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

You pay an annual membership and are assigned a CFP professional who covers planning across tax, insurance, estate coordination and retirement, with investment management available inside it. Because the fee is flat and set by complexity, it does not rise as your portfolio grows, and that is its main argument against the percentage model.

In category terms it is a robo-advisor (hands-off automated investing), and the AI component specifically none; this is human planning. 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.

• A flat fee that does not grow with your balance, which removes the incentive against advice that shrinks it
• A dedicated CFP professional of your own; there is no call centre or questionnaire
• Planning breadth beyond investing, including tax and insurance coordination

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

The flat fee is large in absolute terms at small balances, so it only beats a percentage once you have enough assets or enough complexity.

• In absolute dollars the membership is significant, so at smaller balances a percentage fee is cheaper
• Pricing tiers by complexity, so confirm which tier your situation lands in before comparing

Facet charges a flat yearly fee by plan, whatever the size of your assets: Core at $2,600, Plus at $5,500 and Complete at $8,700, with a $300 enrollment fee waived on annual billing. Checked on facet.com, October 2026. Because it is not charged as a percentage of assets, the cost does not scale with your balance. That makes it proportionally cheaper as an account grows and relatively expensive on a small one, which is the opposite of how a robo-advisor fee behaves.

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

• Best for flat-fee financial planning with a dedicated CFP: Facet ($2,600, $5,500 or $8,700/yr flat, no asset minimum (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.

Facet holds your money in its own account and manages it for you. 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. Your money stays where it is. 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. If you want the whole portfolio run for you, Facet does that job; Walnut covers the stocks you pick yourself. The full self-assessment is on the Walnut review.

Facet: Flat-fee financial planning with a dedicated CFP professional, priced by complexity, at $2,600, $5,500 or $8,700/yr flat, no asset minimum (Oct 2026). It fits someone with a few hundred thousand or more, or real complexity, who wants planning more than portfolio management and objects to paying a percentage. The trade-off to accept: The flat fee is large in absolute terms at small balances, so it only beats a percentage once you have enough assets or enough complexity. If that trade-off is one you are happy with, it is a sound choice.

We compared Facet 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.