The GI Bill mobile app, screen by screen.
College Tool is the free GI Bill® mobile app for military families, on iPhone and Android. This page is the app as it looks on a phone today: every store screen, what changed in the latest update, and a suggestion box that goes straight to the founder who builds it.
Free to download and use. Five states permanently, no account, not a trial. See pricing for what the optional subscription adds.
Every screen, as it ships
Tell us what it should do next
The app is built by one person, a retired Air Force MSgt, and this box goes straight to him. If something in the app should work differently, or there is a screen your family needed that does not exist yet, say so here. No account, no signup, and the email is only asked for in case an answer is wanted.
What the store listing says, in full
This is the app’s own store description, the same text on the App Store and Google Play, reproduced here as it ships. Every sentence in it was checked against the shipped code before it was submitted.
College Tool is a free app that shows a military family how the Post-9/11 GI Bill®, Chapter 35 DEA, the Fry Scholarship and the Yellow Ribbon Program work together, and what the order of use changes.
The order a family uses its VA education benefits in can change the total by thousands of dollars. College Tool maps that order, phase by phase, across a real college plan: stateside, overseas, or both in sequence. And it shows its work. Every rate in College Tool points back to its official VA source, so a family can check it and do the math themselves.
Real housing math
The GI Bill housing allowance (the BAH-based monthly housing allowance, or MHA) runs off the school’s zip code, on currently published rates. A cost-of-living estimator sits beside it, with rent, food, transportation, utilities and the rest, so a family can see whether the housing allowance covers real living costs before committing to a school.
School search
Browse any state, or type a school, a city, or the short name families actually use: FSU, UGA, Ole Miss. Every VA-approved school in the list carries its housing figure, its Yellow Ribbon participation, and any VA caution flag, with a link to that school on the VA Comparison Tool.
Built for military families
Service members deciding whether to transfer the Post-9/11 GI Bill to a spouse or child, military spouses and dependents using transferred benefits, children of the fallen on the Fry Scholarship, and families with Chapter 35 DEA. The app handles the Post-9/11 GI Bill, Chapter 35 DEA, the Fry Scholarship and the Yellow Ribbon Program, plus transferred months and your own scholarships on top.
Free, permanently
- College Tool is free to download and use with no account, and five states are fully searchable free, permanently, with no trial and no expiration.
- The GI Bill and Fry Scholarship math, transferred GI Bill benefits, and your own scholarships, for Georgia, Kentucky, Colorado, South Carolina and Oklahoma.
- The cost-of-living estimator, school search in those five states, and a printable worksheet for a School Certifying Official.
- Every figure linked to its official VA source.
- A free tier, not a trial. No payment, no expiration.
Optional subscription, $17.99 a year
- The phase approach: see how your benefits combine in sequence, the method we have not found offered anywhere else.
- Every state and the top 50 overseas options, all compiled so you are not researching each rate by hand.
- Chapter 35 (DEA) benefits.
Private by design
College Tool has no account, no login, no analytics and no tracking, and what a family types into the app stays on the device.
The update log
Updates reach Google Play and the App Store on each store’s own review timing, so the two can briefly differ. This log records what each update changed, by date.
1.1.0 · published on Google Play August 29, 2026
- School search takes the name you actually say. Type FSU or Ole Miss and the school comes back, matched from the VA’s own published alias list, on your phone, with nothing sent anywhere.
- Housing figures were rechecked school by school against the VA’s own data. Some schools gained approval and some lost it, and both changes are in.
- Chapter 35 rates were corrected to the VA’s current figures, with the October 1 rates built in so they take effect on their own.
Get the app
The full picture of what it does, and how it shows its work: the app page.