An interactive directory of income-based tuition programs
What does $ open?
Slide, or type a household income. On the map, each state lights up gold if a published income ceiling there would let a family at this income attend tuition-free or close to it — hover any state to see which schools.
This is a rough filter on the single highest published figure per school — always confirm directly with a financial aid office. Schools that meet full need without a fixed dollar ceiling aren't counted here, but are in the directory below.
The full directory
206 programs, individually researched and sourced — see how this was built.
No programs match those filters. Try widening your search.
About this data
Each entry was individually researched — not scraped in bulk — from institutional financial aid pages, press releases, and higher-ed reporting, current as of August 2026. Every row lists a source.
This directory currently covers 206 institutions. Cross-referenced against the full set of 3,709 U.S. four-year, degree-granting institutions (via Department of Education College Scorecard / IPEDS data), that means roughly 5.6% of all four-year institutions are represented here — the ones easiest to find via public reporting. A missing school almost certainly means not yet researched, not confirmed absent. Many small and regional colleges likely have comparable programs that simply haven't been covered by the press.
How to read a threshold
Income ceilings usually come in tiers — a lower number for a full ride (tuition, housing, meals) and a higher number for tuition alone. Where a school published two figures, both are shown. Where a school meets full financial need without a published dollar ceiling, it's marked need-based, no fixed threshold rather than assigned a number.
Figures shift year to year, sometimes by tens of thousands of dollars. Treat every figure here as a starting point for your own verification, not a final answer.
About me
Hunter Kulesza — PhD candidate in Higher Education Studies & Leadership at Baylor University. My research focuses on income-based promise programs, low-income student experiences, and qualitative research methods.
I built this directory as part of that work — to make it easier for students and families to find real, income-based tuition programs that they might not otherwise know exist.
This data is always changing, and not every institution has been researched yet — especially smaller colleges. If you spot one that's missing or needs a correction, please reach out on LinkedIn.