To address the economic feasibility of global positioning system (GPS) enabled navigation technologies including automated guidance and lightbar, a linear programming model was formulated using data from Midwestern U.S. Corn Belt farms. Five scenarios were compared: (i) a baseline scenario with foam, disk or other visual marker reference, (ii) lightbar navigation with basic GPS availability (+/-3 dm accuracy), (iii) lightbar with satellite subscription correction GPS (+/-1 dm), (iv) automated guidance with satellite subscription (+/-1 dm ), and (v) automated guidance with a base station real time kinematic (RTK) GPS (+/-1 cm). Results indicate that RTK automated guidance becomes the most profitable alternative when farm size can be increased while maintaining the same equipment set. Results also indicate that relative profitability ranking is sensitive to years to depreciate the technology.