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A budgeting app answers “where did my money go this month.” A net-worth tracker answers something different: is the total actually climbing. It pulls every account into one dashboard instead of a dozen browser tabs — checking, retirement, brokerage, crypto, the house. Five tools cover most of this space in 2026. Here’s what each one costs, what it tracks, and who it’s built for, checked against the providers’ own pricing pages this month.
What actually separates these five
Three questions matter more than the marketing copy. Does the free tier really track investments and net worth, or just account balances? What does it cost once you outgrow free? And what’s the one thing each tool does that the others don’t bother with? Pricing here came straight from each provider’s own page, not a roundup site — several third-party comparisons had different numbers for the same tool, so the provider’s own site settled it every time. Check current pricing yourself before linking anything; it moves.
Five tools, side by side
| Tool | Price | Free tier | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Empower | Free (paid advisory service is optional and separate) | Yes — full net worth & investment tracking | Free, full-depth net worth and portfolio tracking |
| PocketSmith | Free, or Foundation from $9.99/mo billed annually | Yes — 2 accounts, 12 budgets, 6-month forecast | Long-range cash-flow forecasting |
| Monarch Money | $14.99/mo or $99.99/yr | 7-day trial only | One app for budgeting and net worth together |
| Quicken Simplifi | $3.99/mo billed annually (promo), $6.99/mo at standard rate | No free tier — 30-day money-back guarantee instead | Budgeting-first with net worth built in, lowest paid entry price here |
| Kubera | $249/yr (Essentials) | 14-day trial only | Crypto, real estate, and alternative-asset tracking |
Only two of these have a free tier at all. Only one of those two, Empower, actually does full net-worth tracking for free; PocketSmith’s free plan caps out at 2 accounts before it’s not really usable for a whole financial picture.
Empower: free, if you can tune out the upsell
The free dashboard covers net worth, spending and cash flow, portfolio allocation, a 401(k) fee analyzer, and a retirement planner. That’s a lot of tool for $0. Here’s why it’s free: Empower runs the dashboard as a lead-generation funnel for its paid advisory service, Empower Personal Strategy, which needs at least $100,000 in investable assets and charges a tiered fee starting at 0.89% on the first million. You can use the free side forever and never touch the advisory service. Expect the occasional nudge to book a call, though.
PocketSmith: for seeing months ahead, not just today
Every other tool on this list shows you where you stand right now. PocketSmith’s specialty is projecting forward — your account balances and net worth, months or years out, based on your recurring income and expenses. That’s genuinely useful if you’re planning a big purchase or thinking about a career change. The free plan is real but tight: 2 accounts, 12 budgets, a 6-month forecast window. The long-range forecasting that’s the actual reason to use this tool needs the paid Foundation tier, $9.99 a month billed annually or $14.95 month to month, to stretch further than that.
Monarch Money: one subscription instead of two
Our budgeting apps comparison covered Monarch for its shared-account design. The same subscription handles net worth tracking just as well; it’s not an afterthought bolted onto the budgeting tool, the trajectory view gets equal attention. If the choice is between paying for two separate apps or one that does both jobs, Monarch is the strongest single-subscription case here, at $99.99 a year paid annually.
Quicken Simplifi: the cheapest paid option
Simplifi bundles net worth into a budgeting app, along with savings goals and a retirement projection tool. At $3.99 a month billed annually (a recurring promo rate; the standard rate is $6.99, and there’s no monthly-billing option), it undercuts every other paid tool on this list. There’s no free tier, but a 30-day money-back guarantee gives you a real way to test it. The tradeoff against Empower: net worth is a feature inside Simplifi’s budgeting app, not the main event. If investment depth is what you actually want, Empower or Kubera go further.
Kubera: for assets the other four can’t see
Kubera tracks what mainstream net-worth apps skip entirely: crypto across multiple wallets and exchanges, domain names, precious metals, collectibles, private business equity, real estate with automatic value estimation. At $249 a year for the Essentials plan, it costs more than everything else on this list combined, and it’s not worth that if your assets are a checking account, a 401(k), and a brokerage account — Empower handles that for free. It earns its price only for someone who actually holds the alternative-asset types it was built to track.
Where net-worth trackers help, and where they don’t
Where they help
- Seeing your whole financial picture in one place instead of logging into six separate accounts.
- Catching portfolio drift or fee bloat you’d never notice one account at a time.
- Making progress visible. A rising net-worth line motivates in a way a single account balance doesn’t.
Where they don’t
- None of them grow your net worth for you. They show the number; moving it is still on you.
- A “free” tool that sells advisory services has a real incentive to steer you toward that service, not just show you data.
- Manually entered assets (real estate, private equity, collectibles) are estimates. Treat those numbers as rough, not exact.
Matching a tool to your situation
- Full net worth and portfolio tracking, free: Empower.
- Planning months or years ahead, not just today: PocketSmith.
- One subscription for budgeting and net worth together: Monarch Money.
- Cheapest paid option, no need for investment depth: Quicken Simplifi.
- Crypto, real estate, or other assets the mainstream apps miss: Kubera.
Related read
A tracker shows you the number. A budgeting app is how you move it. See our comparison of the best budgeting apps in 2026 → If you’re deciding where new investment dollars actually go, see our comparison of robo-advisors →
Before you link a bank or brokerage account
Nothing here is financial advice tailored to your situation — it’s a comparison, not a recommendation for your specific numbers. Free-tier limits and what counts as a “free” feature shift over time, so double-check the current terms on the provider’s site before you sign up. Any manually entered value (a house, a stake in a private business, a collection) is an estimate the tool can’t verify, not a live price, so don’t lean on those figures for anything that actually matters. For guidance that accounts for your real financial picture, talk to a fee-only advisor instead of treating a comparison article as the final word.
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