How PCS Calculator handles your data: no account is required, calculator inputs are not stored, and this policy sets out what advertising and analytics partners collect.
PCS Calculator ("we," "us," or "our") operates the website at pcscalculator.net (the "Site"). This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and share information when you visit our Site. By using the Site, you agree to the practices described in this policy.
We are committed to being transparent about how we use your data, including our use of third-party advertising, analytics, and affiliate marketing services.
This site participates in affiliate marketing programs. Some links on this Site are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase or complete a form — at no additional cost to you.
This disclosure is made in compliance with the Federal Trade Commission's guidelines on endorsements and testimonials, 16 CFR Part 255. Our editorial content — including calculator results, JTR figures, and move cost estimates — is never influenced by affiliate relationships. We only display affiliate offers that we believe are genuinely relevant and useful to military families planning a PCS move.
Affiliate links on this Site carry the rel="sponsored" attribute, and every group of affiliate links is introduced by a disclosure placed directly above it that reads: "Advertising disclosure: the links below are affiliate links. We may earn a commission at no cost to you if you book through them, which helps keep this calculator free." We are affiliated with the following networks:
These commissions help us keep the calculator free for all service members and their families.
When you use the PCS Calculator, you may voluntarily provide the following information to generate cost estimates:
This information does not include your name, email address, Social Security number, or any other directly personally identifiable information unless you choose to submit our contact form.
We also automatically collect certain technical information when you visit the Site, including your IP address, browser type, referring URLs, pages viewed, and time spent on pages. This is collected through the third-party analytics and advertising services described below.
When you click an affiliate link on our Site, the affiliate network (MaxBounty or FlexOffers) may collect information about your click — including your IP address, browser type, and the referring page — in order to track the referral and attribute any resulting commission. This data is collected by the affiliate network, not by pcscalculator.net directly.
Our Site uses cookies — small text files placed on your device — along with similar tracking technologies such as web beacons and pixel tags. Cookies allow us and our third-party partners to recognize your browser, remember your preferences, and understand how the Site is being used.
We use cookies for the following purposes:
You can control or disable cookies through your browser settings. Note that disabling cookies may affect the functionality of parts of the Site and will prevent affiliate tracking cookies from being set.
We use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google LLC ("Google"), to understand how visitors interact with the Site. Google Analytics uses cookies to collect information such as how often users visit the Site, which pages they visit, and what other sites they visited before coming to the Site.
When you run a calculation we also send Google Analytics a description of that calculation, so we can see which kinds of moves the tools are used for. That description includes your pay grade, the move type and scenario, whether you have dependents, the number of vehicles, whether a truck rental was priced, whether the move is OCONUS, whether your entered weight exceeds your authorized allowance, and whether the calculation was one you asked for or one an estimate shared with you ran on arrival.
When you copy, share, print or download one of those results, we send a second and much smaller event: which of those four you used, which calculator you were on, the move type where the tool has one, and whether you had arrived on an estimate someone else shared with you. It carries no figures at all — not the result, not the inputs behind it, and not the link.
The weight-allowance estimator sends its own event when you ask it to price going over your allowance: whether you are over, how far over as a band rather than a figure, and the distance band of the lane you priced. The installations you chose and the dollar range it returns are not sent.
Some partner offers hide a discount code behind an Unlock button. When you press one, we send Google Analytics a small event recording that you did: which offer it was, which partner network it belongs to, the page you were on, the wording of the button you pressed, and, where the offer sits beside a calculation, the distance band of that move and whether it runs within the United States, to it, from it, or entirely overseas. We send a matching event if you close the code window without going on to the partner’s site. Each also carries a marker saying the record came from your browser rather than from our server — the same marker we put on link clicks, which our server also records, so that the two are never added together. Neither event goes to the partner or to the affiliate network — pressing Unlock does not leave this Site, and nothing you entered into the calculator is included. We record these so we can tell an offer nobody wants from one people want and give up on.
The results of the PCS calculator can show one advertisement, labeled as one. We send Google Analytics a small event when at least half of it has been on screen for a second, and another if you click it. While we test that space, half of the estimates for moves within the continental US, chosen at random, show the advertisement and half do not, and we also record which half an estimate was in and whether a partner link on the same results was clicked. None of these events carries a figure or anything you entered. The advertisement is text and a link served by this Site: the advertiser runs no code here and sets no cookie through it, and it receives only monthly totals of how often its advertisement was seen and clicked. Clicking it takes you to the advertiser’s site, or through one of the affiliate networks described below, and their privacy policy applies from there.
