Empower Review: Free Dashboard, Paid Pitch

Use the Free Dashboard, Ignore the Phone Calls

Empower’s free dashboard is a solid net worth and investment fee tracker, and you do not pay for it. Link your accounts, look at the charts, run the Fee Analyzer, and close the tab.

The paid part is the problem. Empower’s advisory service charges 0.89% a year on the first stretch of your money. On $500,000, that is $4,450 every year, and the math over 20 years costs you about $305,000 (including fund costs) compared with a three-fund index portfolio. You can build that portfolio yourself in an afternoon. The dashboard is a good product that doubles as a sales funnel, and you can take the product and skip the funnel.

Pricing and fee claims below are as of October 2026.

From Personal Capital to Empower

Personal Capital launched as a free aggregation dashboard with a paid advisory arm bolted on. Empower, the retirement recordkeeper, announced it was buying the company in 2020. The Personal Capital name was retired around February 2023, when Empower’s own notice to users pointed to a swap to the Empower brand, the empower.com login, and an app that updated in place.

The rebrand did not change the business model. The free tools stayed free, and the advisory service stayed the thing paying for them. The migration itself was not smooth for everyone. App store reviewers from the transition period report that linked accounts did not carry over and that transaction categories were lost. Those are individual user reports, not an official account, but if you are a long-time Personal Capital user, expect to spot-check your data.

What the Free Dashboard Does

Empower pitches the Personal Dashboard as a way to “make budgeting, planning and retirement decisions all in one place.” Its own Form ADV also refers to “the free Dashboard.” Here is what that covers, based on third-party reviews of the tools:

• Net worth tracking. You link bank, brokerage, 401(k), HSA, mortgage, and loan accounts. Empower totals assets, subtracts debts, and charts the result over time. This is the feature everyone signs up for.
• Investment Checkup. It breaks your holdings down by asset allocation, style, size, and sector, and flags what is overweight or underweight.
• Fee Analyzer. It reads the expense ratios inside your funds and shows what they cost per year. It also projects how much those fees will take over time.
• Retirement Planner. You enter income, expenses, and savings, and it runs scenarios against your goals. It is simple, and you will probably outgrow it, but it is a fast sanity check.
• Cash flow and budgeting. It imports transactions, sorts them into categories, and charts inflows and outflows.

Two caveats. First, the tool list above comes from reviews of the dashboard, because Empower’s marketing page lists the tools only in broad terms. Features move around, so check what your login actually shows. Second, the budgeting side is the weak spot. Reviewers call it basic, and the product was built around investments, not around telling you that you spent $412 on food delivery.

This site’s Monarch Money review already makes the same point. Monarch is the better budget tool. Empower is the better investment dashboard. Plenty of people run both, and that is a reasonable setup.

The Fee Analyzer Is the Best Free Feature

Most tech workers have a 401(k) full of funds they picked in 2019 and never looked at again. The Fee Analyzer is where Empower earns its keep.

Say your 401(k) holds a target-date fund charging 0.60% and an actively managed large-cap fund at 0.85%. On $200,000 split evenly, that is $600 plus $850, or $1,450 a year, in fees you never see on a statement. Fund expenses come out of the fund’s price, so no line item ever shows up.

The analyzer puts that number on a screen. It will not tell you what to do about it, but the number alone tends to prompt you to swap to a 0.03% index fund option if your plan has one. If you do nothing else with Empower, link your 401(k) and run this once. The number it shows can run into four figures a year.

What Empower Charges for Advice

This is where the free product meets the paid one. Empower’s advisory arm is Empower Advisory Group, LLC. Its Form ADV Part 2A brochure for the Personal Strategy program, dated May 18, 2026, sets the fee schedule. I read the brochure directly instead of trusting review sites, because some aggregators list different tiers.

Three details matter.

1. Fees are charged on total assets under management, including cash. The brochure says Empower charges a fee on all client assets it manages, including uninvested cash.
2. The tiers are marginal. The brochure’s own example: with $7.5 million, the first $3 million costs 0.79%, the next $2 million costs 0.69%, and the last $2.5 million costs 0.59%.
3. Underlying fund costs are on top. The advisory fee is separate from the expense ratios of the ETFs and funds inside your account. Empower’s marketing says its ETF expense ratios average around 0.06%. Reviewers cite 0.06% to 0.07%, so call it roughly 0.95% all-in at the low tiers.

The brochure also lists a 401(k) management add-on called Personal Strategy+, at 0.49% a year on the employer plan assets it manages. It is not standalone: you need a core Personal Strategy Managed Account of at least $25,000, and that account pays its own 0.89%. It manages your employer plan without moving the money, but not Empower-administered plans. That is 0.49% extra for picking among the funds your plan already offers.

What do you get for the money?

• $100,000 to $249,999: access to a team of advisors and an ETF portfolio.
• $250,000 to $999,999: a financial plan covering retirement, college, and tax optimization, plus a dedicated advisor and a portfolio of individual securities and ETFs.
• $1 million and up: planning specialists, private banking services, estate and legacy specialists, and access to a private equity fund through iCapital. The brochure warns that the private equity route adds fees and layers of expenses well above the other options.

