Empower vs Betterment: Free Dashboard or Low-Cost Robo-Advisor?

Empower and Betterment both help you invest, but they solve different problems. Empower offers a free financial dashboard for tracking (plus optional wealth management for $100k+ portfolios). Betterment is a pure robo-advisor that invests your money automatically at low cost.

This guide breaks down which approach fits your situation—and what to consider once your wealth reaches the point where investing becomes the easy part.

Last reviewed: January 17, 2026.

Quick verdict

Choose Empower's Free Dashboard if: You want to track all your accounts in one place—investments, bank accounts, spending—without paying anything. The dashboard is genuinely excellent, and you can ignore the wealth management upsells.

Choose Empower's Wealth Management if: You have $100k+ to invest and want human advisors building a custom portfolio. Be prepared for 0.89% fees and persistent phone calls.

Choose Betterment if: You want hands-off automated investing at low cost (0.25%). No minimums, no human advisors (unless you upgrade), no complexity. Just set your goals and let the algorithm work.

Choose X1 Wealth if: Your net worth is $1M+ and you've realized that investing is the easy part. At that point, the real money is in tax optimization, estate planning, and coordinating your entire financial team—not choosing between robo-advisors.

Comparison at a glance

Understanding the Empower ecosystem

Empower (formerly Personal Capital) offers two distinct products that often get conflated:

1. Empower Personal Dashboard (Free)

This is what most people think of when they hear "Empower." It's a free financial aggregation tool that:

• Connects to all your financial accounts (banks, brokerages, retirement)
• Tracks net worth over time with historical charts
• Analyzes investment fees with a hidden fee analyzer
• Provides retirement planning projections
• Offers basic spending categorization

The catch: Empower offers this for free because they want to convert you to their paid wealth management service. If you have significant assets, expect sales calls. Many users report receiving calls within days of linking accounts showing $100k+ in investable assets.

Rating: Excellent for free net worth and investment tracking. Just be prepared to decline the upsells.

2. Empower Wealth Management (Paid)

This is the actual money management service—and it's completely different from the free dashboard:

• Minimum: $100,000 in investable assets
• Fee: 0.89% on first $1M, declining for higher balances
  • $1M-$3M: 0.79%
  • $3M-$5M: 0.69%
  • $5M-$10M: 0.59%
  • $10M+: 0.49%
• Service: Human financial advisors, custom portfolios
• At $250k+: Dedicated team of two personal advisors

Who it's for: High-net-worth investors who want human guidance and are willing to pay premium fees for it. Empower doesn't consider itself a robo-advisor—they position as a "digital wealth manager" competing with traditional advisory firms, not Betterment.

Understanding Betterment

Betterment is a pure robo-advisor—one of the first (founded 2008) and still one of the best. It takes a fundamentally different approach: no human advisors at the basic tier, fully automated portfolio management.

How Betterment works

1. You answer questions about your goals and risk tolerance
2. Betterment builds a diversified ETF portfolio
3. The algorithm automatically rebalances and tax-loss harvests
4. You deposit money and ignore it

Betterment pricing

Standard tier:

• Fee: 0.25% annually (or $4/month if under $20k without $250/month deposits)
• Minimum: None ($10 to start investing)
• Includes: Tax-loss harvesting, automatic rebalancing, goal-based planning

Premium tier:

• Fee: 0.65% annually
• Minimum: $100,000
• Includes: Unlimited access to CFP advisors via phone

Volume discounts:

• $1M-$2M: 0.15%
• $2M+: 0.10%

Recent additions (2025-2026)

• Individual stock and ETF trading in the app
• Crypto portfolio (1% fee + trading costs)
• Cash Reserve account with 4.00% APY
• Up to $2M FDIC insurance through partner banks

Feature-by-feature breakdown

Investment management

Empower Free Dashboard: None. It tracks investments but doesn't manage them.

Empower Wealth Management: Full-service portfolio construction with human advisors. Custom asset allocation based on your complete financial picture. Includes tax-loss harvesting and tax-efficient placement.

Betterment: Fully automated ETF portfolios. Choose from core portfolios, socially responsible investing, income-focused, or Goldman Sachs Smart Beta. Automatic rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting included at all tiers.

Winner: Depends on what you want. Betterment for low-cost automation. Empower Wealth Management for human-guided customization (at 3.5x the fee).

Tax optimization

Empower Free Dashboard: None.

Empower Wealth Management: Tax-loss harvesting, tax-efficient asset location, coordinated tax strategies across accounts.

Betterment: Tax-loss harvesting on all accounts. Tax-coordinated portfolio across account types. Tax impact preview before trades.

Winner: Both paid services offer solid tax optimization for investments. Neither helps with tax strategy beyond investments (S-corp optimization, entity structuring, deductions)—that's a different problem.

Net worth and account tracking

Empower Free Dashboard: Excellent. Connects to 10,000+ institutions, tracks all account types, provides detailed net worth history and investment analysis.

