Comparison
Arden
Empower
Without the advisor funnel.
By Tyler · May 13, 2026 · ~7 min read
Empower's Personal Dashboard (formerly Personal Capital) is the best net-worth-and-investment tracker in the free tier of this category. It will show you your full portfolio across every account, run a retirement projection, and graph your asset allocation. It costs zero dollars to use.
The actual price is the advisor call. Cross $100,000 in linked assets and you're going to get one. Cross $250,000 and you'll get two dedicated advisors on speed-dial. The all-in fee for Personal Strategy is 0.89% of AUM on your first million — which on a $500K portfolio is $4,450 a year, every year. That's the model. The dashboard is the funnel.
I'm not saying don't use Empower. I'm saying know what you're trading.
What Empower does well
The dashboard. Empower's investment-tracking surface is the best free option in the category. Allocation drift, sector breakdown, fee analyzer, retirement planner with Monte Carlo — these are real wealth-management-grade tools and they cost nothing if all you want is to look at them. If your needs are “see all my brokerage accounts, see my asset allocation, run a quick retirement projection,” Empower will give you that better than almost anything else.
The retirement planner specifically. The Monte Carlo modeling is solid, the assumptions are exposed, and the projection chart is genuinely useful. YNAB and Monarch don't have anything close.
The brand inheritance. Personal Capital had a strong product before the Empower acquisition, and the underlying engineering has held up. The mobile app is mature, the connection layer is stable, and the company isn't going anywhere.
If you're under the $100K threshold and you're disciplined enough to ignore the advisor outreach when it starts, Empower's free dashboard is genuinely a good deal.
What Arden does differently
The product is the product, not the lead magnet. Arden's pricingis two prices, both honest: $5/mo Privacy, $12/mo Plus. The revenue model is “users pay for the software.” There is no advisor to sell you, no managed account to upsell into, no $100K threshold that triggers an outreach campaign. The why essay walks through the choice in detail.
Budgeting actually exists.Empower's dashboard is excellent for wealth tracking and basically nonexistent for envelope budgeting. There's a cash-flow view and a category breakdown, but no “ready to assign,” no per-category targets, no spending pace, no Age of Money. If your job is “track my $500K portfolio” Empower wins; if your job is “give every dollar a job this month” it can't help. Arden does both — the product page shows what the integrated picture looks like.
Privacy is structural, not advertised. Empower's free dashboard requires bank credentials. Their entire model assumes you'll connect every account so the advisor outreach can size you correctly. Arden's Privacy plan ($5/mo) never asks for a bank credential and runs every feature through CSV import. The Plus plan adds Plaid as an option, never a gate. If you don't want a wealth-management firm to know exactly what's in your accounts, that's a legitimate preference Empower architecturally can't serve.
No 0.89% in the mail later.This is the big one. Empower's free dashboard is the entry point to a wealth-management business that charges 0.89% AUM on your first million, 0.79% on your next $2 million, and so on. On a $1M portfolio that's $8,900/year — every year, forever. Arden charges $60–$144/year flat, regardless of net worth. The math on five years gets dramatic.
Honest comparison
| Feature | Empower | Arden Privacy | Arden Plus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price (dashboard) | Free | $5/mo / $50/yr | $12/mo / $120/yr |
| Advisory fees if AUM crosses $100K | 0.89% AUM (first $1M) | None — no advisory service exists | None |
| Free trial / guarantee | Dashboard is free | 30-day money-back | 30-day money-back |
| Net worth tracking | Yes (best in free tier) | Yes (19 asset classes) | Yes + Plaid auto-refresh |
| Investment dashboard (allocation, drift, fees) | Yes (best in free tier) | Yes (share-precision math) | Yes + Plaid investment sync |
| Retirement planner / Monte Carlo | Yes (excellent) | Not yet | Not yet |
| Envelope budgeting | No (limited category tracking) | Yes — every dollar gets a job | Yes |
| Cash flow Sankey | No | Yes | Yes |
| Monthly review email | No | Yes (the 1st of every month) | Yes |
| Plaid bank sync | Yes (required) | No (by design) | Yes (optional) |
| Works without bank login | No | Yes | Yes |
| Advisor calls / sales outreach | Yes (starts at $100K AUM) | None | None |
| Sells your data | No (regulated as advisor) | No | No |
| Full data export | Limited | CSV + JSON | CSV + JSON |
| Behavioral analytics on the website | Heavy | None | None |
Pricing current as of May 2026.
