About this tool
Veteran Benefits GPS™ is a private website.
Veteran Benefits GPS LLC, an Illinois limited liability company, built it and operates it.
On this page, "I", "me", and "my" mean that company.
This site is not the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
It is not the U.S. Department of Defense, the Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs, or any other agency.
None of these agencies endorse, sponsor, or review it.
The names of agencies, programs, and forms appear here so you can find the official page.
They do not imply any relationship.
Nothing on this site is legal, medical, financial, or claims advice.
The site does not tell you what to file, whether you qualify, what rating you may receive, or what to say to the VA.
It shows the order of steps, the official starting place for each one, and the form number where there is one.
Everything it shows about benefits is general information and links.
Its tagline reads "Free turn-by-turn directions through the VA process."
The directions are that order of steps and the official page where each one starts.
They are general.
They are never directions about your own claim.
Decisions about benefits are made by the agencies that administer them.
Veteran Benefits GPS LLC is not a VA-accredited attorney, claims agent, or Veterans Service Organization (VSO) representative.
This site does not prepare, present, or prosecute claims.
Free help from an accredited VSO representative exists.
This site points to it where representation matters.
The places it points to are VA-accredited county Veteran Service Officers, state Veterans agencies, and the Veteran Service Officers of the federally chartered Veterans Service Organizations.
You can also find an accredited VSO representative through the VA's own accreditation search.
Rules, deadlines, forms, and dollar amounts change.
Every route here ends at an official page.
That page is the authority.
If this site and an official page disagree, the official page is right.
I would like to hear about it at casey@vbgps
There is no charge to use this site, no upsell, and nothing you have to give me to use it.
The tool offers an optional account from November 11, 2026.
You can make one so it remembers your place.
It costs nothing and unlocks no content.
Signed out, you get the same content a signed-in Veteran gets.
This site takes no fee from any Veteran for any benefit.
The work may be funded by sponsorships, contributions from supporters, grants, prizes, contracts, licensing, and services in kind.
None of it comes from charging a Veteran.
People who want to support the work can contribute on the support page, under the Supporter Terms.
Veteran Benefits GPS is a for-profit business.
Contributions support this tool and are not tax deductible.
A contribution is not a charitable donation, and it never changes what the tool shows anyone.
You can use the whole tool without telling me anything about you.
Without an account, the tool keeps these in your own browser and nowhere else:
- your place
- the dates your journey started and was last touched
- a version label
- whether its tips are on
- which tips you have seen
The tool offers an optional account from November 11, 2026.
If you want it to remember your place when you switch devices or clear your browser, you can make one.
An account takes an email address and nothing else.
If you make one, there is no password.
You get a single-use link by email, you click it, and you are in.
These are stored against an account:
- your email address
- your place on the map (which territory is open, which stops you have opened and completed, and which steps you have checked off)
- the dates your journey started and was last touched
- a version label the tool writes itself
- the dates the account was created and last used
- the date and time you accepted the Terms of Use and which version you accepted
- whether you turned on product updates and check-ins
- a scrambled fingerprint of each sign-in link, never the link itself (a link stops working within fifteen minutes)
That is the list, and the Privacy Policy prints it in full.
The tool never stores any of these, with an account or without one:
- your postal address
- your phone number
- your date of birth
- your Social Security number
- your VA file or claim number
- your service record
- your disability rating
- any medical condition
- any fact about a claim
- any document (there is nowhere in the tool to upload one)
The short questions at the front door touch some of these subjects in general terms.
They only pick where you start and which of the map's filters start out on.
Your answers stay on your device and are never stored.
The tool never asks for your name either.
If you contribute on the support page, the Supporter Terms say what I keep.
The support page is separate and creates no account.
The Route Pass is the picture and link of your route that you can save or share.
It keeps your route in its own link and never sends it to me.
It carries nothing about who you are.
Anyone you give it to can open the same route.
Nothing an account holds is ever sold, rented, or traded.
None of it is shared with anyone except the companies that host the site, host the account, and deliver its email.
They handle it only to do that.
Beyond those companies, it goes only to:
- an accountant or lawyer I engage, who must keep it confidential
- anyone a court order or a law compels me to answer
- a successor that takes over the site and the tool, if you agree to its move
Apart from your name on the Supported By page when you ask for it, no sponsor or supporter ever receives anything about you from me.
