A free guide to VA benefits.
Written plainly. Built by a U.S. Army veteran and former VA HUD-VASH housing and peer specialist.
Look up rating criteria for hundreds of conditions, walk through the claims process step by step, and find your state's veteran benefits.
Free. No signup. Your answers stay on your device.
What brings you here?
Pick whichever path matches what you're looking for. Everything on the site is free.
See what you may be eligible for
Answer a few questions about your service and get a personalized list of federal and state benefits to look into. About three minutes.
Take the 3-minute briefingDisability ratingsLook up a specific condition
Rating criteria, diagnostic codes, evidence requirements, and C&P exam tips for hundreds of conditions across every body system.
Browse rating articlesClaims processNavigate the claims process
Step-by-step guides on filing, evidence, nexus letters, C&P exams, appeals, supplemental claims, and the PACT Act.
Browse claims guidesState benefitsFind your state's benefits
Property tax exemptions, education waivers, employment preference, license programs — what your state offers beyond the federal VA.
Browse 50 states + DCCalculatorCombine your ratings
Calculate your combined VA rating using the official "whole person" formula, including the bilateral factor and final rounding.
Open the calculatorStart here
A few of the most-read pages across rating criteria, the claims process, and the blog.
PTSD Rating Criteria
How the VA rates PTSD under 38 CFR 4.130, what evidence helps, and common reasons for low initial ratings.
Read article →Claims guideBurn Pit & PACT Act Claims
Presumptive conditions under the PACT Act, who qualifies, and how to file or re-file a previously denied claim.
Read article →BlogHow to File a VA Disability Claim
A plain-English walkthrough of the claims process — from gathering evidence to what happens after you submit.
Read article →BlogHow VA Combined Ratings Work
Why two 50% disabilities do not add up to 100%. The "whole person" formula, the bilateral factor, and the final rounding step.
Read article →Recently updated
See everything that's changed →- Jul 9The disability calculator now explains the math
The combined-rating calculator used to be a bare tool. The page now walks through how VA math actually works — the whole-person formula and the rounding rule, the bilateral factor, and how dependents change the monthly amount — with a 2026 compensation-rate table checked cell-by-cell against VA.gov (the December 1, 2025 COLA) and eight common questions answered. All of it loads as regular page text, so it reads fine without JavaScript.
- Jul 9Six core claims guides rewritten in depth
The guides on filing your first claim, VA burial benefits, TDIU (Individual Unemployability), nexus letters, the claim timeline, and VA back pay roughly doubled in length: comparison tables, worked examples, and five FAQs each. Every figure was re-verified against VA.gov for 2026 — including the correct 100% rate paid under TDIU ($3,938.58 a month) and the current average claim-completion time of about 76 days.
- Jul 9Guides now load their full text without JavaScript
The procedural guides — filing walkthroughs, appeals, C&P exams, presumptives — used to ship only their first paragraph in the page HTML, with the rest filled in by scripts. The full body of every guide is now in the page itself, so guides read completely in reader mode, over slow connections, with JavaScript turned off, and for search engines.