Empower alternative: how RetireNumber compares
Formerly Personal Capital. A free net worth dashboard and retirement planner, funded by a paid wealth management service.
The short answer
Empower and RetireNumber are answering different questions. Empower is a free dashboard that aggregates your accounts, and it is free because it is the front door to a wealth management business that charges a percentage of your assets. RetireNumber sells software and nothing else. If you want automatic net worth tracking and do not mind the sales motion, Empower is hard to beat on price. If you would rather not hand over account credentials or field the calls, this is the trade you are making.
Where Empower is the better choice
We would rather you pick the right tool than pick ours.
- The dashboard is genuinely free, with no paid tier needed for the planner
- Automatic account aggregation, so net worth and spending update themselves
- A large, well-funded company with a long-standing product
- Access to human advisors, if you want that and meet the reported asset minimum
Where RetireNumber differs
- No account linking, so there are no credentials held by an aggregator
- The business model is software subscriptions, not assets under management, so nobody has a reason to call you
- Built around stress-testing a plan rather than tracking balances
Side by side
| RetireNumber | Empower | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost of the planner | Free tier, then $4.99/mo, $49/yr or $399 once | Free |
| How the company makes money | Software subscriptions only | Wealth management fees, reported from 0.89% of assets a year, plus retirement plan administration |
| Links your bank and brokerage accounts | No. Numbers are entered by hand | Yes, aggregation is central to the product |
| Sales contact | None. There is nothing to sell you beyond Pro | The free tools are described as a client acquisition channel |
| Net worth and spending tracking | Manual entry | Automatic, via linked accounts |
| Historical backtesting | Yes, against data from 1928 | Not a documented feature |
| Signup needed to see a result | No | Yes, account linking is required |
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Other comparisons: Boldin, ProjectionLab. See also our pricing and what the model cannot do.