APR monitor

APR Monitor: What 24 Tribal Lenders Publish (Nov 2026)

By Josephine Adler · reviewed by Elias Thornberry · updated 2026-11-09

This is issue #1 of a standing series. Each quarter the research desk re-checks what tribal-affiliated lenders actually publish about price — not what reviewers claim, not what ads imply, but the rate figures the lenders themselves put on the record. The first sweep covered 24 indexed lenders between November 2 and November 6, 2026. Per-lender stamps, including what each site displayed and on which page, live in the index itself; this piece is the summary and the method.

What the sweep counts, and what it refuses to

Three kinds of price disclosure count as a touchpoint: a published APR range on a rates or FAQ page, an example APR shown in marketing copy or a sample payment, and a fee schedule expressed per $100 borrowed. What does not count: promise language (“flexible,” “competitive”), third-party review-site figures, or numbers we inferred ourselves. Where a lender publishes nothing, we record nothing — and publish that fact instead of filling the gap with arithmetic, because a modeled APR is not a disclosure.

Every touchpoint also carries a location: a rates page, an FAQ entry, or a sample-payment box on the landing page. The location matters for drift detection — the lender that buries its range in an FAQ is precisely the one whose range can change without anyone noticing. Each stamp in the index records the value, the page, and the sweep date, so the next issue can diff against a fixed baseline rather than against memory.

The published scale, from 34.5 percent to about 900 percent

The spread in what lenders volunteer is enormous — more than a factor of twenty-five between the lowest published tier and the highest example figure. Both ends are real, and neither is typical of the whole market.

Three reading notes. Uprova’s 34.5% best tier sits under the 36% benchmark that governs most state caps and the Military Lending Act — but it is a top-tier figure, and advertised tiers are earned by the strongest applicants. MobiLoans’ line-of-credit pricing behaves differently from installment pricing, because charges accrue on an outstanding balance rather than a fixed schedule. And the Green Arrow and Enable Loans figures are examples, snapshots of one pricing scenario rather than a bounded range, which makes them easy to over-quote in either direction.

Two clocks, and two kinds of number

Published touchpoints differ along two axes at once, and confusing them produces most of the bad comparisons circulating in reviews. The first axis is the clock. MobiLoans’ line-of-credit charges accrue against an outstanding balance over time, while installment products such as Big Picture Loans and Northern Star price a fixed schedule — the same headline APR behaves differently on the two structures, and a credit line drawn and repaid quickly can cost far less than its ceiling suggests. The second axis is the kind of figure. A range (250%–699%) is a statement about how pricing behaves across the applicant pool; an example (~825%) is one scenario the lender chose to display; a fee schedule ($29.50 per $100) is a formula you must convert yourself. Ranges are the most informative and the least common; examples are the most quotable and the least general. The next sweep tracks each lender’s kind of figure separately, because a lender that shifts from a published range to examples-only has changed its disclosure in substance, not merely in digits.

The agreement-only holdouts

A second group discloses nothing public at all. Plain Green, Bright Lending, Lendumo, Little Lake, and Post Lake — among others in the sweep — showed no rate figure on any page a prospective borrower can read before applying. Their pricing surfaces only inside the loan agreement, at the point where a borrower has already invested time in the application and often has a number in mind. We still index these lenders and record their non-disclosure as a fact in its own right, because in a market where the biggest names publish nothing, “no figure available” is itself a price signal.

Reading an APR you were never given

If a lender quotes only fees, the conversion can be done in your head, in words, with one rule: a fee is a rate wearing a disguise.

First, normalize to $100 per pay period. A $29.50 charge per $100 is 29.5% per period; a $30 charge per $100 is 30%. Second, annualize by periods per year: a 14-day clock runs 26 periods a year, so 30% per period is roughly a 780% nominal APR, and MaxLend’s $29.50-per-$100 schedule works out to about 767% on the same clock. Third, watch the term, because it dilutes or concentrates the number: the same 30% charge spread over a 30-day clock annualizes to roughly 365%, not 780%. Fourth, ask what happens on repeat: a fee charged on the full balance every period compounds into a total cost far above any single-period figure. Finally, skip the APR entirely and ask one question the disclosure cannot dress up: the total of payments — every dollar you will have paid by the end.

What issue #2 will track

The next sweep, planned for early 2027, will re-stamp all 24 lenders and watch three things specifically: drift inside published ranges (an announced 250%–699% that quietly becomes 299%–699%); whether the agreement-only holdouts begin publishing public figures as litigation pressure continues; and portfolio moves, since a brand’s pricing often follows its holding company rather than its own history. The docket keeps moving — our companion piece on the enforcement timeline records the rulings — and pricing pages move with it. The record on November 9, 2026, after a re-check against the index: no published touchpoint in the sweep changed.

Questions this piece answers

Sources

• Uprova published rate tiers, lender site (November 2026 sweep)
• Big Picture Loans published APR range, lender site (November 2026 sweep)
• Spotloan cost disclosure for new borrowers, lender site (November 2026 sweep)
• MobiLoans line-of-credit pricing disclosure, lender site (November 2026 sweep)
• MaxLend fee schedule, lender site (November 2026 sweep)
• Published rate pages and example APRs for the remaining indexed lenders (November 2026 sweep)