As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly find benefits and entitlements you may be missing.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the GOV.UK benefits and financial support pages and your local council's benefits or Council Tax Reduction page.
   2. Gather current details about your household, ages, earnings, benefits, savings, rent, caring duties, disability or illness, childcare costs and UK location, leaving out National Insurance numbers, bank details and passwords.
   3. Paste the prompt and your details into a chatbot, then ask it to separate UK-wide support from council or devolved-government schemes.
   4. Copy each suggested scheme into a note with its official GOV.UK or council page, the missing facts and the reason it might apply.
   5. Compare every suggestion with the relevant official eligibility page or calculator, correcting any rule, threshold or date the chatbot cannot support from an official source.
   6. Contact a welfare rights adviser or Citizens Advice for unclear, disputed or high-value cases, then submit applications through the official service and keep confirmation records.

   Prompt

   Act as a UK benefits research assistant, not a decision-maker. Based only on the information below, identify benefits, entitlements, discounts and local support I may be missing. Consider Universal Credit, Council Tax Reduction, Carer's Allowance, Personal Independence Payment, Pension Credit, help with childcare, help with health costs, free school meals and other relevant UK or local schemes, but do not assume I qualify for any of them.
   
   For each possibility, provide: the name, why it may be relevant, the facts that could make me ineligible, what information is still missing, the official GOV.UK or local council page to check, and whether I should use an official calculator or contact an adviser. Separate UK-wide schemes from council or devolved-government schemes. Use current official sources where available, state clearly when you cannot confirm a rule, and do not invent thresholds, rates, dates or links. Do not ask for or use my National Insurance number, bank details or passwords.
   
   My circumstances:
   - Location within the UK: [England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland; council area if known]
   - Age and partner's age: [details]
   - Household and children: [details]
   - Employment and earnings: [details]
   - Benefits already received or claimed: [details]
   - Savings and investments, excluding account numbers: [details]
   - Rent, mortgage or housing situation: [details]
   - Caring responsibilities: [details]
   - Disability, illness or effect on daily activities: [details]
   - Childcare, travel or other essential costs: [details]
   - Immigration or residence conditions that affect access: [details]
   - Anything else relevant: [details]
   
   Finish with a short, ordered checklist of what I should verify on official sites and which applications or enquiries to make. Mark every item as possible, likely to need checking, or not enough information. This is not professional advice.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.