Retirement planning software comparison
WealthTrace vs. Empower: When Is a Free Retirement Planner Not Enough?
Empower is an excellent free way to monitor your finances and explore retirement possibilities. WealthTrace takes you further with advanced tax planning, investment-aware Monte Carlo, detailed projected cash flows, and the power to test more complex retirement decisions.
Try WealthTrace Deluxe features for seven days. No credit card required.
The difference
From tracking your wealth to planning your retirement in depth.
Empower combines account aggregation, investment tracking, and a convenient retirement forecast. WealthTrace brings those building blocks into a dedicated retirement-planning environment with finer control over taxes, investment scenarios, spending rules, and every year of your future cash flow.
Make more informed tax decisions
Test and optimize multi-year Roth conversion strategies, examine withdrawal order, and see projected taxes, RMDs, and Medicare IRMAA effects throughout retirement.
Stress-test more than a single forecast
Explore asset allocation alternatives, future investment reallocations, historical bear markets, and dynamic spending guardrails inside Monte Carlo simulations.
See precisely where the numbers come from
Review detailed year-by-year cash flows, choose the columns you care about, save custom views, and generate reports ranging from simple summaries to comprehensive financial plans.
Side-by-side
WealthTrace vs. Empower features
Both connect financial accounts and offer investment tracking and Monte Carlo-based retirement planning. WealthTrace specializes in deeper retirement strategy and projection detail; Empower specializes in a free, all-in-one financial dashboard.
| What matters | WealthTrace | Empower Personal Dashboard |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Dedicated retirement planning and financial projections with extensive tax and investment decision tools | Free personal finance dashboard with account aggregation, investment tracking, budgeting, and a retirement planner |
| Financial account linking | Link investment and bank accounts with supported providers | Link investments, cash accounts, mortgages, loans, and credit accounts |
| Investment holdings and tracking | Security holdings, asset allocation, historical balances, transactions, performance, and fees (advanced tracking in Deluxe) | Investment holdings, portfolio analysis, performance, allocations, transactions, and fee insights |
| Manual ticker-based holdings | Enter share counts and tickers; WealthTrace refreshes values using recent security prices | Primarily designed around connected account data; equivalent manual ticker/share price-refresh workflow not verified |
| Fund look-through and concentration | Analyze underlying positions within supported ETFs and mutual funds and identify overlapping concentrated exposures | Portfolio allocation and investment checkup tools; equivalent cross-fund underlying-position rollups not verified |
| Roth conversion optimization WealthTrace standout | Model multi-year conversions and optimize strategies using lifetime-tax and beneficiary-value objectives (Deluxe) | No comparable user-directed multi-year Roth conversion optimization tool documented in the free dashboard |
| Detailed projected taxes | Federal/state tax projections, taxable vs. tax-deferred withdrawals, RMDs, Social Security taxation, Medicare premiums, and IRMAA | Retirement income and spending estimates; equivalent granular future tax schedules not established |
| Monte Carlo retirement analysis | 1,000 simulations informed by mapped holdings' asset classes, volatility, and correlations | Monte Carlo retirement planner; Empower describes running 5,000 hypothetical scenarios informed by current finances |
| Monte Carlo spending guardrails | Set investment-value thresholds that raise or reduce living expenses within simulated retirement paths (Deluxe) | Retirement spending guidance; equivalent adjustable in-simulation spending guardrails not documented |
| Quick Monte Carlo scenarios | Adjust spending, retirement age, longevity, and other assumptions alongside simulation results | Explore retirement scenarios, including retirement timing, spending, and saving changes |
| Bear-market stress tests | Dedicated historical bear-market and recovery scenarios (Deluxe) | Recession Simulator tests historical downturns, including 2008 and the dot-com crash |
| Asset allocation scenarios | Test changes to portfolio investment mixes and their effect on retirement projections (Deluxe) | Investment Checkup supports analyzing portfolio mix and risk; equivalent integrated allocation-scenario workflow not verified |
| Future investment reallocations | Schedule up to two changes to your investment mix at specified future dates | Equivalent scheduled reallocation workflow not documented |
| Detailed retirement cash flows WealthTrace standout | Extensive year-by-year projections for income, expenses, taxes, investment growth, withdrawals, and individual balances. Filter data, save custom views, and export the details. | Retirement income, spending, and savings projections with interactive charts; comparable customizable, saved projection data views not documented |