Empower Wealth Management: Same dashboard plus advisory services.

Betterment: Basic. Shows your Betterment accounts and can link external accounts, but not designed as a full financial dashboard.

Winner: Empower, definitively. The free dashboard is the best in class for comprehensive financial tracking.

Retirement planning

Empower Free Dashboard: Strong retirement planning tools that project savings needs and simulate different scenarios.

Empower Wealth Management: Same tools plus human advisor guidance.

Betterment: Goal-based planning with projections, but less comprehensive than Empower's retirement planner.

Winner: Empower for detailed retirement planning.

Human advisor access

Empower Free Dashboard: None (but expect sales calls).

Empower Wealth Management: All clients get advisor access. At $250k+, you get a dedicated two-person team.

Betterment Standard: None.

Betterment Premium: Unlimited CFP access via phone ($100k minimum, 0.65% fee).

Winner: Empower Wealth Management offers more advisor access, but at significantly higher fees (0.89% vs 0.65%).

Fees comparison

Winner: Betterment, significantly. Even Betterment Premium costs less than Empower Wealth Management at every balance level.

Who should choose Empower?

Empower Free Dashboard is right for you if:

• You want to track all accounts in one place (free)
• You care about investment fee analysis
• You want detailed retirement planning projections
• You can handle declining sales calls
• You don't need anyone to manage your money

Ideal user: A DIY investor with $200k+ spread across multiple accounts who wants visibility but manages their own investments.

Empower Wealth Management is right for you if:

• You have $100k+ and want human advisors
• You value customization over low fees
• You want comprehensive financial planning
• You're willing to pay premium fees for premium service

Ideal user: Someone with $500k+ who previously used a traditional advisor and wants similar service with better technology.

Who should choose Betterment?

Betterment is right for you if:

• You want hands-off automated investing
• Low fees matter more than human advice
• You're starting with any amount (no minimums)
• You want tax-loss harvesting without complexity
• You prefer algorithms to advisors

Ideal user: A busy professional with $50k-$500k who wants to automate investing without thinking about it.

Betterment Premium is right for you if:

• You have $100k+ and occasionally want human guidance
• You still prefer robo-advisor fees to full wealth management
• You want CFP access without Empower's aggressive sales culture

Ideal user: Someone with $200k+ who's mostly comfortable with automation but wants occasional professional check-ins.

What neither Empower nor Betterment offers

Both platforms focus on investment management—getting your money invested efficiently. That's valuable, but it's increasingly the easy part of wealth building.

Once your net worth reaches $1M+, the questions change:

Tax optimization beyond investments

Empower and Betterment both do tax-loss harvesting on investments. Neither helps with:

• S-corp reasonable compensation optimization ($10k-$30k potential savings)
• Entity structuring for tax efficiency
• Timing of income and deductions
• Qualified business income deduction strategies
• Cost segregation for real estate

The difference between good investment tax strategy and comprehensive tax strategy can be $50k+ annually for high earners.

Estate planning

Neither platform analyzes your estate plan, explains your trust documents, or helps you understand what you're paying attorneys to create.

That $15k revocable living trust sitting in your filing cabinet? Empower and Betterment don't know it exists, let alone whether it needs updating.

Advisor coordination

If you have a CPA, estate attorney, insurance agent, and financial advisor, who's making sure they're all on the same page?

Empower's advisors manage investments. They're not coordinating your entire professional team or tracking whether decisions actually get implemented.

Family governance

Investment accounts are individual. Family wealth is collective. Neither platform helps with family decision-making frameworks, values articulation, or intergenerational wealth planning.

X1 Wealth: the planning layer above investing

X1 doesn't compete with Empower or Betterment for investment management. We think that's a solved problem—use Betterment if you want automation, use a fee-only advisor if you want human guidance.

Instead, X1 provides the planning and coordination layer that sits above your investments:

Tax Strategy Discovery: AI analysis finds S-corp optimization, entity structuring, and deductions your CPA isn't proactively recommending.

Estate Plan Analysis: Upload your trust documents and get plain-English explanations, gap identification, and attorney-ready questions.

Advisor Coordination: Single source of truth for your CPA, attorney, and financial advisor with decision tracking and outcome measurement.

Family Governance: Decision frameworks, values articulation, and planning tools previously reserved for $25M+ family offices.

Best for: Professionals and business owners earning $250k-$2M with $1M-$10M net worth who've solved the investing problem and want to optimize everything else.

See how X1 fits into your financial stack →

Methodology

This comparison was developed through:

• Direct testing of Empower's free dashboard and Betterment's platform
• Analysis of user reviews and fee structures
• Review of official documentation from both companies
• Pricing verified as of January 2026 (fees may change)

We have no affiliate relationships with either Empower or Betterment.

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Looking for more comparisons? See our guides to Monarch Money vs YNAB and Mint alternatives.