Virginia doesn't remove points. It runs a bank, and the answer depends entirely on which door you walk in through.
Start with the currency. Virginia assigns demerit points for violations, but it also maintains safe driving points, plus-one for each clean year, up to a balance of plus five. Complete a DMV-approved driver improvement clinic voluntarily and Virginia credits you up to 5 safe driving points, once every 24 months. Your demerits from the ticket don't vanish; your balance improves. A driver at minus 4 who takes the clinic can climb back toward zero. It's the most generous single credit in the country, Georgia's 7-point reduction aside, and most Virginians have no idea it exists.
Now the part that catches people. Virginia tracks why you enrolled, with four codes, and the code controls the benefit. Enroll voluntarily and you choose at enrollment: safe driving points or an insurance discount. One or the other, never both from the same attendance. Pick wrong and there's no switching after. If your record is carrying demerits, take the points. If your record is clean and you're purely rate-shopping, take the discount, and note the insurance track is for drivers 54 and under, with a separate mature driver course for 55 plus.
If a court sent you, different rules: the court decides whether you get safe driving points as part of your case, dismissal or fine reduction is at the court's discretion, and court-ordered drivers aren't eligible for the insurance discount at all. And if the DMV sent you, because you hit 12 demerit points in 12 months or 18 in 24, this isn't optional and there's no prize: you have 90 days to complete the clinic or your license is suspended.
The practical details. The clinic is 8 hours, Virginia caps the fee at $100 by law, and typical online tuition runs $45 to $75. Two groups can't take it online at all: drivers under 20 and CDL holders, who need the classroom version. Against a typical 10-over ticket, a $111 fine and roughly $1,707 in three-year insurance exposure in our data as a ceiling estimate, a $60 clinic that either restores your point balance or, where a court allows it, resolves the ticket itself is one of the easier calls in this catalog. Just decide which benefit you're there for before you type your card number, because Virginia will hold you to it.
Every DMV-approved online clinic we track is compared on the Virginia page.