Free Canadian Mortgage & Land Transfer Tax Calculators

Which tool to reach for, and when

Start with the budget calculator if you haven’t picked a home yet — it shows what you can realistically set aside each month and how long it’ll take to build a down payment. Move to the mortgage affordability calculator once you have a sense of your down payment; it works out the maximum price a lender would actually approve, using your income, your debts, and the mortgage stress test. Once you have an actual price in mind, the mortgage payment calculator for your province turns it into a real monthly payment, CMHC premium and provincial tax included. If you’re putting less than 20% down, the CMHC insurance calculator breaks that premium out on its own — which rate applies, what it costs, and which provinces tax it. And before you sign anything, the land transfer tax calculator for your province shows what you’ll owe in cash at closing, on top of your down payment.

Who this is for

This site is for anyone who wants the real number before they talk to a lender — first-time buyers who find the process intimidating, people weighing two provinces before deciding where to buy, and anyone who’d rather build a budget first and shop for a home second. Start wherever makes sense for you: there’s no wrong door. And every figure you see links back to where it came from — CMHC, Revenu Québec, the Government of Ontario, and more — so you’re never just taking our word for it.

Why Canadian mortgages don’t work like the calculators you’ve used before

Estimates only. The figures below are illustrative examples, current as of July 2026. Every calculator and article on this site is dated and sourced — always confirm the actual numbers with your lender, notary, or the official source linked before you commit to anything.

If you’ve plugged your numbers into a US-built mortgage calculator, the payment it gave you was probably a little too high — because American and Canadian mortgages are calculated differently.

The first difference is compounding — how often interest gets added to what you owe. Canadian fixed-rate mortgages compound semi-annually, twice a year, by law; American mortgages typically compound monthly. It sounds like a technical detail, but it means a calculator built the US way will quietly overstate your real Canadian payment. Every calculator on this site uses the Canadian method, so what you see is what your lender would actually quote you.

The second difference is mortgage default insurance. If your down payment is under 20% of the purchase price, Canadian rules require you to carry it — usually through CMHC, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (SCHL in French). It protects your lender if you ever stop paying, not you. The cost, the premium, is a percentage of your loan that shrinks as your down payment grows: according to CMHC, the standard schedule runs from 4.00% at 5% down to 2.80% at 15% down. The premium is financed into your mortgage, so it costs no cash up front — but in three provinces, Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan, the province also taxes that premium directly, at 8%, 9%, and 6%, and that tax must be paid in cash at closing. It’s the detail most generic calculators miss.

Why your closing costs depend on which side of a provincial border you’re on

Here’s something that surprises a lot of first-time buyers: the same home, at the same price, can cost thousands of dollars more or less to close on depending only on which province it’s in.

Most provinces charge a land transfer tax — a one-time percentage of the purchase price, paid in cash through your lawyer or notary, on top of your down payment. Quebec calls its version the welcome tax (taxe de bienvenue, officially droits de mutation); according to Revenu Québec and the Ville de Montréal, it runs to roughly $5,611 on a $500,000 Montréal home, though a new rebate can now return up to $5,875 of that to first-time buyers. In Ontario, the Government of Ontario’s land transfer tax on a $500,000 home is $6,475, with a first-time buyer refund of up to $4,000.

Then there are the provinces that charge no land transfer tax at all. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador instead charge a modest land-registry fee. According to the Government of Alberta, registering the title and a $400,000 mortgage on that same $500,000 home costs roughly $1,000 total — a fraction of what an Ontario or Quebec buyer pays for an identical purchase price. That’s the whole reason this site is organized by province rather than one generic number: the “right” answer depends on where you’re buying.