What is a typical balance transfer fee?

Usually 1% to 5% of the amount you move, commonly around 3%, charged once per transfer, so about £120 on a £4,000 transfer at 3%. A fee can still beat months of interest at 20% to 30% APR, but the longest 0% deals often carry the biggest fees, so the trade-off depends on how long you need and how fast you can repay. The ladder planner on the tracker lets you test it with your own numbers.

I've been stung by a 0% card deal ending — twice. So I built a tracker so it never happens again

Q: Where do I find my 0% end date?

It is usually on your monthly statement, often just below the promotional-interest line, in your card's app or online banking under account details or promotional rates, and in your original approval email. The promotional clock typically runs from when the account opened, not from when you made the transfer.

I've been caught out by this more than once

I've been stung by a 0% credit card deal ending more than once. Not because I don't understand how balance transfers work — I write about this stuff now — but because the single most important date in the whole arrangement, the day the 0% actually runs out, kept slipping past me.

The first time, I'd moved a chunk of spending onto a 0% card, told myself I'd clear it "well before the deal ends", and then life happened. The end date was sitting in a statement PDF I hadn't opened in months. I found out the hard way, the way most people do: a line of interest appeared on the next statement, at a rate north of 20%. It wasn't a catastrophe. It was just money I handed over for nothing, because I'd lost track of a single date.

Why the date is so easy to miss

Here's the bit that genuinely irritates me. When you take the card out, the 0% length is the entire pitch — "0% for 20 months!" is plastered everywhere. The moment you've signed up, that countdown vanishes. The end date gets tucked near the bottom of a monthly statement, under a heading like "promotional rates", in a document you have to go looking for. It's somewhere in the app too, three or four taps deep, if you know which screen.

And if you want to check it with an actual human? Good luck. More and more, the first thing you hit is a chatbot built to route you anywhere except a person. By the time you've convinced it you have a real question, you've burned twenty minutes confirming a date that should have been a notification in the first place. None of this is an accident. The issuer earns the revert-rate interest when you forget — so the incentive to make that date loud and obvious just isn't there.

A £4,000 balance left on a card at 24.9% costs roughly £83 a month in interest for doing nothing — about £1,000 over a year. The deal was free money while it lasted. The forgetting is where it gets expensive.

So I built the thing I wanted to exist

After the second time, I stopped being annoyed and built it. The idea is almost embarrassingly simple: one place to put every card and its 0% end date, so the countdown lives somewhere you'll actually see it instead of in a PDF you'll never open.

You add each card — issuer, end date, and optionally the balance and the rate it reverts to. The tracker shows the days left, colour-coded by urgency, the monthly payment you'd need to clear the balance before the deadline, and the interest you'd be on the hook for if you let it lapse. Everything stays in your browser, on your device. There's no account to create and nothing to enter unless you want to.

Free · No signup

0% Balance Transfer Tracker

Log every 0% balance transfer and purchase deal in one place. See the days left, the monthly payment to clear each card in time, and the interest at stake — plan a balance-transfer ladder, and turn on optional email and calendar reminders before the rate jumps.

Open the tracker →

The part I lean on most is the optional reminder. Add your email and it nudges you before each deadline — at eight weeks, two weeks, and on the day — and every reminder carries a one-tap calendar file, so the date lands in Apple or Google Calendar without any faff. It's the notification the bank never sent. You can unsubscribe in one click, and the tracker works perfectly well without ever handing over an email if you'd rather not.

Clear it, or ladder it?

If you can clear the balance before the deadline, the maths is easy: divide what's left by the months remaining, and that's your monthly payment. If you can't, the usual alternative is to move the remaining balance onto a fresh 0% card and keep going at no interest — a "ladder". That only works if the transfer fees (typically 3–5%) stay below the interest you'd otherwise pay, and if you keep getting approved for new cards. I added a small ladder planner to the page so you can put your own numbers in and see which way actually comes out cheaper, instead of guessing.

I'll be clear about what this is and isn't: a reminder and planning tool, not advice, and it doesn't recommend specific cards. When you're ready to compare actual deals, that's a job for an independent comparison site or an FCA-authorised broker. I keep my own balances visible inside my net-worth picture for the same reason I built this — a debt you can see is a debt you deal with. And if you want the broader case for avoiding interest wherever it's legal to, the Martin Lewis post makes it better than I can.

Where this goes next — and the honest bit

Right now the tracker is deliberately neutral. It tells you when your deal ends and leaves the "what next" entirely to you. But the obvious missing piece — the moment you realise you need to switch — is "...to what?", and that's where I'd love to take it.

Here's the honest version, because I'd rather say it out loud than pretend otherwise. Recommending or linking to specific credit cards is a regulated activity in the UK. To do it properly — to show you the best 0% deals you could move to right now, and earn a referral if you take one out — WealthR would first need to go through Financial Conduct Authority authorisation. That's a real piece of work, and I'm not there yet. But it's on the roadmap as something I want to do the right way round: get authorised, then build the comparison, so the tool can close the loop it currently leaves open — and yes, so there's eventually a revenue model behind all these free tools that isn't just me funding them on evenings and weekends.

I'd rather be upfront that referral income is the plan than bury it the way the card companies bury that end date. Until that authorisation exists, there are no affiliate links here, no card recommendations, and nothing on this page is a financial promotion — just a date, a countdown, and a nudge. You can see what else is coming on the WealthR roadmap.

Frequently asked

What happens when my 0% balance transfer deal ends?

Any remaining balance starts accruing interest at the card's standard rate — typically around 20–30% APR in the UK — from the day the promo ends, with no grace period. That's why people either clear the balance or move it to a new 0% card before the deadline.

Where do I find my 0% end date?

Usually on your monthly statement (often just under the promotional-interest line), in your card's app or online banking under "account details" or "promotional rates", and in your original approval email. The promo clock typically runs from when the account opened, not from when you made the transfer.

What's a typical balance transfer fee?

Usually 1–5% of the amount you move (commonly around 3%), charged once per transfer — so £120 on a £4,000 transfer at 3%. A fee can still beat months of interest at 20–30% APR, but the longest 0% deals often carry the biggest fees, so the trade-off depends on how long you need and how fast you can repay. The ladder planner on the tracker lets you test it.

Does the tracker need a signup or share my data?

No. The tracker runs entirely in your browser and your card details are saved only on your own device. Email reminders are a separate, optional opt-in you can turn on or off at any time.

This is a personal account and general information, not financial advice. WealthR is a planning and reminder tool, is not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, and does not recommend specific credit cards. Rates, fees and rules vary by card and change over time — check your own paperwork and eligibility, and for personal recommendations speak to an FCA-authorised adviser or broker.