Personal Capital Cost 2026: Empower Fee Breakdown

Personal Capital rebranded to Empower in 2020, but the pricing model people ask about hasn’t changed in structure, only in name. The free budgeting and net worth tools still cost nothing. The optional wealth management service still charges a percentage of the money it manages for you. What trips people up is figuring out which parts of Empower are free, which parts cost money, and how much that gap actually adds up to over time.

This breakdown covers the real numbers: what the free dashboard includes, the exact fee tiers for paid wealth management, what you get at each tier, and how the cost compares to other robo-advisors and human advisors.

Is Personal Capital free to use

Yes, for the core dashboard. Empower’s financial tracking tools cost nothing and don’t require a credit card. You link your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, and investment accounts, and the platform gives you a real-time net worth calculation, a spending tracker, a retirement planner, and a fee analyzer that shows what you’re paying in expense ratios across your 401(k) and other investment accounts.

The free tier makes money for Empower in an indirect way. Once your linked accounts show you have $100,000 or more in investable assets, an advisor typically reaches out to pitch the paid wealth management service. There’s no obligation to sign up, and you can decline every call and keep using the free dashboard indefinitely.

Personal Capital wealth management fees explained

This is where the actual cost comes in. If you sign up for managed investing through Empower, formerly branded Personal Capital, you pay an annual advisory fee based on a percentage of the assets they manage for you. The fee is tiered, meaning the percentage drops as your account balance grows.

Here is the current fee schedule:

1. Empower advisory fee tiers

The first $1 million in assets is charged at 0.89% annually. Between $1 million and $3 million, the rate drops to 0.79% on that portion. From $3 million to $5 million, it falls to 0.69%. Between $5 million and $10 million, the rate is 0.59%. Anything above $10 million is charged at 0.49%.

These are blended tiers, not flat rates applied to your entire balance. If you have $1.5 million invested, you pay 0.89% on the first $1 million and 0.79% only on the remaining $500,000, not 0.79% on the whole amount.

For context, on a $200,000 portfolio at the entry tier, the annual advisory fee works out to roughly $1,780. On a $500,000 portfolio, it’s about $4,450 per year. These fees are calculated daily and billed quarterly, so the exact dollar amount fluctuates slightly with your account value.

What the fee includes at each service level

Empower doesn’t just charge for portfolio management. The advisory fee bundles several services together, and what you get depends on how much you invest.

Investment Services is the entry tier, available starting at $100,000. You get a customized portfolio built from low-cost ETFs, access to a team of financial advisors rather than one dedicated person, and standard tax-loss harvesting.

Wealth Management kicks in around $200,000 and replaces the advisor team with two dedicated financial advisors. You also gain access to specialists for topics like stock option planning, insurance review, and estate planning questions.

Private Client is reserved for higher balances, generally $1 million and above. This tier adds more direct access to senior advisors, more customized portfolio construction using individual stocks rather than only ETFs, and deeper planning around concentrated stock positions, philanthropy, and complex tax situations.

Across every tier, the fee also covers rebalancing, tax-loss harvesting, and use of the full dashboard suite. There are no separate trading commissions and no fee for moving money in or out of the account.

The cost people often miss: ETF expense ratios

The advisory fee isn’t the entire cost of investing with Empower. Your money is invested in ETFs, and those funds carry their own expense ratios charged by the fund provider, not by Empower. Empower states its portfolios average around 0.07% in underlying fund costs, which is low compared to actively managed mutual funds but isn’t zero.

Add the advisory fee and the fund expense ratio together to get your true all-in cost. On a $500,000 account at the 0.89% tier, that’s roughly 0.96% total per year once fund costs are included. It’s a small addition, but it matters when comparing Empower against advisors who quote only their advisory fee and leave out fund costs.

Personal Capital cost compared to other options

A 0.89% starting fee sounds reasonable until you compare it against pure robo-advisors. Wealthfront and Betterment both charge around 0.25% for automated portfolio management with no human advisor access. Vanguard Personal Advisor Services charges roughly 0.35% and includes access to a financial advisor, undercutting Empower’s entry tier by more than half.

Where Empower earns its higher fee is the depth of human access at lower account minimums than traditional wealth managers. A $250,000 account at a boutique financial advisory firm often faces a 1% fee with less digital tooling. Empower sits in the middle: more expensive than a bare-bones robo-advisor, less expensive than most traditional in-person advisors, with a stronger free dashboard than either offers. If you’re comparing where to keep cash rather than investment-management fees, start with the basics of choosing a savings account.

If all you want is net worth tracking and a spending overview, paying nothing and skipping the wealth management pitch entirely is the better move. If you want a managed portfolio with human advisor access and don’t need the absolute lowest fee, Empower is competitive rather than expensive.

Is the Personal Capital fee worth paying

This depends heavily on what you’d otherwise do with the money. If you’re a confident do-it-yourself investor comfortable rebalancing your own portfolio and filing your own tax-loss harvesting trades, the 0.89% fee is money you could keep by managing a simple three-fund portfolio yourself through a low-cost brokerage.

If you value having a dedicated advisor to call before a major financial decision, want tax-loss harvesting handled automatically without tracking wash sale rules yourself, or hold a concentrated stock position that needs careful unwinding, the fee buys real expertise that’s hard to replicate alone.

A useful test: if a 1% annual fee on your portfolio size feels uncomfortable when you picture it as a flat dollar amount rather than a percentage, that’s a sign to either negotiate, choose a lower-cost robo-advisor, or manage the money yourself.

How to reduce what you pay

A few practical levers exist if the standard fee schedule feels high for your situation. Consolidating accounts under one household, since some balances can be combined to reach a lower tier faster. Asking directly whether any fee discretion exists, since advisors sometimes have limited room to adjust for large accounts or long-term clients. Using the free dashboard alone if your main goal is tracking net worth and spending rather than active portfolio management. Comparing the total all-in cost, advisory fee plus fund expense ratio, against at least one other provider before committing, since a quarter-point difference compounds meaningfully over decades.