Empower (formerly Personal Capital) is probably the most frequently recommended free net worth tracker in any personal finance forum. It has genuine fans.
It also has real tradeoffs that most reviews gloss over, because most reviews have affiliate links.
Here's the honest version.
Is the Empower net worth tracker worth using? The short answer: yes, if you hold mostly traditional accounts (bank, brokerage, 401(k), IRA) and you're comfortable linking them. It's free, it's genuinely good at consolidating your net worth and exposing investment fees, and it isn't likely to disappear the way Mint did. The trade-off is that you're a sales lead for Empower's paid wealth management, and it isn't built around Bitcoin and other alternative assets.
Fees and features below were checked against Empower's own pages in October 2026.
What Is Empower?
Empower acquired Personal Capital in 2020 for $825 million. The consumer-facing dashboard product kept the same functionality under the Empower brand. It syncs your financial accounts, shows your net worth, analyzes your investments, and projects your retirement readiness — all for free.
That "free" is worth unpacking, because not all acquisitions end the same way.
Compare it to what happened with Mint. Intuit acquired Mint in 2009 for ~$170 million. Mint was one of the most popular personal finance apps in the country — millions of connected accounts, genuine user loyalty. But Intuit's core business is TurboTax and QuickBooks. Mint never fit cleanly. The ad-based revenue model was weak, the product referral fees were modest, and Mint kept running as a loss-leader with no real conversion engine attached to it. In 2024, Intuit shut Mint down entirely. Fifteen years of user data, gone. Millions of users scrambling for alternatives overnight.
More than two years later, friends and followers still frequently mention that they miss Mint.
Empower is a somewhat different situation, but there are parallels. Empower's core business is managed wealth services — advisory management with a $100,000 minimum, at 0.89% a year on the first tier. That fee on a $500k portfolio is $4,450 annually. The rate steps down on larger accounts (0.79% on the first $3 million for Private Client, which starts at $1 million), so a $1M portfolio pays less per dollar but still about $7,900 a year. The math on a single conversion is substantial.
A free net worth tracker run by a company whose paid service starts at $100,000 isn't a charitable offering. It's how Empower meets the people most likely to want that service. You're the lead; the dashboard is the funnel.
This is precisely why Empower, unlike Mint, will likely remain free and functional: the dashboard has a business reason to exist. Personal Capital is the top of Empower's sales pipeline.
Understanding this doesn't make the free product bad. It means understanding what you're using and why it's free. And what that may entail.
What Empower Actually Does Well
Net worth tracking across all accounts
Empower connects to banks, brokerages, credit unions, loan servicers, and credit card companies — hundreds of institutions — through a third-party aggregator, Yodlee. Once connected, you get a real-time view of your total assets and liabilities in one place.
This is genuinely useful if your financial life spans multiple institutions. Most people with significant savings have at least 3–5 accounts: a checking account, a high-yield savings account, a 401(k) through an employer, a Roth IRA, and possibly a taxable brokerage. Seeing all of that in one place without manual entry is a real convenience.
The fee analyzer
This is probably Empower's single most valuable free feature and the one most people underuse.
The fee analyzer looks at every mutual fund and ETF in your connected investment accounts and calculates how much you're paying in expense ratios — then projects what those fees cost you over your investment lifetime.
A 1% expense ratio on a $100k portfolio costs you roughly $1,000 per year directly — and substantially more in foregone compound growth over decades. Most people in employer 401(k) plans are paying more than they realize. Empower shows you exactly what it is and flags the high-fee funds.
This feature alone is worth connecting your accounts for, even if you don't use the rest of the dashboard.
Investment analysis and asset allocation
Empower's Portfolio Analysis shows your allocation across all connected accounts — equities, bonds, international, alternatives — and compares it to a suggested allocation based on your stated risk tolerance and time horizon. The analysis is not groundbreaking, but it's useful for seeing your full picture rather than managing each account in isolation. It works as a stock and investment tracker too: your holdings, your performance and your fees, across every account you connect.
Retirement planner
The retirement planning tool asks your income, savings rate, current savings, and target retirement age — then runs projections under different scenarios. It's more sophisticated than most free tools and gives you a sense of whether you're on track.
It's not a replacement for a serious retirement planning tool like Projection Lab, but for a free sanity check, it's solid.
Budgeting and cash flow
Empower's free tools also include Budgeting & Cash Flow and a Transactions view. They're a sidecar to the net worth dashboard, not the reason to use it, but they mean Empower covers some of what Mint did.
The Real Tradeoffs
You're linking your bank accounts
Empower links outside accounts through Yodlee's FastLink. Its terms of use say so, and ask you to accept Yodlee's terms separately. Aggregation is optional: you use it by providing your financial account credentials, which lets Empower connect to your institutions and show the results on the dashboard.
You are giving a third party ongoing access to your bank, brokerage, and loan accounts. This isn't unique to Empower — it's how essentially all financial aggregation works — but it's worth naming clearly. The risk is real but statistical, not zero.
The more relevant concern for most people isn't breach risk — it's data usage. Read Empower's privacy policy for how your account data may be used before you connect anything.
The upsell is built in
Once you connect your accounts, expect emails and in-app prompts about Empower's managed wealth services. Empower's advisory service starts at $100,000, so it's reasonable to expect outreach from an advisor once your connected balances pass that mark.
This isn't a bug or an aggressive sales team operating outside the product's intent. It's the business model. Empower knows your net worth, your asset allocation, and your account balances at every institution you link. That's a better picture than any cold-lead list provides.
