Empower review 2026

Anyone who wants a free net-worth and fee-drag tracker

The free net-worth and fee-drag tracker has no minimum balance and no cost to use. It aggregates external bank, brokerage, mortgage, and 401(k) accounts into one central interface, and it runs an investment-fee analyzer against your actual holdings to expose hidden expense ratios.

Investors with $100,000 to $1 million weighing a dedicated advisor

This is Empower's paid advisory floor. Below $100,000 in investable assets, the product remains dashboard-only, and you can't buy into the managed tiers regardless of preference.

High-net-worth investors ($1 million+) who want private-client access

Empower's Private Client tier lowers the advisory fee percentage and adds direct indexing, tax-loss harvesting, and access to estate-planning specialists for accounts crossing the million-dollar threshold.

SEC registration and fiduciary standard

Advisory services run through Empower Advisory Group, LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser operating under a fiduciary standard.¹This legal structure means the firm and its representatives are bound by law to act in the client's best financial interest rather than push proprietary products for higher commissions.

Custody, SIPC, and FDIC cash sweep coverage

Investment assets custody with a major clearing firm, which carries standard SIPC protection up to $500,000, including a $250,000 limit for cash claims.²Cash balances swept into partner banking networks receive standard FDIC pass-through deposit insurance.

The free Personal Dashboard: net worth tracking and fee analysis

The core free software aggregates all your linked financial accounts into a single interface, featuring budgeting graphs, cash flow tracking, and an investment fee analyzer that checks your mutual funds and ETFs for hidden drag. It also includes a retirement planner using Monte Carlo simulations. The honest limitation is that the software functions primarily as a lead-generation funnel for the advisory side, and it lacks the granular, envelope-style budgeting tools found in dedicated applications like YNAB or Monarch Money.

A fee-drag percentage only means something against a target, though, because the same 0.5% is trivial on one balance and ruinous on another. The retirement calculator gives you the target the analyzer's percentages are eating into, which is what turns them back into dollars.

Paid advisory tiers, from $100,000 to $1 million and up

Empower structures its paid wealth management into three distinct tiers above the free dashboard. Investment Services covers accounts from $100,000 to $249,999, providing pooled advisor access and automated ETF portfolio management. Wealth Management spans $250,000 to $999,999, assigning a dedicated two-CFP advisory pair and adding direct indexing alongside tax-loss harvesting.

Private Client handles balances of $1 million and above, adding Investment Committee access, estate-planning specialists, and private banking integrations.

Tax work is a large part of what those tiers charge for, and some of it you can price yourself first. Moving money into a Roth IRA is the decision an advisor tends to raise early, and the Roth conversion calculator puts a number on it, which is a fair way to judge what the advice is worth before you buy it.

Empower Personal Cash

This interest-bearing cash management feature carries no account fees and provides FDIC pass-through coverage on uninvested money. It serves as an internal parking spot for short-term savings while keeping funds visible inside your aggregated net-worth graph.

The 0.89% standard advisory fee

The base advisory fee of 0.89% applies from the $100,000 minimum up to the Private Client threshold.³This management fee excludes the underlying expense ratios of the ETFs and mutual funds held in the portfolio, which typically add roughly 0.08% to 0.15% in external fund costs.

Private Client pricing above $1 million

The fee rate steps down on a tiered schedule once your balance crosses into Private Client territory. The progressive rate ladder applies specifically to assets managed within the Private Client program rather than discounting the entirety of smaller accounts retroactively.

How Empower compares to Betterment, Wealthfront, and a fee-only RIA

Empower vs. Betterment and Wealthfront

Robo-advisors like Betterment and Wealthfront undercut Empower's standard fee by more than half at 0.25%, but neither provider offers dedicated human CFP access at their standard tiers. For a closer comparison of automated tax-loss harvesting and portfolio automation,read the Wealthfront review.

Empower vs. a traditional fee-only advisor

A traditional human financial advisor operating independently typically charges roughly 1.00% of assets under management, with a comparable or higher account minimum. Empower's Private Client tier undercuts that traditional advisory rate while layering in proprietary software tools most standalone local RIAs don't build in-house.