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Judgment Interest Calculator
What a judgment is actually worth today. Pick the state, put in the amount and the date it was entered, and this works out the interest with the statute shown on screen.
Read this before you rely on a number
Roughly half the states do not use a fixed rate. They tie it to a federal index and republish it every quarter, every six months, or every January. For those states the figure here is the statutory basis and a recent value, not a guarantee of what applies to your file today. Check the state’s published rate and type it in.
The rate that applies is also usually the one in force when the judgment was entered, and in some states it then stays fixed for the life of the judgment while in others it moves with each new publication. That difference can be worth thousands over a decade, and it is decided by the state’s statute, not by a calculator.
Simple or compound
Most states use simple interest on the principal. A few compound annually, and Colorado says so in the statute. If you compound where the state does not allow it, opposing counsel will catch it and your whole figure loses credibility. When in doubt, use simple — you can always argue upward later.
The part people get wrong
Interest runs from the date the judgment was entered, not the date of the breach, the demand letter, or the underlying event. Those earlier periods are pre-judgment interest, which is a different statute, often a different rate, and frequently discretionary.
Costs added after judgment — service fees, sheriff’s fees, recording a lien, an abstract — are usually recoverable but do not always earn interest themselves. This calculator adds them at the end rather than compounding them, which is the conservative position.
Renewal deadlines matter more than the interest
A judgment that expires is worth nothing regardless of how much interest accrued. Renewal windows run from five years to twenty depending on the state, and missing one is the single most common way a collectible judgment turns into a worthless piece of paper. Diary the renewal date the day you take the file.