Figures are banded or reduced to a direction before they are sent, never passed through as you typed them. Distance and weight go as ranges (for example “500-999” miles) rather than exact numbers. Whether your estimate came out positive is sent as yes or no, without the amount. If you enter the Government Constructed Cost your transportation office quoted, we send the discount rate that figure implies, rounded into two-point bands — a percentage, not a dollar amount — because it is the one input the published moving tariff does not disclose and measuring it is how the accuracy range on this site gets narrower. Beside that percentage band we send two pieces of context about how it was measured, and nothing else: whether the pricing used your route’s exact published rates or a national average, and the route itself as the tariff’s own service-area region numbers for the origin and destination — metro-scale regions from the published rate tables, not addresses or ZIP codes. The dollar figures you enter and the dollar figures we calculate are not sent to Google.
Google Analytics also records the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit, rather than your name or other identifying information. We do not combine the information collected through Google Analytics with personally identifiable information.
Google's ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visits to the Site is restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Service and the Google Privacy Policy. You can prevent Google Analytics from recognizing you on return visits by downloading and installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.
We use Google AdSense, an advertising service provided by Google LLC, to display advertisements on our Site. Google AdSense uses cookies, including the DoubleClick cookie, to serve ads based on your prior visits to our Site and other sites on the internet.
Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to our Site and/or other sites on the internet. This is known as interest-based advertising or personalized advertising.
You may opt out of personalized advertising by:
For more information about how Google uses data from sites that use its advertising services, visit How Google uses data when you use our partners' sites or apps.
We participate in the following affiliate marketing networks. When you click an affiliate link on our Site, these networks may collect data about your click and set tracking cookies on your device in order to process commission payments. Their data practices are governed by their own privacy policies:
Clicking an affiliate link does not share any of the information you entered into the PCS Calculator with the affiliate network or the advertiser. The click event data collected by these networks (IP address, browser, referring page, and device identifiers) is used solely for commission attribution and is governed by each network's own privacy policy.
We use the following third-party services on this Site. Each service has its own privacy policy governing how it handles data:
We do not sell your personal information to any third party. The sharing described above is limited to what is necessary for these services to function.
The information you provide through the calculator is used solely to:
Technical usage data collected automatically (via Google Analytics) is used to understand how visitors use the Site so we can improve it. Advertising-related data (via Google AdSense) is used to display relevant advertisements.
When you click an affiliate link, anonymized click data (such as which link was clicked and from which page) is shared with the affiliate network (MaxBounty or FlexOffers) for the sole purpose of tracking referrals and processing commission payments. We do not share your calculator inputs or any other information you entered on the Site with affiliate networks or advertisers.
You have several options for controlling how your data is used:
Calculations are not saved to a database. The figures you enter are used to work out your estimate, returned to your browser, and not written to any datastore or tied to you. There is no account, so there is nothing to sign in to and no history of your calculations for us or anyone else to look up. A shared results link carries its figures in the link itself, which is why anyone you send it to can open it — and why it is worth thinking about who you send it to.
The contact form and the third-party services described above are the exceptions, and each is covered in its own section. Our servers keep ordinary short-lived request logs, as any web server does. We use industry-standard security measures to protect information from unauthorized access, disclosure, or destruction. No transmission of data over the internet is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
This Site is not directed to children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe we have inadvertently collected information from a child under 13, please contact us immediately and we will take steps to delete that information.
If you are a California resident, you have the following rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA):
Authorized Agent: California residents may designate an authorized agent to submit privacy rights requests on their behalf. The authorized agent must provide written authorization signed by you demonstrating their permission to act on your behalf. We may require you to verify your identity directly with us even when an authorized agent submits the request.
To submit a request, please use our Contact page. We will respond within 45 days.
If you are a Virginia resident, you have the following rights under the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA):
To exercise your Virginia privacy rights, please contact us through our Contact page with the subject line "Virginia Privacy Request." We will respond within 45 days, with the option to extend by an additional 45 days when reasonably necessary.
If you are a Colorado resident, you have the following rights under the Colorado Privacy Act (CPA):
To exercise your Colorado privacy rights, please contact us through our Contact page with the subject line "Colorado Privacy Request." We will respond within 45 days, with the option to extend by an additional 45 days when reasonably necessary.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or for legal, operational, or regulatory reasons. When we make changes, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.
This tool provides estimates only and is not affiliated with the Department of Defense. For official guidance and authoritative information, please consult the Joint Travel Regulations (JTR) and your installation's Transportation Management Office (TMO).
If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, our affiliate relationships, or how we handle your data, please reach out through our Contact page. We take privacy inquiries seriously and will respond promptly.