The Grad PLUS loan limit is not a set dollar figure. Each year your school calculates your cost of attendance, subtracts every other form of aid you receive, and whatever gap remains is the most you can borrow through Grad PLUS. There is no lifetime or aggregate cap. One large caveat sits on top of all of this: under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed in July 2025, graduate and professional students lose access to PLUS loans for any enrollment period beginning on or after July 1, 2026, with only a narrow legacy window for students already borrowing.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 20 USC 1087e – Terms and Conditions of Loans
How Your Annual Grad PLUS Amount Is Calculated
Your school first sets a cost of attendance (COA) covering tuition, fees, housing, food, books and supplies, transportation, and personal expenses.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 20 USC 1087ll – Cost of Attendance From that figure, the school subtracts every other source of aid in your package: scholarships, grants, assistantships, and the $20,500 you can borrow annually through Direct Unsubsidized Loans.3Federal Student Aid. Annual and Aggregate Loan Limits, 2025-2026 Federal Student Aid Handbook The remaining gap is your Grad PLUS eligibility for that year.
A concrete example makes this clearer. If your program’s COA is $75,000 and you have $30,000 in other aid, you can borrow up to $45,000 in Grad PLUS loans that year. A student at a cheaper school with better scholarship funding might have only $10,000 of eligibility, or none at all. The formula resets every academic year because both COA and your aid package can change.
That design puts the financial aid office in control of your ceiling. Schools set their own COA figures and sometimes adjust them for local cost of living. If you believe the published COA undercounts your actual expenses, you can appeal, but the school has the final word.
No Lifetime or Aggregate Cap
Direct Unsubsidized Loans top out at $138,500 combined across graduate and undergraduate borrowing. Grad PLUS loans carry no equivalent ceiling. There is no cumulative amount at which you lose eligibility. The program simply recalculates each year using current COA and aid numbers.3Federal Student Aid. Annual and Aggregate Loan Limits, 2025-2026 Federal Student Aid Handbook
That is how students in long, expensive programs have historically financed everything through federal loans. A four-year medical student at a school with a $90,000 COA could borrow more than $280,000 through Grad PLUS alone over the degree, on top of other federal loans. The year-by-year COA was the only check.
The absence of a hard cap is also what made the program controversial, and it is a significant reason Congress moved to end it.
Grad PLUS Ends for New Borrowers on July 1, 2026
The amendment to 20 U.S.C. § 1087e makes graduate and professional students ineligible for PLUS loans for any enrollment period starting on or after July 1, 2026.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 20 USC 1087e – Terms and Conditions of Loans If you are starting a graduate program in the 2026–2027 academic year or later and have not already borrowed a federal loan for that program, Grad PLUS is not available to you.
Everything above about the annual COA-minus-aid formula and the absence of a lifetime cap still applies, but only for the shrinking pool of borrowers who retain access.
The Legacy Window for Current Borrowers
If you were enrolled in your program and had a Direct Unsubsidized or Grad PLUS loan disbursed before July 1, 2026, you can keep borrowing under the old rules for the shorter of three years or the time left to complete your current program.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 20 USC 1087e – Terms and Conditions of Loans
The protection is fragile. You lose legacy status if you change programs, withdraw from all courses in a term after beginning attendance, or take a leave of absence after July 1, 2026. Any of those shifts drops you into the new rules immediately, with no further Grad PLUS eligibility. If you are close to finishing, think carefully before making enrollment changes during this transition.
New Graduate Loan Caps After July 2026
Without Grad PLUS filling the gap, new graduate borrowers face fixed limits on Direct Unsubsidized Loans. Standard graduate students have an annual cap of $20,500 and a new aggregate cap of $100,000, down from the previous $138,500 combined limit. Students in certain health professions programs get higher ceilings. Medical and dental students, for example, can borrow between $33,000 and $47,167 per year depending on academic year length, with aggregate caps up to $224,000.3Federal Student Aid. Annual and Aggregate Loan Limits, 2025-2026 Federal Student Aid Handbook
Graduate students whose costs exceed these new limits will need to look at private loans, which do not carry the same repayment flexibility or forgiveness options as federal loans. Scholarships, employer tuition assistance, and program cost comparisons matter more than they did when Grad PLUS could absorb whatever was left.
The Credit Check Can Also Limit You
Even within the COA formula, a credit problem can block borrowing. Grad PLUS does not use a credit score, but the Department of Education reviews your record for an “adverse credit history.” You will be denied if you have a debt exceeding $2,085 that is 90 or more days delinquent, has been sent to collection, or was charged off within the two years before your credit report date.
A separate set of events in the five years before your application also triggers denial: bankruptcy discharge, foreclosure, repossession, and unresolved federal tax liens. There is no minimum credit score and no debt-to-income calculation, so the standard is more forgiving than private lenders apply. Many borrowers with mediocre credit still qualify as long as none of those specific triggers appear.
If you are denied, you have two paths. You can find an endorser who passes the same adverse credit check and agrees to repay the debt if you default, or you can submit documentation of extenuating circumstances to the Department of Education. Either route requires completing PLUS loan credit counseling, an online session of roughly 20 to 30 minutes.4Federal Student Aid. PLUS Loan Credit Counseling
What You Actually Receive After the Origination Fee
The borrowing limit set by your school is not the amount that reaches your account. Every Grad PLUS disbursement has an origination fee deducted first. For loans disbursed before October 1, 2026, that fee is 4.228%. On a $40,000 loan, roughly $1,691 is taken off the top, so the school receives about $38,309 while you still owe the full $40,000. If you need exactly $40,000 in usable funds, you have to borrow slightly more to compensate.
Interest also matters when you are calculating how much to borrow. Loans first disbursed between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026, carry a fixed 8.94% rate that locks in for the life of the loan.5Federal Student Aid. Interest Rates for Direct Loans First Disbursed Between July 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026 Interest accrues from the day of disbursement, including while you are in school. In-school deferment delays payments but not accrual, and the unpaid interest eventually capitalizes into your principal. On a $50,000 Grad PLUS loan at 8.94%, roughly $4,470 in interest accrues per year, which is why the balance you repay often looks much larger than what you originally borrowed.