make this article useful and practical for borrowers. Here are the factors we considered:

• Payday loan APRs by state. Our experts relied heavily on WalletHub’s payday loan statistics and the Center for Responsible Lending’s typical-APR-by-state analysis to calculate the true APR hidden behind per-$100 fees in each state.
• Price transparency. We explained how payday loan APRs can range from 114% to over 780% across different states and showed how a $15-per-$100 fee converts into an APR of 391%.
• Legal documents and non-commercial data sources. We used legal status information from the Consumer Federation of America and CRL, data from the Center for Responsible Lending, and statutory codes, administrative regulations, and licensing laws of particular states to ensure accuracy and transparency.
• State regulatory gaps. The research highlights states with the highest APRs — where weak regulation leaves borrowers most exposed — to help residents understand the risks before taking out a loan.
• Recent legislative changes. Our experts reviewed recent shifts across states to demonstrate that protections are expanding, but high-APR exposure still remains in many states.

Based on everything we gathered, we created this content to help borrowers check their own state’s rules instead of relying on national averages, understand the full cost of a loan before committing, and make the choice that works best for their situation.

Methodology and Sources

APR figures are average advertised rates for a small single-payment payday loan, typically a $300 loan on a 14-day term, drawn from WalletHub’s 2025 state ranking, the Center for Responsible Lending’s state APR analysis, and the National Consumer Law Center’s 2025 survey of state lending laws. State legal status is taken from the Consumer Federation of America’s paydayloaninfo.org and CRL. APRs on payday loans are sensitive to loan size and term, so a state’s “typical” rate is a representative figure rather than a single statutory number; where a state’s statutory maximum differs sharply from its real-world average, both are shown. The recency window is two years; figures are dated where older. Every quantitative claim carries a numbered citation.

The High End: Where There Is No Cap

In states without a rate ceiling, the fee structure alone sets the price, and it climbs past 500% routinely.

Idaho, Utah, Delaware, and Missouri sit among the states that impose no APR ceiling on small loans; lenders set the fee and the annual rate follows.⁴ In Texas the workaround is structural: lenders register as Credit Access Businesses and layer a broker fee on top of a third-party loan, which is how the typical Texas APR clears 500% with no statewide cap to stop it.¹ Historically Texas has run higher still, with CRL putting the typical rate near 664% in earlier years.⁷

Missouri is the clearest example of how a weak cap reads worse than none. Its law limits interest and fees to 75% of the principal, which on a two-week loan translates to a statutory maximum near 1,955% APR; in practice lenders charge less, and CRL puts the real Missouri average at about 527%.⁷ Either number sits far above any safe-credit benchmark.

The Low End: Caps That Price the Product Out

A 36% APR is the line consumer advocates treat as the threshold of safe small-dollar credit. At or below it, the payday model cannot turn a profit, so the loan disappears.

Below these come the states that closed the product down. Around 18 states plus the District of Columbia hold small loans to a usury cap at or under 36%, which CRL and the Consumer Federation of America describe as effectively prohibiting high-cost payday lending.^5,6 Massachusetts runs the tightest in that group at 23%.² In these states a borrower’s effective payday APR is zero, not because rates are low but because no licensed lender offers the two-week product at all.

The 36% line is not arbitrary. It is the cap the federal Military Lending Act sets for active-duty service members and the level CRL recommends nationally; states that adopt it see payday storefronts leave the market.⁶ By CRL’s count, 20 states and DC now cap payday rates around 36% or require equivalent protections, and no state has authorized new storefront payday lending since 2005.⁶

What the Spread Costs a Borrower

The APR is abstract. The same loan, priced in two different states, makes the gap concrete.

Pew’s analysis found the same $300 two-week loan costs about $16 in Colorado and about $70 in Texas, the same four largest lenders charging close to whatever each state allows.⁸ Stretched over the months most borrowers actually take to repay, the gap widens: a $300 loan that runs five months costs roughly $172 in Colorado against about $702 in Texas.⁸ The median payday loan is about $350 on a two-week term, and roughly 80% are rolled over or reborrowed, so the high-state pricing compounds rather than resolves.⁸

Across the country the drain is large. CRL estimated payday fees pulled about $2.4 billion a year from borrowers, concentrated in the no-cap and high-cap states.³ The national average APR sits near 400%, but that single figure hides a range that runs from the low triple digits to past 650%.³

2024–2026: The Map Kept Shifting

The two ends of the range are not static. Recent sessions moved several states toward the cap end, and a few loosened.

The trend has run toward tighter caps. New Mexico adopted a 36% cap in 2023, Minnesota’s took effect in 2024, and Washington strengthened its anti-evasion rules in 2024 to make clear its 36% cap covers all amounts a borrower pays.⁴ The NCLC counts 45 states plus DC capping rates on at least some consumer installment loans, with about half prohibiting high-cost short-term payday loans outright.⁴

A few states moved the other way. Florida raised its top rate to 36% and applied it to the first $10,000 of a loan in 2024, and Kansas widened its 36% rate to cover the entire loan effective January 1, 2025, both lifting the maximum APR on mid-size loans.⁴ Among the no-cap states, the high end held: Idaho, Utah, and Texas remained at the top of the 2025 ranking.¹

Net direction. The cap end of the range is growing and the no-cap end is shrinking, but slowly. The headline spread, from roughly 36% (or zero, in practice) to past 650%, has not closed; it has simply shifted more states toward the protected end while leaving the highest-cost states untouched.^1,4

The Range in One View

From the cap states to the no-cap states, the cost of the same small loan spans more than a 600-point APR range.

The lesson mirrors the state-by-state pattern in consumer lending generally: the cost of short-term credit is a policy choice, not a market outcome. A borrower with identical credit, borrowing an identical amount for an identical term, pays nothing extra in a cap state, low triple digits in the most restrained permitting states, and more than 650% in the states that have chosen not to set a ceiling.

Sources

Report generated June 2026. Figures are sourced as cited and dated; confirm current statutory caps before acting on them. State APRs are representative averages for a typical small single-payment loan and vary with loan size and term. “0% / no product” denotes states where a 36% or lower usury cap makes the two-week payday model commercially unavailable, not a literal zero-cost loan.