Empower Review (2026): Cost, Features, and Who It Suits

You link accounts from across providers and Empower shows net worth, allocation, and a fee analyser that surfaces expense ratios you may not have noticed. That tier is free. Separately, Empower runs a managed wealth service with human advisors at a percentage of assets, with minimums, and the free tools are the funnel into it.

In category terms it is a robo-advisor (hands-off automated investing), and the AI component specifically aggregates accounts and analyses them. That phrase is worth reading literally: across this market, "AI" covers everything from a rebalancing rule to a conversational assistant, and the products are not interchangeable just because they share the label.

• Genuinely useful free aggregation across accounts no single provider sees
• The fee analyser routinely surfaces fund costs people did not know they were paying
• Managed tier adds access to human advisors on top of the software

These are real advantages, and if they describe what you want, Empower is a reasonable choice regardless of what any competitor including us has to say about it.

The free tools are a lead source for a high-fee managed service, and the sales contact is persistent.

• Expect sales contact after linking accounts. The free product exists to source clients for the managed one
• The managed service is priced at the higher end of the market for what is largely ETF portfolio management

Empower's managed Personal Strategy needs more than $100,000 invested and charges 0.89% a year on balances up to $1 million, then 0.79% on the first $3 million for Private Clients, stepping down to 0.49% on assets over $10 million. Its budgeting and net-worth tools stay free. Checked on empower.com, October 2026. Translated into money, 0.89% a year is roughly $89 a year on a $10,000 balance and about $890 on $100,000, charged annually including in years the account falls. A percentage fee compounds with the balance, so the dollar figure is the number to compare.

Fees change. The figure above is a point-in-time guide, and the Empower pricing breakdown goes into what else you pay on top. Confirm current pricing on Empower's own site.

• Best for free portfolio tracking; the paid advice is a separate decision: Empower (0.89%/yr from $100,000, tiered down to 0.49% (Oct 2026))
• Best for a keep, trim or exit read on the stocks you already own, and placing the trades you approve: Walnut (Free; Walnut Plus $9.99/mo on the web; no fee on assets)
• Best for set-and-forget automated investing: Betterment ($5/mo, or 0.25%/yr from $24,000 or $200/mo deposits (Oct 2026))
• Best for hands-off investing with planning built in: Wealthfront (0.25%/yr, $500 minimum (Oct 2026))
• Best for a second opinion on an existing portfolio: PortfolioPilot (Free; Gold $20, Platinum $49, Pro $99 a month billed yearly (Oct 2026))
• Best for research and discovery in plain English: Magnifi (Free plan; Premium is a paid subscription (as of October 2026))
• Best for quantitative stock signals: Danelfin (Subscription)

Prices checked October 2026. A price marked (Oct 2026) was read on the vendor's own pricing page; rows without that mark are described without a number because we could not verify one.

The two columns that change your experience most are whether your money has to move and whether the tool can act on what it finds. Cost matters next, and only in dollars.

Empower and Walnut can both work alongside an account you already hold. Walnut is an AI investing app: it connects the brokerage you already use, read-only by default, gives each stock you hold a keep, trim or exit read against the S&P 500, and places the trades you approve. Empower takes a different approach to acting on it; Walnut goes from the read to the order. Walnut is free to use, with no fee on assets; Walnut Plus ($9.99 a month on the web) lifts the assistant's session limit.

The limits, with the job Walnut does own beside each: it does not manage money on autopilot, but it drafts the trades back to your target weights and places the ones you approve; it has no cost basis or tax lots and does not harvest losses, so it reads each holding by its one-year price return against the S&P 500; and it works on a brokerage account you already hold and does not open one for you. The full self-assessment is on the Walnut review.

Empower: Free account aggregation and portfolio analysis tools, alongside a percentage-fee wealth management service for larger balances, at 0.89%/yr from $100,000, tiered down to 0.49% (Oct 2026). It fits someone who wants a free, honest view of accounts spread across providers and is comfortable declining the follow-up call. The trade-off to accept: The free tools are a lead source for a high-fee managed service, and the sales contact is persistent. If that trade-off is one you are happy with, it is a sound choice.

We compared Empower with the products answer engines most often set beside it (Betterment, Wealthfront, Magnifi, PortfolioPilot, Danelfin) and with Walnut, on five questions: where your money sits, whether the tool reads the account you already have, whether it can place a trade, what it costs in dollars, and who it fits. Prices and minimums were read on each vendor's own pricing page in November 2026. Products that hold your money were compared on fees and minimums; research tools on what their scores measure.

Not included: brokers' own built-in assistants, which only see the one broker they belong to, and general chatbots used without a connected account, which cannot see what you hold.