At £600 you are just past the most common loan request, and often borrowing for something with a fixed price: a deposit on a rented home, a car repair that came in over budget, or a replacement appliance. This page prices the extra £100, shows what £600 costs over each term, and works through an affordability check for people who already have other credit. Dot Dot Loans is a credit broker, not a lender.
£500 or £600? Pricing the extra £100
At the representative rate over 12 months, the extra £100 adds £11.63 a month and £39.56 in interest. Over 6 months, it adds £20.04 a month.
That is worth paying if the extra covers a cost you know about. It is not worth paying as a cushion. The lender will check you can afford the full amount, and interest on money you do not spend is a straight loss.
£600 over 6 to 36 months
Over 36 months, you would repay £1,397.88, more than twice what you borrowed. For an amount this size, terms beyond 12 or 18 months add a lot of cost for a modest drop in the monthly payment.
Representative Example: Borrow £1,000 over 18 months. 18 monthly repayments of £89.22. Total amount repayable: £1,605.96. Interest: £605.96. Annual interest rate: 59.97% (fixed). Subject to application approval by the lender. Not all lenders offer loans up to £5,000. Representative APR 79.5% (Variable). Any representative monthly repayment shown is for illustration only, based on our representative APR. Your actual repayments will be confirmed by the matching lender if your application is approved.
If you already repay other credit
Most people applying for a loan already have some credit. In the first half of 2026, 75.4% of applications made through us with complete income and spending figures came from people already repaying other credit, and one in four (24.9%) came from people committing more than 10% of their income to it before any new borrowing.
Take someone with £2,000 a month take-home pay and £150 a month of existing repayments, the median figures in our data. Adding £600 over 12 months at £69.79 a month takes their total credit repayments to £219.79, about 11% of their income (illustration, representative 79.5% APR).
The lender will also look at rent, bills and other essential spending. The real question is what is left once all of those are paid, not the percentage on its own.
What applications at this size were for
For applications between £501 and £1,000, utility bills were the most common stated reason (31.8%), followed by emergency cash (19.9%) and home improvement (19.6%). Vehicle costs accounted for 13.4% and debt consolidation for 9.2%. Source: our Borrowing Barometer, January to June 2026.
Borrowing for a tenancy deposit
If the £600 is for a deposit, check the alternatives first. Some councils run rent deposit or bond guarantee schemes for people who cannot raise a deposit. In England, a deposit is capped at five weeks' rent for most tenancies, and your landlord must protect it in a government-approved scheme. Moving costs tend to arrive together, so add up the deposit, the first month's rent and removal costs before deciding how much to borrow.
£600 suits a specific, priced cost when your income is steady over the term you choose. If you are borrowing because your money runs out before payday each month, a loan will not fix that, and a free debt adviser can help you find what will.
- £500 loans: what a lender looks at for the most common request
- Loans for moving house: budgeting for the costs of a move
- £1,000 loans: the representative example explained line by line