| Customizable reports | Generate and export everything from a brief retirement summary to a comprehensive financial plan, choosing the content you want | Dashboard charts and planning views; equivalent customizable comprehensive retirement-report generator not documented |
| Choose cash-flow accounts | Direct particular cash inflows to specific accounts and select funding sources for expenses | Retirement income and withdrawals planning; same cash-flow event-level account controls not documented |
| What-if and life-event scenarios | Multi-variable scenarios, big expenses, income changes, taxes, and retirement timing | Side-by-side retirement scenarios, major expenses, income events, and different retirement dates |
| Everyday budgeting and transaction review | Focused on long-term planning and investment analysis | Free budgeting, categorization of transactions, debt management, and financial dashboard |
| AI planning assistance | Trace AI helps explain WealthTrace plan results and planning concepts (Deluxe) | Offers educational resources and optional human financial professionals; equivalent plan-aware assistant not verified |
| Cost | Standard $229/year; Deluxe $289/year; seven-day Deluxe trial, no credit card required | Free Personal Dashboard; separate optional paid investment advisory services |
Comparison reviewed October 29, 2026 against public product documentation. “Not documented” means a directly comparable feature could not be verified, not proof that it is unavailable. Empower Personal Dashboard is distinct from Empower's paid investment advisory services. Sources: Empower financial tools, Empower Retirement Planner, Empower scenario and recession tools, and WealthTrace pricing and features. Advanced WealthTrace capabilities generally require Deluxe.
How to choose
Which planner is right for you?
Choose WealthTrace if…
Your retirement decisions need deeper answers.
- You want to optimize Roth conversions and understand projected taxes over decades.
- You want guardrails in Monte Carlo, future asset reallocations, and allocation scenarios.
- You want to drill into each year's investment gains, taxes, withdrawals, and account balances.
- You want to filter, save, and export detailed projection views or create a customized retirement report.
- You want investment look-through analysis alongside your retirement planning.
Choose Empower if…
A free financial dashboard meets your needs.
- You want to aggregate accounts and track investments, spending, net worth, and debts in one place.
- You want a useful retirement forecast without paying for a software subscription.
- You value budgeting, spending categories, and everyday transaction monitoring.
- You want to explore basic retirement life events and recession scenarios.
Frequently asked questions
Answers before you decide
Is WealthTrace worth paying for if Empower is free?
If you need more than a useful overview of your retirement, yes. WealthTrace is built for multi-year tax strategies, Roth conversion optimization, detailed withdrawal and account projections, advanced stress testing, and configurable financial reports. Empower's free dashboard remains a strong choice for everyday account and spending tracking.
Does Empower have a Monte Carlo retirement planner?
Yes. Empower offers a Monte Carlo retirement planner that uses information from linked accounts and estimates a range of retirement outcomes. WealthTrace adds more granular controls, including mapped asset-class volatility and correlations, dynamic spending guardrails, and quick what-if inputs.
Can Empower stress-test a recession?
Yes. Empower's Recession Simulator includes historical downturns such as 2008 and the dot-com crash. WealthTrace also provides historical bear-market scenarios and adds dedicated asset-allocation scenarios and spending guardrails within Monte Carlo.
Can Empower optimize my Roth conversions?
Empower's free dashboard does not publicly document a comparable multi-year Roth conversion optimizer. WealthTrace Deluxe lets you model conversion strategies over time and compare results for lifetime taxes and other objectives.
Do both tools connect investment accounts?
Yes. Both can aggregate financial accounts. Empower emphasizes a broad financial dashboard for spending, investing, and net worth. WealthTrace uses account and holdings data within its detailed retirement projection and investment analysis tools.
Can I customize my retirement projection data and reports?
WealthTrace lets you inspect detailed yearly cash flows, filter and save custom data views, and export reports ranging from a concise summary to a comprehensive financial plan. Empower offers dashboard and retirement-planning charts, but a comparable customizable planning-report workflow is not documented.
Can I try WealthTrace before subscribing?
Yes. WealthTrace offers seven days of Deluxe access with no credit card required, so you can build a retirement plan and try the advanced tools before choosing a subscription.
See the numbers behind your retirement plan
Ready to go beyond a free retirement planner?
Keep the big picture, but take control of the details. Explore Roth conversion strategies, investment scenarios, taxes, and year-by-year cash flows with WealthTrace's advanced retirement-planning tools.
7 days of Deluxe access · No credit card required