Empower's free dashboard is genuinely good — the advisory sales motion around it is why people leave. Here are the best alternatives, by what you actually used Empower for.
Empower (formerly Personal Capital) bundles three things: a free net-worth dashboard, a retirement planner, and a paid wealth-management service at 0.49–0.89% of assets — and the third funds the first two, which is why linking a $100K+ portfolio tends to bring advisory outreach. The right alternative depends on which piece you want to keep:
📊 The dashboard + projections
Richify — net worth and retirement projections, free, no upsell, no account linking
💰 The budgeting it lacked
Monarch Money, YNAB, Copilot — real spending tools with bank sync
🔮 The retirement planner
ProjectionLab — deeper FIRE and life-event modeling than Empower's planner
AI Financial Planning
Best for: Empower users who want the net-worth dashboard and retirement projections — without the advisory upsell or account linking
✓ Strengths
✗ Limitations
Wealth Management
Best for: Investors with $100K+ who actually want a human advisory relationship attached to their dashboard
✓ Strengths
✗ Limitations
Budgeting & Net Worth
Best for: People who want Empower's net worth view plus proper budgeting, and are happy to pay for it
✓ Strengths
✗ Limitations
FIRE & Retirement Planning
Best for: Replacing Empower's retirement planner with much deeper FIRE and life-event modeling
✓ Strengths
✗ Limitations
Zero-Based Budgeting
Best for: Fixing the one thing Empower never did well: hands-on monthly budgeting
✓ Strengths
✗ Limitations
Premium Budgeting
Best for: Apple users who want a beautifully designed spending tracker alongside a separate investing app
✓ Strengths
✗ Limitations
| Feature | Richify | Empower | Monarch | ProjectionLab | YNAB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free tools | $14.99/mo | Paid | $14.99/mo |
| Net Worth Tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Retirement Projections | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ (deep) | ✗ |
| AI Financial Agent | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Budgeting | ✗ | Basic | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Works without linking accounts | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Advisory upsell / sales calls | None | 0.49–0.89% AUM | None | None | None |
Richify gives you the net worth view and retirement projections Empower is known for — with an AI agent team instead of an advisory pitch, and manual entry instead of account linking. Free on iOS and Android.
Download Richify — FreeEmpower's dashboard tools — net worth tracking, portfolio analyzer, fee analyzer, and retirement planner — are free. The business model is wealth management: Empower offers paid advisory services at roughly 0.49–0.89% of assets under management, aimed at portfolios of $100K and above, and linking a large portfolio typically leads to advisory outreach. The free tools are genuinely useful; the trade-off is the sales motion around them.
Three common reasons. First, the advisory outreach — after linking accounts with a meaningful balance, users report calls and emails promoting Empower's paid wealth-management service. Second, focus: Empower is investment-first, with comparatively weak budgeting and spending tools. Third, account linking itself — Empower works by aggregating your accounts through third-party connections, which some users prefer to avoid for privacy reasons.
It depends on which part of Empower you used. For net worth tracking and retirement projections without any advisory upsell, Richify is free with AI-powered explanations and manual entry (no bank credentials shared). For budgeting, Monarch Money and YNAB are stronger than Empower ever was, though both are paid. For deep FIRE-style retirement planning, ProjectionLab models life events and drawdown in more detail than Empower's planner.
No. Richify has no advisory service, no assets under management, and nothing to upsell by phone — the model is a free app with an optional Pro subscription for unlimited AI agent access. It also doesn't connect to your accounts at all: you enter balances manually, so there is no aggregator access to your credentials and no linked-balance trigger for outreach. The trade-off is honest: no automatic sync means you update balances yourself.