Changed

What Is Changed?

Changed (formerly known as ChangEd) is a debt payoff app built around a simple concept: round up your everyday purchases to the nearest dollar, and use that spare change to make extra payments on your debt.

Buy a coffee for $4.35, and Changed rounds up to $5.00, setting aside the $0.65 difference. Those round-ups accumulate in a holding account, and once they hit a threshold, Changed sends the money as an extra payment to your debt — typically student loans, though the app also supports credit cards and other debt types.

The idea is that small, painless contributions add up over time. You don’t feel the individual round-ups, but over months and years, they can chip away at your balance.

Who Is Changed Best For?

Student loan holders. Changed was originally built for student loans and has the strongest integration with student loan servicers. If you’re chipping away at student debt and want an automatic boost to your payments, this is the app’s sweet spot.

People who struggle to make extra payments. If you always intend to throw extra money at your debt but never quite get around to it, Changed removes the decision from the equation. It just happens. You spend money like normal, and the round-ups take care of the extra payments in the background.

Small-step starters. If the idea of finding hundreds of extra dollars per month for debt payments feels impossible right now, round-ups are a gentler starting point. They won’t eliminate $50,000 in debt quickly, but they build the habit of directing money toward debt — and that habit matters.

People who want something alongside their main payoff plan. Changed works best as a supplement, not a strategy. Pair it with a structured payoff plan and a budget, and the round-ups become a small but consistent bonus on top of your regular extra payments.

Pricing

Changed costs $3/month. There’s no free tier. The subscription fee is charged regardless of how much you round up in a given month.

This is worth doing the math on. If you average $40/month in round-ups, the $3 fee represents 7.5% of your extra payments going to Changed rather than your debt. If you use the round-up multiplier (2x or 3x) to increase your contributions, the fee becomes a smaller percentage. But on months where you don’t spend much, the ratio can be less favorable.

Our Take

Changed is a clever idea with a real limitation: the amounts are small. For most users, round-ups generate somewhere between $30 and $60 per month in extra debt payments. That’s not nothing — over a year, it could be $360-$720 of extra principal payments you wouldn’t have made otherwise. But it’s not going to transform your debt payoff timeline on its own.

The $3/month fee is the main sticking point. On a $40/month round-up, you’re paying Changed almost 8% of what they’re sending to your debt. A manual monthly transfer would accomplish the same thing for free. The value of Changed is purely in the automation and the “set it and forget it” convenience.

If automation is what you need to make extra payments happen at all, Changed earns its fee. Some of us are wired to skip the manual transfer every month, and $3 to ensure it actually happens is a reasonable price. But if you’re disciplined enough to set up an automatic bank transfer yourself, you can replicate what Changed does without the subscription.

Our recommendation: use Changed as a supplement, not a substitute. Build your debt payoff plan with a dedicated strategy tool, make your regular extra payments, and let Changed add a little extra on top. Think of it as the bonus round, not the main game.