Empower's wins on this table are real: the retirement planner is genuinely better than what Arden offers today, the investment dashboard is best-in-class for the free tier, and the company is large enough that it isn't going anywhere. Arden's wins are the budgeting model, the no-Plaid path, and the absence of an advisor pipeline.
Where they win, where we win
Empower wins on the wealth-tracking dashboard and the retirement planner. If you have a meaningful portfolio, you're comfortable ignoring sales outreach, and you don't need envelope budgeting, the free dashboard is a legitimately good tool. It's not even close in this lane — Monarch, YNAB, and Arden all have weaker retirement projections than Empower's.
Arden wins on the integrated picture (envelope budgeting + investments + net worth + cash flow Sankey + monthly review, in one app), on the no-bank-login path, and on the math of “flat $60–$144/year forever vs 0.89% of your portfolio every year.” A $500K portfolio user pays Empower $4,450/year in advisory fees if they take the advisor call, or Arden $144/year if they don't. The dashboard is free at Empower; the relationship isn't.
The honest framing is that Empower and Arden are competing for different jobs. Empower wants to be your wealth manager and gives you a free dashboard to get there. Arden wants to be your money software and charges $5–12/mo because that's what software costs to run honestly. If you want a wealth manager, Empower is a reasonable place to start that conversation. If you want money software that won't try to become a wealth manager, that's the thing Arden is.
FAQ
Common questions.
Can I import my Empower data into Arden?
- Sort of. Empower's export options are more limited than YNAB's or Monarch's — you can get CSV exports of transactions and holdings, but the full structured export of categories, budgets (limited as they are), and goals isn't really there because Empower's product doesn't model those primitives as deeply. Most users coming from Empower import the transaction CSV and rebuild category groups in Arden over a weekend. The import flow covers the mechanics.
Will Arden ever offer wealth management?
- No. The whole point of the two-price model is that the software is the product and the relationship ends at "I help you see your money." Once an advisor is in the loop, the incentives change in ways that I think are bad for users, and I'd rather not be in that business. If you eventually want a wealth manager, hire one independently — fee-only fiduciary, hourly or flat-fee, not AUM-based. (That's a structural recommendation, not a specific firm recommendation, because we don't do financial advice on this site.)
Why does it matter that Empower's dashboard is free?
- It doesn't, on its own — free is fine when free is honest. What matters is what funds the free tier. Empower funds the dashboard with the advisory business, which means the dashboard is optimized to find advisor-eligible users (high net worth, complex situations) and route them into outreach. Mint funded the free tier with credit-card affiliate revenue, which meant the dashboard was optimized to find users in debt and route them into credit products. Both are coherent businesses. Neither one's incentives line up with "help the user manage their money better." Arden's $5–12/mo is the friction that makes the incentives line up.
Is the advisor outreach really that aggressive?
- The reports vary. Some users say one call and a polite "I'm not interested" ends it. Others report continued outreach, especially around portfolio events or major contributions. The pattern matches the AUM threshold — cross $100K, expect the call. Cross $250K, expect more attention. That's not Empower being underhanded; that's the business model working as designed. It's just useful to know it's the business model.
What about Empower's privacy policy — they don't sell data, right?
- Correct, and Empower's privacy posture is better than most ad-funded apps because they're regulated as a registered investment advisor. The trade isn't data-resale; it's that your full financial picture (every account, every balance, every position) is being collected and analyzed to qualify you for an advisory relationship. The security page and privacy policy cover Arden's posture in detail — short version: minimum data, no analytics, no advisor pipeline, exit any time with full CSV + JSON export.
Software, not a sales funnel. Flat price, no advisor.
$5/mo Privacy for CSV-only. $12/mo Plus if you want Plaid bank sync. 30-day money-back on either.