Calculator Updated with Shareable URLs

The VA disability calculator now supports shareable URLs. Enter your ratings, mark which conditions are bilateral, add your dependents, and click “Copy Link” to share your exact calculation with anyone — a VSO, an accredited attorney, a fellow veteran, or your spouse.

This release also ships a more accurate bilateral factor implementation and a redesigned mobile layout. None of the changes affect how the calculator handles your data: everything still runs entirely in your browser, and nothing you enter is sent to or stored on our servers.

What is new in this release

Shareable URLs

When you click Copy Link, the calculator encodes your full input — every rating percentage, every extremity designation, your dependent status, and any optional fields — into the URL itself. The result is a link like:

/calculator?r=70,50,30,20&b=0,1&dep=spouse-1child

That link is yours to share. When someone opens it, the calculator decodes the parameters and displays the same combined rating, bilateral factor application, and 2026 monthly payment estimate that you saw. Nothing is uploaded; no account is required; the URL is the entire payload.

Common ways veterans have been using shareable links during the beta:

• Sending a scenario to a VSO before an appointment, so the VSO can see exactly what numbers you ran and verify the math.
• Showing an accredited attorney the rating breakdown you are working from, without screenshots.
• Comparing two scenarios side by side — for example, “current ratings” vs. “with the new secondary condition added.”
• Family planning — sharing the dependent-adjusted figure with a spouse so household budgeting reflects the real take-home amount.

Improved bilateral factor

The bilateral factor, described in 38 CFR § 4.26, is one of the most commonly miscalculated parts of VA math. It adds 10% to the combined value of disabilities that affect paired body parts — both knees, both shoulders, both ankles, paired skeletal muscles, and so on — before that result is merged with the rest of the combined rating.

This release reworks how the calculator identifies which disabilities should be grouped together for the bilateral calculation. Previously, the calculator could under- or over-apply the factor in scenarios involving three or more bilateral disabilities. The new implementation matches the worked examples in 38 CFR § 4.26 for every test case we ran, including the asymmetric cases (e.g., a 30% on one knee and a 20% on the other).

A simple worked example:

• Right knee instability — 20%
• Left knee instability — 20%
• Combined value of the two: 36% (per the § 4.25 table)
• Bilateral factor: 10% of 36% = 3.6%
• Adjusted bilateral combined value: 36% + 3.6% = 39.6%

That 39.6% is then combined with any other (non-bilateral) ratings the veteran has. For a veteran whose only ratings were the two knees, the final combined rating would round to 40%, not 36%, because of the bilateral factor.

Redesigned mobile layout

The calculator’s mobile experience has been rebuilt to use larger touch targets, a single-column layout on phones, and clearer rating-input controls. We tested it on iOS Safari and Chrome on Android in screen sizes from 360px wide upward.

Privacy: nothing is stored on our servers

This is worth saying clearly because veterans regularly ask. The VA Disability Hub calculator:

• Runs entirely in your browser using client-side JavaScript.
• Does not send your ratings, dependents, or any other input to our servers.
• Does not require an account, login, or any personal information.
• Stores nothing in our databases — we do not have a database for calculator inputs.
• Encodes shareable links into the URL on your device. We never see the link unless you give it to us.

If you do not click “Copy Link,” your inputs disappear when you close the browser tab. If you do click it, the URL exists only on the device(s) you share it with. This is by design: VA disability information is sensitive, and we have no business holding any of it.

Try it

The updated calculator is live now at /calculator. If you find a scenario where the math does not match what you expect, please contact us — we publish the test cases we use for the bilateral factor and the combined rating table, and we want to know about edge cases.

For the underlying rules our calculator follows, see 38 CFR § 4.25 (combined ratings table) and 38 CFR § 4.26 (bilateral factor). Our 2026 rate tables page shows the monthly compensation amounts the calculator uses.