With an account, you can do all of this yourself, from inside the tool, whenever you want.
You can see everything stored against the account.
You can download a copy.
You can delete all of it.
You can change your email address without losing your journey.
If you have an account and it is not signed in to or used for twenty-four months, I delete it and everything stored against it.
I send you a warning email thirty days before I do.
The Privacy Policy describes this exactly, including what the hosting provider sees when it serves a page.
On the tool's screens a sponsor is credited in two places only, by name, tier, and logo.
One is the sponsor strip.
It is one slim row at the foot of each screen and on the landing page.
The strip is labeled "Sponsors" so you never have to guess what it is.
The other is the foot of the Route Pass.
The Route Pass is the picture and link of your route that you can make in the tool to save or share.
There the first sponsor the strip lists is named, with its tier and logo.
That credit stays on the picture.
The strip lists national sponsors first.
It then lists the state, region, and county sponsors that match the county you pick on your own device, if you pick one; when no sponsor serves the county you pick, or you do not pick one, it lists every sponsor in turn.
I never learn which county you pick.
A tap on a logo opens that sponsor's tile on the Sponsored By page and never the sponsor's own site.
The Sponsored By page shows each sponsor's name and link.
A sponsor pays for advertising.
On this site that buys recognition and nothing else.
A sponsor gets no say in what the tool's guidance shows, links to, or recommends.
A sponsor gets no place in any territory's orientation, steps, or glossary, or among the official pages the tool points to.
A sponsor gets no influence on the order of anything in that guidance.
A sponsor gets no information about any Veteran, ever.
A credit identifies and never sells.
It carries no call to action, no price, and no qualitative or comparative claim.
If a sponsor is told anything about how this site is used, it is how many times a page was viewed, in total.
It is never who viewed it.
There are no lists, no identifiers, no segments, and nothing about any one person.
Some businesses and bodies are not allowed to sponsor this site at all.
They are:
- claims consultants, benefit maximizers, and unaccredited representatives
- lenders and brokers marketing to Veterans on their benefit status
- pension and asset-transfer advisers aimed at Aid and Attendance
- a firearms or alcohol business
- a Veterans Service Organization or a government body
- any business whose pitch depends on a Veteran's benefit status changing
Sponsor artwork is screened.
Anything carrying a government seal, an imitation of one, or wording that implies a federal endorsement is refused.
Call 988 and press 1, text 838255, or chat at veteranscrisisline.
The Veterans Crisis Line is free, confidential, and open every hour of every day.
Copyright 2026 Veteran Benefits GPS LLC.
All rights reserved.
Veteran Benefits GPS and the compass mark are trademarks of Veteran Benefits GPS LLC.
815 Illinois Compiled Statutes (ILCS) 505/2YYY, as amended by Public Act (P.A.) 103-783 (effective January 1, 2025), sets out two statements, to be given "in upper case type in size at least as large as the type size of the written communication or by voice-over," by any person providing Veteran or military benefits services "in exchange for any financial compensation, benefit or thing of value." This tool is free to every Veteran and gives general information and links. Both statements are true, and both are carried anyway, whether or not the statute reaches this tool: on the About page and in the Terms of Use, in upper case, no smaller than the body copy of that page, in full contrast, always expanded, and never hidden behind a control. Every word is the statute's:
THIS BUSINESS IS NOT ENDORSED OR SPONSORED BY, OR AFFILIATED WITH, THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS OR THE ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS, OR ANY FEDERALLY CHARTERED VA ACCREDITED VETERAN SERVICE ORGANIZATION. YOU MAY QUALIFY FOR OTHER VETERANS BENEFITS BEYOND THE BENEFITS FOR WHICH YOU ARE RECEIVING SERVICES HERE.
VETERAN AND MILITARY BENEFITS SERVICES ARE AVAILABLE FREE OF CHARGE FROM VA ACCREDITED COUNTY VETERAN SERVICE OFFICERS, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS, AND THE VETERAN SERVICE OFFICERS OF FEDERALLY CHARTERED VETERAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS. TO LEARN MORE, CONTACT THESE ORGANIZATIONS OR THE ILLINOIS ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE AT 1-800-382-3000.