Post-9/11 GI Bill® 2026–27: tuition cap, housing by ZIP, tiers

Step 1: your benefit level

Every Post-9/11 payment is scaled by a percentage VA calls your eligibility tier. VA’s rates page sets it by your total days of active duty, with or without breaks in service:

You’re also at 100% if you received a Purple Heart on or after September 11, 2001, or served at least 30 continuous days and were discharged for a service-connected disability.

One conflict to know about: the regulation’s own table, 38 CFR 21.9641, still lists older tiers — 40% for 90 to 179 days, 50% for 180 to 364 and 60% for 365 to 544. VA’s rates page is what VA publishes for this year, so our calculator uses it and shows the conflict. VA decides the level that applies to you.

Step 2: tuition and fees

• Public school: VA pays the net in-state tuition and mandatory fees, with no dollar cap. VA notes you may get the in-state rate even if you haven’t lived in that state.
• Private or foreign school, or a non-college degree program: up to $30,908.34 for the academic year.
• Flight training: up to $17,661.89. Correspondence: up to $15,012.59.

Each amount is multiplied by your benefit level. At 70%, a private school that charges $40,000 gets $21,635.84 from VA (70% of the $30,908.34 cap). The Yellow Ribbon Program can add to that at participating schools; our calculator doesn’t model it.

Step 3: the monthly housing allowance (MHA)

For in-person classes in the U.S., VA starts from the Department of Defense (DoD) 2026 Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) for an E-5 with dependents at the ZIP code where you attend most of your classes, and uses the 2026 rates for the whole August 1, 2026 – July 31, 2027 year. Then:

• it multiplies by your benefit level, and
• it multiplies by your rate of pursuit — your credits each term (or clock hours each week) compared with what the school counts as full time — rounded to the nearest tenth. VA’s own example: 9 credits where 12 is full time is 75%, which becomes 80%.

VA pays the housing allowance at the end of each month you’re enrolled.

Students who first used the Post-9/11 GI Bill before January 1, 2018, are paid a slightly higher “grandfathered” housing rate. VA’s school profile for Old Dominion University in Norfolk, for example, shows $2,556 a month at 100% for them, against $2,430 for students who started later. Every housing figure in this guide is the rate for students who started on or after January 1, 2018.

You get no MHA at all if your rate of pursuit is 50% or less, during breaks between terms, for flight or correspondence training, while you’re on active duty, or as a spouse using transferred benefits while the service member is on active duty.

Online-only students get up to $1,198 a month (half the national average), and students at foreign schools up to $2,396 (the national average), according to VA’s rates page as updated October 13, 2026 — it listed $1,261 and $2,522 before. Taking at least one class in person can move you to the ZIP-based rate.

Full-time, 100% housing at six school ZIPs, from DoD’s January 2026 BAH for an E-5 with dependents:

At 100% and full time, the MHA a month is that figure. VA’s own school profiles in the GI Bill Comparison Tool↗ show the same DoD rate for the school’s ZIP: Old Dominion University’s profile↗ (ZIP 23529, Norfolk) lists $2,430, the Norfolk/Portsmouth figure above. VA’s separate ZIP lookup is less reliable: on October 7, 2026 it put ZIP 23511↗ in a “Hampton, VA” area at $2,274, a different area and amount from the school profiles. The figure to trust is the one on your school’s own page in VA’s GI Bill Comparison Tool.

Why Abilene is marked. DoD (which since September 2025 also calls itself the Department of War) raised BAH in the Abilene/Dyess area temporarily, from May 16 to December 31, 2026; for an E-5 with dependents the temporary rate is $1,872. VA hasn’t said whether GI Bill housing follows that change. VA’s own GI Bill Comparison Tool data, read October 6, 2026, still shows $1,554 for Abilene and Dyess ZIPs — the January 2026 rate — so that is the figure we use, with medium confidence. As for any school, its own page in VA’s GI Bill Comparison Tool is the figure to check.

Step 4: books and supplies

VA pays $41.67 per credit hour, up to 24 credits — $1,000 a year — times your benefit level, at the start of each term. At 70% the most is $700; at 60%, $600. Flight and correspondence training get no books payment.

Six worked examples

Two lines that surprise people: the same San Diego student at exactly half time (50%) gets $0 in housing, and a student still on active duty gets no housing allowance at any rate of pursuit.

Montgomery GI Bill Active Duty and the 48-month limit

The Montgomery GI Bill Active Duty (MGIB-AD), compared side by side with the Post-9/11 in this guide, has its own rate year, October 1, 2026, to September 30, 2027. It pays a monthly amount set by how long you served on active duty and how much of a full load you take:

If you have two separate periods of service, one qualifying for the Montgomery GI Bill and one for the Post-9/11 GI Bill, the Supreme Court’s April 16, 2024, Rudisill decision means you may be able to use both, up to 48 months combined. By law you can’t use the two at the same time. VA applies the decision; our calculator explains it but doesn’t count months.

Next step

Enter your days of service, school type, tuition, school ZIP and credits in the GI Bill calculator. To compare housing at several school ZIPs first, the BAH calculator shows the E-5 with-dependents rate for each.

This is general information, not legal, tax, financial or medical advice. For BAH itself — how a ZIP becomes a housing area and why rates change — see BAH 2026 explained.