Choosing between two lenders when the ceilings are close
When two ceilings are within about $1,000 of each other on $30,000 over 10 years, the difference between the lenders is smaller than the gap inside either lender's own range, which has a median of $9,658 (checked 2026-08-25). Check whether the order holds at both ends, whether both ranges are on the same autopay basis, and whether the minimums and terms fit your balance before the ceiling figure decides anything.
How big is the difference between two close ceilings?
A few hundred dollars, in the pairs this site lists side by side. LendKey's fixed ceiling costs $16,072 in interest over the life of a $30,000 loan on 10 years, and Purefy's fixed ceiling costs $17,057 (checked 2026-08-25). Laurel Road's fixed ceiling costs $17,077 and ISL Education Lending's costs $16,386 on the same balance and term (checked 2026-08-25). Both of those are pairs where the two ceilings sit within $1,000 of each other.
Compare that with the gap inside one lender's own range. Across the 24 computable products, the gap between interest at the floor and interest at the ceiling on $30,000 over 10 years runs from a minimum of $3,518 to a maximum of $14,443, with a median of $9,658 (checked 2026-08-25). LendKey's own gap is exactly that median figure, $9,658, because its fixed range runs from 3.98% to 9.24% (checked 2026-08-25). The spread inside LendKey's own range, $9,658, is nearly ten times the $985 between LendKey's ceiling and Purefy's.
That is the whole argument of this article in one comparison. Where the ceilings are close, the ranking on the lender list is a starting order, not a decision. The ceiling still matters, because it is the worst case the lender itself has put in print, and what refinancing costs explains why this site leads with it. But the rate you are offered will land somewhere inside a range wider than the difference between the two ceilings.
Here is the subtraction for both pairs, using the ceiling figures from the computed table (checked 2026-08-25):
You can rerun both pairs on your own balance and term in the calculator.
Does the order hold at the floor and at the ceiling?
It depends on the pair, and this is the first of three questions to ask. For LendKey and Purefy, the order holds at both ends. LendKey's floor costs $6,414 and Purefy's floor costs $7,292 in interest on $30,000 over 10 years, so LendKey is lower at the floor and at the ceiling (checked 2026-08-25). That tells you only that LendKey's published band sits lower at both ends. Your two offers can still land anywhere inside each band: an offer near LendKey's ceiling ($16,072) costs more than an offer near Purefy's floor ($7,292), so the published order is not the offered order (checked 2026-08-25).
For Laurel Road and ISL Education Lending, the order flips. At the ceiling, ISL is lower at $16,386 against Laurel Road's $17,077 (checked 2026-08-25). At the floor, Laurel Road is lower at $7,728 against ISL's $8,448 (checked 2026-08-25). Laurel Road's fixed range starts lower, at 4.74%, and ends higher, at 9.75%; ISL's runs from 5.15% to 9.40% (checked 2026-08-25). A pair like this cannot be decided from the published pages alone. Only the two actual offers settle it.
| Pair | Interest at the floor | Interest at the ceiling | Order at both ends |
|---|---|---|---|
| LendKey Fixed | $6,414 | $16,072 | LendKey lower at both |
| Purefy Fixed | $7,292 | $17,057 | |
| Laurel Road Fixed | $7,728 | $17,077 | Flips: Laurel Road lower at floor, ISL lower at ceiling |
| ISL Education Lending Fixed | $8,448 | $16,386 |
^ Interest over the life of a $30,000 loan on a 10-year term at the published floor and ceiling, from data/computed_for_articles.json using each rates page (LendKey, Purefy, KeyBank's Laurel Road page, iowastudentloan.org), checked 2026-08-25.
The vs pages on this site put the floor and the ceiling of both lenders on one table, so a flip is visible in the first row. ISL vs Laurel Road shows the flipped pair above, and LendKey vs Purefy shows the pair where the order holds. The article on why the advertised rate is the bottom of the range explains why the floor alone tells you so little about where you will land.
