BDC LIFT · Live calculator
BDC LIFT Loan Calculator — Estimate Your Rate, Payment, and Canadian-Integrator Savings
Set your revenue, sector, project budget, and track. The calculator runs the BDC LIFT eligibility rules locally in your browser and shows the monthly payment, total interest, and how much you'd save by picking a Canadian-incorporated AI integrator — all in real time. No signup, no data leaves your machine.
Your project
Drag the sliders. Results update live on the right.
LIFT Track A requires $1M+. Track B requires $5M+.
Track A is sector-agnostic. Track B is restricted to manufacturing, transport, wholesale, construction, agriculture, mining, and architecture/engineering.
Track A caps at $2M for AI-only projects.
Optional — for Track B borrowers consolidating prior equipment financing alongside the AI build.
Estimates only. BDC's 2.25% preferential rate is the program's published preferential rate; the ~5.75% standard rate is an approximation based on BDC's public rate sheet for SME term loans and varies with market conditions, your credit profile, and BDC's underwriting outcome. Talk to BDC for a binding quote and to Creatrixe for the integrator scope.
How the calculator computes your rate
The math is straightforward — standard amortisation, applied to two interest-rate scenarios. We're not modelling BDC's underwriting outcome (that's their call), or your specific credit risk, or principal-payment postponement (LIFT allows up to 24 months of deferred principal — once you take that into account, your real first-two-years cash flow is lighter than what's shown here). What this calculator does is give you a defensible baseline so you can walk into a BDC conversation knowing the order of magnitude.
The amortisation formula is the same one mortgage brokers use:
- P — your project budget, taken straight from the slider.
- r — monthly rate, which is the annual rate divided by 12.
- n — total number of monthly payments (60, 84, or 120 depending on your term selection).
- Monthly payment = P × (r × (1+r)n) / ((1+r)n − 1)
Total interest is simply the monthly payment times n, minus the principal. Total cost is principal plus total interest. The "standard-rate cost" tile runs the same calculation at the ~5.75% rate so you can see the integrator-choice spread in dollars rather than percentage points.
The 2.25% preferential rate, explained
BDC LIFT carries a published 2.25% preferential interest rate — but only when the borrower's chosen AI solution OR system integrator is Canadian. This is a deliberate policy lever: the Government of Canada is funding the program to grow Canadian AI capacity, not to send the capital to US or offshore integrators. There are two ways to unlock the rate:
- Canadian-built AI solution — the underlying AI model or platform is Canadian. In practice this is rare for SME projects, because the dominant models (OpenAI's GPT family, Anthropic's Claude, etc.) are US-hosted. Canadian-hosted Llama deployments and a handful of Canadian-built specialist tools qualify, but they're not the default stack.
- Canadian system integrator — the firm scoping, building, integrating, and supporting the AI work is Canadian-incorporated, with staff and delivery in Canada. This is the practical lever for most SMEs. Creatrixe (Burnaby, BC) satisfies this clause.
On a $250K, 5-year loan, the difference between 2.25% and a ~5.75% market rate is roughly $24,000 over the term. On a $1M, 10-year loan it's closer to $200,000. The integrator choice isn't a procurement detail — it's a five-figure-to-six-figure rate decision baked into your first BDC conversation. Toggle the Canadian-integrator checkbox above to see the dollar number for your scenario.
To be clear about who controls what: the rate is BDC's, not Creatrixe's. We don't set it, we don't discount it, we don't broker it. What we do is build the AI system the loan funds — and our being Canadian-incorporated happens to be one of the two qualifying conditions BDC has published. If you'd rather work with a non-Canadian integrator, that's your call; you'd just pay the standard SME rate and accept that the work likely runs on the same underlying models either way.
BDC LIFT vs. a standard commercial AI-project loan
If you're weighing LIFT against a generic bank line of credit or a commercial term loan to fund the same AI work, the comparison shakes out roughly like this. Numbers are illustrative on a $250K, 5-year project; your real terms will move with credit profile, sector, and lender.
| BDC LIFT | Bank term loan | |
|---|---|---|
| Indicative rate | 2.25% – 5.75% | 7% – 9% |
| Loan range | $25K – $5M | $50K – $5M+ |
| Principal postponement | Up to 24 months | Rarely available |
| Mandatory advisory | Yes — BDC Advisory plan | None |
| Use restriction | AI adoption (defined scope) | General business purpose |
| Intake | Continuous (no cohort) | Continuous |
| Reporting | BDC outcome reporting required | Standard covenants only |
The honest read: LIFT is meaningfully cheaper than commercial debt for the same use case, and the principal-postponement window is genuinely useful when you're a year out from seeing the productivity lift in your numbers. The trade-offs are the use-restriction (the capital has to fund AI work, not working capital or general expansion) and the mandatory Advisory layer (which adds a few weeks to the front of the process but tends to surface scoping mistakes before they become budget mistakes).
For SMEs that wouldn't qualify for LIFT — sub-$1M revenue, non-Canadian, or building something the program doesn't cover — a standard bank loan is the alternative. Read the full BDC LIFT explainer for the program from first principles, or the eligibility deep dive if you're not sure whether your business clears the floor.
What this calculator doesn't tell you
A few caveats worth saying plainly:
- It doesn't model your BDC underwriting outcome. Your actual rate could come in different from either of the two scenarios shown here, depending on your credit profile and BDC's review.
- It doesn't include the BDC Advisory Services plan cost (delivered by BDC or a vetted advisor, partially subsidised inside the program).
- It doesn't model principal-payment postponement. LIFT allows up to 24 months of deferred principal, which makes real first-two-years cash flow lighter than this view suggests.
- It doesn't model SR&ED tax credits, provincial co-funding, or any other stacking opportunity. Talk to your accountant — some LIFT-funded AI work qualifies for SR&ED, which can return 35-40% of eligible expenditure as a refundable credit on top of the loan terms.
- The 2.25% preferential rate is conditional on the Canadian-integrator-or-Canadian-solution clause being met to BDC's satisfaction at underwriting. Toggling the checkbox here doesn't guarantee BDC will agree your specific arrangement qualifies. Get this confirmed in writing before you sign.
For the longer pre-call briefing — what we'd tell you in a readiness consult, in writing — book a call below.
Want a real number, not an estimate?
30-minute LIFT readiness call — we'll size your scope, sanity-check the budget, and tell you whether LIFT is the right capital for what you're trying to build. If it isn't, we'll say that too.