You can unsubscribe from emails and decline calls without losing access to the free dashboard. But the product will keep surfacing wealth management prompts in the UI as long as you're using it. That's the exchange. Use the tool with that understanding.
Limited help with Bitcoin and other non-standard assets
If you hold Bitcoin, own real estate, have equity in a private company, or hold any significant asset that isn't a standard bank or brokerage account, check what Empower can do with it before you commit. Its list of free tools doesn't include crypto tracking, and what links automatically depends on whether your exchange, wallet or institution is supported. Anything it can't link goes in as a manual account that you update yourself.
For portfolios that include Bitcoin, business equity, or real estate, that's a meaningful gap, and a tracker built for those assets is worth a look. See the alternatives below.
The interface can feel overwhelming early on
Empower is built for someone who already has a complex financial picture and wants to manage it in one place. If you're in the early stages of building wealth — fewer accounts, smaller balances, more focused on building habits than analyzing allocations — the dashboard can feel like more than you need.
Who Should Use Empower
Use Empower if:
- You have $100k+ across multiple financial institutions and want one consolidated view
- You hold primarily traditional assets (bank accounts, index funds, 401k, Roth IRA) that link cleanly
- You want to run the fee analyzer on your 401(k) — even once
- You're comfortable with the bank-sync model and its tradeoffs
Don't use Empower if:
- You're not comfortable linking bank accounts to a third-party platform
- A significant portion of your assets is in Bitcoin, real estate, or private equity and you want them tracked automatically
- You're in the early wealth-building phase and want something simpler and more milestone-focused
- You want to track progress against specific wealth milestones rather than just see a balance sheet
Alternatives Worth Knowing
Wealth Potion — Free net worth tracker at app.wealthpotion.com. No bank link. You add your accounts yourself: stock, ETF and crypto holdings update from live prices, and everything else you update by hand. Set a net worth goal and track progress toward it, with XP at milestones like your first positive net worth and your first $100K. Pairs with a Financial Freedom Calculator. Built for people in active wealth-building mode who want a progress frame, not just a balance aggregation.
Kubera — Built for wealth that isn't all in bank and brokerage accounts. Kubera tracks crypto in exchanges, wallets and DeFi, real estate, and private investments, and costs $250 a year after a 14-day trial. The trade is the opposite of Empower's: you pay up front instead of being the lead.
Stifel Wealth Tracker — A free app from the brokerage Stifel. US residents can sign up without being a Stifel client. What it is and who it's for.
Projection Lab — Purpose-built for detailed FIRE planning and retirement projection. More sophisticated than Empower's planner but requires more setup. Full ProjectionLab review.
Spreadsheet — Still underrated. Full control, full privacy, zero friction. No visualization or milestone tracking, but nothing wrong with it if you'll maintain it.
FAQ
Is Empower actually free? The dashboard is free, yes. Empower's business is managed wealth services, starting at 0.89% a year with a $100,000 minimum. The free tier exists to generate leads for that product. You can use it indefinitely without paying anything.
Is Empower safe to connect bank accounts to? Empower links accounts through Yodlee's FastLink, a third-party aggregator, which means you provide your account credentials to connect. The security risk is real but low in practice. The bigger consideration for most people is the data usage policy and comfort with ongoing third-party account access.
Is Empower better than Mint was? They were solving different problems. Mint was primarily a spending tracker — transaction categorization, budget monitoring, where did the money go. Empower has always been net worth and investment analysis, though it now lists Budgeting & Cash Flow and Transactions among its free tools. If envelope-style budgeting is what you want, YNAB or Monarch Money are built around it.
What Empower does have that Mint never did: a clear reason to stay free. Mint got shut down in 2024 because Intuit — a tax and accounting software company — couldn't find a real business model for it after 15 years of trying. Empower has no such problem. The managed wealth service gives the free dashboard a permanent reason to exist. For net worth and investment use cases, Empower was better than Mint and, unlike Mint, it's not going anywhere.
Does Empower work with Bitcoin or crypto? It isn't a headline feature. Empower's list of free tools doesn't include crypto tracking, and what links automatically depends on whether your exchange or wallet is supported. Holdings it can't link go in as manual entries. If crypto is a big part of your net worth, check support for your exchange first, or use a tracker built for it, like Wealth Potion for a simple view or Kubera for a deeper one.
How does Empower compare with Kubera? Empower is free, links traditional accounts through Yodlee, and includes a fee analyzer and retirement planner. Kubera costs $250 a year after a 14-day trial and tracks crypto in exchanges, wallets and DeFi, real estate, and private investments. Pick Empower if your money sits in bank, brokerage and retirement accounts. Pick Kubera if a large share of it doesn't.
Will I get calls from Empower's advisors? Possibly. Empower's advisory service starts at $100,000, so if your connected portfolio is over that, it's reasonable to expect emails and perhaps calls. You can unsubscribe from emails and decline calls without losing access to the free dashboard.
The Bottom Line
Empower is a genuinely good free product for a specific user: someone with a multi-institution traditional portfolio who wants consolidated visibility and doesn't mind the bank-sync model.
The fee analyzer alone is worth signing up for if you have employer-sponsored retirement accounts — run it once, see what you're actually paying, then keep the account or not.
For active wealth builders who want milestone-based progress tracking without bank access — or who hold Bitcoin, real estate, or other non-standard assets — Wealth Potion is the better fit.
Track your net worth and your progress toward a goal, no bank link required — Wealth Potion is free with signup.