Are both ranges on the same autopay basis?
No, not always, and this is the second question. LendKey states that its rates "include 0.25% autopay discount" (checked 2026-08-25). Purefy's page does not state whether its range includes an autopay discount, so the dataset records the basis as not stated (checked 2026-08-25). Of the 24 computable products, 16 state the range already includes autopay and 8 do not state the basis (checked 2026-08-25).
That matters for the $985 difference. LendKey's 9.24% ceiling is a with-autopay figure. Purefy's 9.74% ceiling might already include a discount from one of its partner lenders, or it might not; Purefy's page says its rates are "based on information provided to Purefy by lenders" (checked 2026-08-25). A 0.25% discount is smaller than the distance between a 9.24% and a 9.74% ceiling, but it is not zero, and you cannot tell from Purefy's page which side of the comparison it sits on.
Laurel Road and ISL are the cleaner pair on this question. KeyBank's Laurel Road page states that "All rates shown reflect a $100,000 loan amount and include a 0.25% interest rate discount for enrolling in AutoPay" (checked 2026-08-25). ISL states that "All rates include an auto-debit discount" of 0.25% (checked 2026-08-25). Both ceilings are with-autopay figures, so the $691 is a like-for-like difference. The Method page records how each product's basis was read and what "with autopay" means on this site.
Do the published minimums and terms fit your balance?
Sometimes not, and this is the third question. It is the easiest to check and the most often skipped. Laurel Road publishes a $5,000 minimum and terms of 5, 7, 10, 15, and 20 years (checked 2026-08-25). ISL publishes a $5,000 minimum, a $300,000 maximum, and a higher $10,000 minimum for California residents; its term lengths are not listed on its rates page (checked 2026-08-25). ISL's page also states that Connecticut, Maine, and Puerto Rico applicants are ineligible (checked 2026-08-25).
LendKey publishes a $5,000 minimum, with "$10,001 in Arizona, $50,001 in Connecticut, $6,001 in Massachusetts", and a bachelor's degree requirement (checked 2026-08-25). LendKey's page says "Choose from 5 to 20-year terms" without listing the specific terms (checked 2026-08-25). Purefy's minimum and terms are not stated on its published rate page (checked 2026-08-25).
| Lender | Minimum | Maximum | Terms published |
|---|---|---|---|
| LendKey | $5,000 (state exceptions) | not stated | "5 to 20-year", specific terms not listed |
| Purefy | not stated | not stated | not stated |
| Laurel Road | $5,000 | not stated | 5, 7, 10, 15, 20 years |
| ISL Education Lending | $5,000 ($10,000 in California) | $300,000 | not explicitly listed |
^ Published minimums, maximums, and terms from each rates page (LendKey, Purefy, KeyBank's Laurel Road page, iowastudentloan.org), checked 2026-08-25. "Not stated" means the figure is not on the lender's published page.
A $691 difference in interest at the ceiling is not worth anything if one lender in the pair will not take your balance or your state. I put this question last in the list because it is a yes-or-no filter, and the two questions above only matter for pairs that pass it. Laurel Road's page and ISL's page on this site list what each lender publishes and what it leaves unstated.
What do the vs pages show, and what do they not show?
They show the two published ranges, the interest at both ends for the reference case, the gap, and the autopay basis, each with a check date. They do not show the rate you will be offered, and they do not rank the two lenders on anything but the published figures. A vs page for the Laurel Road and ISL pair will show a flip, and it will say so, but it cannot tell you which side of the flip your offer falls on.
The vs pages also do not show anything about approval, service, or the paperwork. This site has not borrowed from any lender listed, and nothing on it is a personal result. What it can show is that a lender's published page either states a figure or does not. Where a minimum, a term list, or an autopay basis is missing, the page says "not stated" rather than filling it in from elsewhere. A marketplace's combined range spans several partner lenders, so its floor and ceiling can belong to different lenders; who publishes a full range records how those rows are read, and why a marketplace's combined range, like LendKey's or Purefy's, is a different kind of figure from a direct lender's range.
