Unsecured personal loans are a great alternative to credit cards for making large purchases such as a car, putting the down payment on a house or even consolidating your current debt.

Here are the best personal loan options for 2018.

Peer-To-Peer Lending

Peer-To-Peer Lending is a revolutionary lending style where your average Joe can invest small amounts of money ($5-$100) into larger loans. This allows the investor to distribute risk between multiple loans. The investee on the other hand, gets an interest rate assigned to them based on their credit score, job and other factors. This is a great way to get money for whatever you want or need while other average Joe’s can earn interest for lending to you instead a bank.


Prosper is one option for peer-to-peer personal loans. At Prosper the amount you request is fulfilled by other people just like you in increments of $25, which lessens the risk for everyone involved. At Prosper you can get up to $35,000 and the interest rate can be as low as 6% for a five year loan.

Lending Club

Lending Club is another peer-to-peer lending platform, albeit harder to get approved to use. They offer up to $40,000 for a three or five year loan also starting at 6%. The downside to using Lending Club is that there is an origination fee that you pay back with interest.

Investor Lending

Much like Peer-to-Peer lending, investor lending goes through a person rather than an institution. This means that you can get money without disclosing what it’s for and you can also often get lower interest rates.


SoFi is option for those with good credit. They use investors instead of “peers” to lend you larger chunks of money which means you can get some amazing interest rates as low as 5% APR. Their maximum loan period is seven years and you can get up to $100,000 with no origination fees.

Verified Lending Partners

Verified lending partners are typically banks or institutions that lend money to a third party company who distributes it accordingly. See this page for more information: https://financedistrict.co.nz/loans/personal-loans-no-bad-credit-check/


Payoff is a financial wellness company that uses verified lending partners, which include banks and credit unions to acquire the money to consolidate your debt. Payoff’s service is specifically for paying off credit card debt. The idea is that you consolidate your credit payments into one fairly low interest loan and pay it off over a period of two to five years. They finance up to $35,000 with interest rates starting at 8%.

Traditional Bank Loans

Using the traditional method of bank-originated loans has its benefits as well as its disadvantages. One advantage is that banks are often able to provide larger loans for smaller interest rates. One such loan is that by Lightstream.


LIghtstream is a division of SunTrust bank and they offer personal loans for pretty much everything. Lightstream requires excellent credit, but if you have excellent credit they offer some of the lowest interest rates starting at 2.49%. With Lightstream you can get up to $100,000 with a maximum loan period of seven years.