How we check the numbers

Every number on this site comes from a published state document — a sliding fee scale, an income chart, a rate schedule, a CCDF state plan — and every number carries the date of the document it came from.

The four stamps

Limits, fee scales, rate ceilings, and waitlist status expire on four different clocks, so every state page carries four separate stamps: limits checked, fee scale checked, ceiling checked, waitlist checked, each with its month and year. Most states reset their charts on the federal fiscal year (October 1); we sweep the whole dataset every fall and spot-check quarterly. A state whose fee scale cannot be re-verified at the sweep has its co-pay module switched off — eligibility only — rather than run on a stale chart.

The verdict language

The checker prints exactly three classes:

• Likely — your income sits under your state's published entry line and no deciding fact is outstanding.
• Borderline — you sit close enough to the line that named facts decide it: how your state counts a specific income source, a categorical lane, a state expansion. The verdict names those facts.
• Unlikely — over the line on the published rules, printed with the exceptions worth checking (categorical lanes, state expansions, Head Start and pre-K on separate lines).

You will never see the word for a granted benefit used as a verdict here, and never a benefit promise. A co-pay is always a range with its chart date. The gap is always labeled an estimate, built from the state's published rate ceiling and the price you entered. Only your state agency decides your case; every verdict ends with the application path so the decision can be made by the people who actually make it.

The records discipline

The Safety & Records department translates state records. It never mirrors, republishes, rates, scores, or ranks any named center — the day a page here scored a center, it would become a stale accusation with a logo. Severity translations cite each state's own class definitions with their check dates, correction status is translated with the same prominence as the violation itself, and every state page states what that state's archive cannot show.

What changed in 2026

A 2024 federal rule capped every family's co-pay at 7% of income. A final rule in 2026 rescinded that cap. Some pages elsewhere still print the 7% as current law for every state; here it appears only where a state kept its own version (Florida's rule caps the family co-pay at 7% of income; Alaska capped its single family co-pay at 7% from January 2025) or as dated history. State charts are the only truth, and several states are mid-rewrite — which is what the stamps are for.