Is the term a bigger lever than the choice of lender?
Yes, by a wide margin in these pairs. On Laurel Road's fixed ceiling, interest over the life of a $30,000 loan is $8,024 on a 5-year term, $17,077 on 10 years, and $27,206 on 15 years (checked 2026-08-25). Moving from 10 years to 15 years on the same lender adds far more interest than the $691 that separates Laurel Road from ISL at 10 years. The monthly payment at Laurel Road's ceiling is $392.31 on 10 years, and that is the figure the term trades against (checked 2026-08-25).
The same pattern holds on the marketplace pair. LendKey's fixed ceiling costs $7,575 on 5 years and $25,544 on 15 years, against $16,072 on 10 years (checked 2026-08-25). If you have not settled the term, settle it first. The article on how the term changes interest over the life of the loan walks through the five published terms on one balance, and it is the more useful comparison to run before the lender pair.
Where the answer changes
- If the two ceilings are more than the median gap apart, which is $9,658 on $30,000 over 10 years (checked 2026-08-25), the ceiling difference is larger than the range you might land in, and the test is whether the lower ceiling sits below the other lender's floor. If it does, the two published ranges do not overlap, and no offer inside either range can reverse the order.
- If the order flips between the floor and the ceiling, as it does for Laurel Road and ISL, do not decide yet: get both offers, and compare the two offered rates against the published ends. Laurel Road's floor is 4.74% and ISL's ceiling is 9.40% (checked 2026-08-25), but once both offers are in hand the published ends drop out: on the same term, the lower offered rate is the cheaper loan. Run each offer through the calculator, and treat a difference under 0.35 points, the distance between the 9.75% and 9.40% ceilings, as inside the noise of one lender's range.
- If your loans are federal, none of this comparison applies until you have checked what refinancing them privately gives up. Refinancing federal loans with a private lender gives up federal repayment options, and studentaid.gov is where to check that before running any figure here.
Who this article is not for
This article does not help if the two lenders you are comparing have ceilings far apart, such as Brazos at $9,949 and College Ave at $25,874 in interest at the ceiling on $30,000 over 10 years (checked 2026-08-25). For a pair like that, Brazos' ceiling of $9,949 sits below College Ave's floor of $11,781, so the two published ranges do not overlap and the three questions here add nothing you can check (checked 2026-08-25). It also does not help if one of your two lenders publishes only a floor, as Earnest, ELFI, and Advantage Education Loan do (checked 2026-08-25), because there is no ceiling to subtract.
Sources
- LendKey, student loan refinancing page, https://www.lendkey.com/student-loan-refinancing/, checked 2026-08-25
- Purefy, student loan rate page, https://www.purefy.com/student-loan-rate, checked 2026-08-25
- KeyBank, Laurel Road student loan refinancing page, https://www.key.com/personal/student-loans/student-loan-refinancing.html, checked 2026-08-25
- ISL Education Lending, refinance loan page, https://www.iowastudentloan.org/refinance-loan/student-loan.aspx, checked 2026-08-25
- Over the Life, data/computed_for_articles.json (interest at the floor and the ceiling, gaps, and payments), generated 2026-08-25
- Over the Life, review-kit/facts.json (count-US-gap, count-US-autopay, count-US-fixed-ceiling, count-US), checked 2026-08-25
How this article was made. Written by Kaz, an independent publisher. All figures come from the companies' own published documentation or regulator publications; each figure carries the date it was last checked. I have not borrowed from these lenders, and nothing here is a personal result. The arithmetic is shown so you can recalculate with your own numbers. Found an error? Use the contact form; corrections are logged on the Editorial policy page.
Related articles
- The ceiling, the floor, and the gap
- Why the advertised rate is the bottom of the range
- What the advertised rate leaves out
Written by Kaz (pen name). Figures are copied from the sources' published pages on the dates shown. We have not used these products. Corrections: contact form.