Work out your combined rating

Put in the ratings you already have. The calculator shows the answer and the arithmetic that produced it, because the number alone is the part people argue with and the steps are the part that explains it.

Nothing you type leaves your device. This page has no form to submit, no email box, and nothing to sell — the site cannot receive anything, by design.

If you do this all day, it is built to be used that way: no sign-up, no rate limit, no modal asking who you are. Representatives and VSO staff are welcome to it, and so is anyone who wants to check a decision letter once and never come back.

Two things that make it usable in an office:

• Send the worked result. After you combine, the page offers a link that reproduces exactly what you entered, already worked out. Paste it into an email and the person on the other end sees the steps rather than a number you asserted.
• Print it. The printed page drops the dropdowns and the buttons and keeps the result, the reasoning and a line stating what was entered — so a page in a claims file still says what question it answered.

One thing to know about that link: it carries the ratings you entered. Nothing is sent to a server — the figures travel in the part of the address after the #, which browsers never transmit, and this page is measured so that choice was deliberate. But a link is still a thing someone can forward. Send it the way you would send the numbers themselves.

What it is doing

It applies 38 C.F.R. §4.25, which combines ratings rather than adding them, and §4.26, the bilateral factor, which applies when you have ratings on both arms or both legs. The longer explanation is here.

Three things it gets right that are easy to get wrong by hand:

• Order. Ratings are combined from the highest down, not in the order you happen to list them.
• The bilateral factor comes first, before any other combination, and its 10 percent is added rather than combined.
• Rounding happens once, at the very end. Rounding an intermediate value inflates the answer.

What it will not tell you

A dollar amount. Payment depends on your combined rating plus dependents, and the rates change every December. A payment figure baked into a page goes stale quietly, and someone budgets on it. Use VA's current rate tables, which VA keeps up to date.

Whether your ratings are right. It assumes the percentages you type are the ones VA assigned. If you think an individual evaluation is wrong, that is a different question — start with reading your decision letter.

Whether two ratings should be separate at all. Some conditions cannot be rated separately no matter what the arithmetic says. See pyramiding and, for breathing conditions, §4.96(a).

Paired skeletal muscles. §4.26 covers those too; this does not model them. If that is your situation, the calculator will under-count, and an accredited representative can work it properly.

TDIU, SMC, or anything else. Total disability based on individual unemployability and special monthly compensation are separate paths with their own rules, and neither is arithmetic.

If your number and VA's disagree

That is worth looking at rather than assuming either side is wrong. In order of likelihood, the gap is usually:

1. a rating you forgot, or one VA assigned at a different percentage than you remember;
2. the bilateral factor, applied or not applied;
3. rounding done early;
4. two ratings that VA did not treat as separate.

The decision letter lists what was actually granted and at what percentage. Start there, not from memory.

Reviewed October 6, 2026