There is no performance fee, and the brochure says the single fee includes trading commissions. Fair enough. You also pay no commissions on ETFs or on the broker’s own index funds at Fidelity or Schwab.

The Math: 0.89% vs a Three-Fund Portfolio

Let’s put real dollars on it. Assume you have $500,000 and no further contributions. Assume a 7% annual return before costs, which is an assumption and not a forecast. Compare two ways to hold the same stocks and bonds.

Option A: Empower Personal Strategy. Advisory fee of 0.89% plus roughly 0.06% in fund expenses. All-in cost: 0.95%.

Option B: DIY three-fund portfolio. A total US stock fund, a total international fund, and a bond fund at a blended 0.03%. All-in cost: 0.03%.

Year one dollars:

• Option A: 0.95% of $500,000 = $4,750 ($4,450 advisory + $300 fund expenses)
• Option B: 0.03% of $500,000 = $150

That is a $4,600 annual gap on day one. It grows because the fee scales with the balance.

Over 20 years, treat the fees as a straight reduction of the return:

• Option A: $500,000 x (1 + 0.07 - 0.0095)^20 = $500,000 x 1.0605^20, about $1,618,800
• Option B: $500,000 x (1 + 0.07 - 0.0003)^20 = $500,000 x 1.0697^20, about $1,924,000
• Gap: about $305,000

That is the price of 20 years of an advisor, and it equals about 61% of your starting balance. This simplified model ignores taxes, rebalancing, and contributions. Adding contributions makes the gap bigger, because fees apply to every new dollar too. Behavior also matters. If the advisor stops you from panic-selling in a crash, some of that gap comes back. A well-run DIY portfolio needs you to sit still, which is the actual skill being sold.

Is a 0.89% advisor ever worth it? If you will not rebalance, will not stick to a plan, or have a tangled situation (equity comp, business income, estate questions), a human who answers the phone has value. For most tech workers reading this site, who can read a prospectus and ran the numbers in a spreadsheet anyway, it is an expensive way to buy discipline you can get for free.

The Phone Calls

This is the most common complaint about Empower, and it follows from how the business works.

The dashboard is free. The advisory fee is what pays for it. Empower’s sign-up page has a “Schedule a call” button, and its site says advisory services “are available when you invest $100,000 or more with us.” Its Form ADV says Empower Personal Wealth pays affiliate websites for each person who registers with the Dashboard and links at least $100,000 in new investable assets, even if that person never becomes a client. Empower itself has every reason to want you past that threshold.

So when you link a brokerage account and a 401(k) that together cross $100,000, you are now a qualified lead. Reviewers report calls and emails from advisors after that. I cannot tell you how many calls you will get, because it varies by user and I did not test it with a funded account.

Treat the calls like any sales outreach. The advisor is paid by the fee, so the advisor has a reason to recommend the service. The sign-up page says you are “not obligated to subscribe for investment advisory services.” Say no. Ask to be taken off the call list. If the calls continue, contact Empower support in writing.

If you hate this, you can link only accounts that total less than $100,000, or skip linking the large brokerage account and enter its balance by hand. That gives up automatic tracking, which is the point of the product. Most people live with a few “no thanks” calls.

Who Should Use Empower

Use the dashboard if you:

1. Want a net worth number that updates itself.
2. Have a 401(k) or IRA and want to see what it costs.
3. Want a second view on your investments next to a budget app like Monarch.

Skip the advisory service if you:

1. Already hold broad index funds and know why.
2. Have under $1 million, where the fee is 0.89% flat.
3. Can handle one calendar reminder a year to rebalance.

Consider it if you have a messy situation and would otherwise pay a human by the hour. A flat-fee planner for a one-time review may cost less than 0.89% a year, forever. That comparison is the one to run before you sign.

Common Questions

Is Empower’s free dashboard actually free?

Yes. Empower’s Personal Dashboard has no subscription fee, and its Form ADV refers to it as the “free Dashboard.” Empower pays for it through its advisory business. The cost is sales outreach once your linked accounts pass roughly $100,000, not a bill.

What is the minimum for Empower Personal Strategy?

Empower Personal Strategy advisory services require $100,000 in assets under management, per Empower Advisory Group’s Form ADV dated May 18, 2026. The brochure says Empower can reduce or waive that minimum at its discretion. Personal Strategy+, the 401(k) management add-on, also requires a core Managed Account of at least $25,000.

How much does Empower charge for advisory services?

Empower charges 0.89% a year on $100,000 to $999,999 under its May 2026 Form ADV. Private Clients with $1 million or more pay 0.79% on the first $3 million, with lower marginal rates above that. Fund expense ratios are billed separately, and Empower says its ETFs average about 0.06%.

Did Personal Capital become Empower?

Yes. Empower announced its acquisition of Personal Capital in 2020, and the Personal Capital brand was replaced by Empower around February 2023. The free dashboard moved to empower.com and the app updated in place. Some users report having to relink accounts and rebuild transaction categories after the migration.