Detailed Personal Loan Comparison Across 11 Criteria: Best Egg Personal Loan vs Upgrade Personal Loan
We’re going to compare personal loans from Best Egg and Upgrade. We’ve spent years working in the lending industry and we track dozens of lenders. We want to break down these two lender so you can see which one might be better for your situation.
The first thing we are going to look at is the personal loan amounts Best Egg and Upgrade Offer.
Best Egg’s minimum loan amount is $2,000 and Upgrade will issue loans as low as $1,000. So, if you are looking for a little bit of money to handle an emergency, Upgrade offers a little more flexibility on the low side. If you are looking for a more substantial amount of money, both Best Egg and Upgrade will lend up to $50,000.
I will point out that Best Egg will also allow you to stack multiple Best Egg loans. Of course, we don’t want to get buried in debt, but the ability to stack loans can mean that you can initially borrow the bare minimum of what you need knowing that you can go back if you run into further trouble. For both of these lenders, it’s important to remember that the amount that they offer you will depend on your particular financial situation.
Loans from Best Egg have terms between 3 and 5 years. I am a bit concerned about a $2,000 loan at a three year term. That’s just too long to pay that amount of money back. Upgrade’s terms range from 2 to 7 years. Even for $50,000, seven years is a long time to be in debt. No matter how long your loan is, if you make extra principal payments in the first 6-8 months of the loan, you will save a lot of money on interest over the course of the loan.
Best Egg’s minimum APR is 8.99% and Upgrade’s minimum is 8.49%. That doesn’t seem like much of a difference, but better is better, so Upgrade gets credit for a lower bottom interest rate. Both of them have maximum APRs that cap out at 35.99%.
Best Egg charges an origination fee between 0.99% and 8.99% while Upgrade’s origination fee ranges between 1.85% and 9.99%. Best Egg has the better fee here. The origination fee is a percentage of the borrowed amount and comes out of the proceeds of the loan. So, if you borrow $10,000 and have a 5% origination fee, you will receive $9,500 but will still need to repay the $10,000. Remember that the origination fee is accounted for in the APR. The APR is the origination fee plus the interest rate. All things being equal, you want a lower origination fee if you plan on paying off your loan early. Paying off early will save you on the interest you would have paid, but you don’t get a reimbursement of the origination fee.
Best Egg doesn’t offer any particular discounts, but Upgrade will give you a discount if you sign up for Autopay, if you use their loan to consolidate other debt, or if you secure the loan with the title to your motor vehicle.
Both Best Egg and Upgrade target borrowers who have credit scores between 620 and 700 for personal loans.
They will lend down to 620, but that doesn’t mean that you are guaranteed to be accepted.
They both also offer both unsecured loans as well as secured loans. A secured loan is where you offer your motor vehicle title as a guarantee of repayment. Normally, it’s not a good idea to risk losing your assets when borrowing money, especially if you can help it. But, sometimes securing a loan is the only way to get the money that you need. You just need to be careful that you aren’t putting yourself in a worse situation if bad financial luck hits.
Best Egg will not accept a cosigner, but Upgrade will. A cosigner is someone who agrees to pay off your loan if you fail to repay it. If you can qualify for the loan that you need, there is little reason to entangle a loved one in the process. But, if you have a spouse or loved one that has a stronger credit profile than you do, add them as a cosigner might make all the difference in getting the loan you need. It’s good that Upgrade offers this option.
Both Best Egg and Upgrade will directly pay off your other debts if you are using their loan to consolidate credit card balances or other personal loans. Not only is this convenient, it shows that they know this loan will replace your other debts and not just stack on top of them. Because it won’t make your debt-to-income ratio worse, it should make it easier to be approved with them.
Best Egg charges a $15 late fee and Upgrade charges $10. So, Upgrade wins this category as well. But, they might not be as good as they sound. Best Egg doesn’t charge any other fees, but Upgrade will charge a Failed Payment fee of $10. If you don’t have enough money in your account when Upgrade tries to pull a payment using an ACH connection to your account, you could get hit with both a late fee and an failed payment fee. So, Best Egg gets credit for not having additional fees.
So, let’s summarize what we know about Best Egg and Upgrade.
You can see that generally speaking, Upgrade wins more categories than Best Egg does. But Best Egg is not a bad company. For many people, the most important two things are whether they can get the money they need at the lowest possible price. If Best Egg would give you the money you need at a lower cost, there’s no reason you shouldn’t go with them. That’s why we always recommend that before you accept a loan, you should shop around. Find the best deal. At The Yukon Project, we’ve tried to make shopping around easy. If you visit our marketplace page, you can apply to any one of our other featured lenders. Behind the scenes, we will check your rate with up to 40 other lenders. Our partners use a soft credit check, so applying won’t hurt your credit score. We will show you all of the approved offers so you can pick the loan that’s best for you.
If you have any questions about either one of these lenders that we didn’t cover, leave a comment below and we will try and answer it. If you found this video useful, please like it and subscribe to our channel. Thanks for watching.
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