Foliolytic vs Portfolio Visualizer: Free, Faster, Cleaner

The 30-Second Comparison

Portfolio Visualizer is the most-cited retail-investor analytics tool on the internet. Bogleheads link to it. Reddit's r/portfolios moderators recommend it. It launched in 2011 and has barely changed visually since. It does deep work — Monte Carlo, factor regressions, efficient frontier, asset class correlation matrices — and most of that depth lives behind its Premium tier (listed at roughly $35–$39 per month per their pricing page as of April 2026; verify the latest at portfoliovisualizer.com/membership).

Foliolytic launched in 2026 with a narrower goal: take the brokerage CSV you already have, compute every risk-adjusted return metric a serious retail investor cares about, and never charge for it. It does not project the future. It does not run optimizations. It tells you what your portfolio actually did, more honestly than your broker's app does — and it does so without storing your data anywhere.

Feature-by-Feature Comparison

The table below reflects the public state of both tools as of April 2026. Pricing and feature sets at Portfolio Visualizer change occasionally; always confirm against their pricing page before subscribing.

Where Foliolytic Wins

Foliolytic was built specifically for the workflow Portfolio Visualizer doesn't natively support: take an existing brokerage CSV, get every risk-adjusted return metric a serious investor cares about, and pay nothing.

• Free, forever, all features — Portfolio Visualizer's deepest analytics live behind a Premium paywall. Foliolytic does not have a paid tier; the full 70+ metric set is unlocked from the first upload.
• Direct brokerage CSV ingestion — Drop in a Schwab, Fidelity, Interactive Brokers, Robinhood, Coinbase, or Kraken CSV and Foliolytic's format detector identifies the broker automatically. Portfolio Visualizer requires you to type tickers and weights into a web form.
• Client-side privacy — Your transaction history is parsed in your browser. No HTTPS POST to a server, no database row, no "we use cookies and analytics partners." If your broker history contains identifying account numbers, Foliolytic literally cannot leak them — it never sees them.
• XIRR done right — Money-weighted return on a portfolio with deposits and withdrawals is one of the most-mishandled metrics on the retail web. Foliolytic computes XIRR from your actual transaction dates, not just start-to-end values. See the XIRR calculator.
• Crypto-native — 440+ cryptocurrencies with full inception history, dividends/airdrops, and FX-aware valuations. Portfolio Visualizer handles BTC and ETH but treats other crypto as custom data.
• Hedge-fund-grade metrics — Probabilistic Sharpe Ratio (PSR), Deflated Sharpe Ratio (DSR), Hurst exponent, Modigliani-Modigliani M², Burke ratio, Martin ratio, Sterling ratio — calibrated against Fama-French 84-portfolio cross-section and 100-year market data. Most retail tools don't compute these at all.
• Open methodology — Every metric in Foliolytic shows the formula, citation, and historical baseline on hover. Portfolio Visualizer publishes methodology in separate documentation pages, but inline transparency on the result page is sparse.

Where Portfolio Visualizer Wins

Honesty matters in a comparison page; Foliolytic does not replace Portfolio Visualizer for every workflow. If any of the following are core to your analysis, stay with Portfolio Visualizer Premium — or use both.

• Forward-looking Monte Carlo — Portfolio Visualizer's Monte Carlo Simulation tool projects future portfolio paths under various return-distribution assumptions. Foliolytic is strictly ex-post (historical) and does not simulate forward returns. If you are doing retirement Monte Carlo, sequence-of-returns risk modeling, or safe-withdrawal-rate research, Portfolio Visualizer remains the better tool.
• Mean-variance optimization and efficient frontier — Portfolio Visualizer can solve for the minimum-variance portfolio, maximum-Sharpe portfolio, and full efficient frontier across an asset universe you specify. Foliolytic does not optimize allocations; it analyzes the allocation you already hold.
• Multi-factor regression (Fama-French 3 / 5, Carhart 4) — While Foliolytic computes single-factor alpha and beta against the S&P 500, full multi-factor regression with t-stats and R² decomposition is currently a Portfolio Visualizer Premium feature. Foliolytic's 2026 roadmap includes FF-3 and FF-5 regression, but it is not shipped today.
• Backtesting model portfolios you don't yet own — Portfolio Visualizer's strength is "what would 60/40 with a 10% small-cap value tilt have done from 1985–2025?" That what-if backtesting on hypothetical allocations is not Foliolytic's design. Foliolytic answers "what did my portfolio do?"

Pricing

How to Move from Portfolio Visualizer to Foliolytic

Portfolio Visualizer does not export portfolios in a structured CSV. The migration path is therefore "load the actual brokerage transaction history into Foliolytic," which is what Foliolytic was built for.

Step 1 — Export your brokerage transaction history

Log into your brokerage and download the full transaction history as a CSV or Excel file. The export is usually under "Account Activity," "Transaction History," or "Trade Confirmations."

• Schwab — Account Activity → Export as CSV
• Fidelity — Activity & Orders → Download in CSV format
• Interactive Brokers — Reports → Activity → Custom Statement → CSV
• Robinhood — Account → Statements & History → Generate CSV
• Coinbase / Kraken / Binance — Tax / Transaction Reports → CSV export

Step 2 — Drop the file into Foliolytic

Drag the CSV onto the upload area on the Foliolytic homepage. The format detector identifies the broker from the column headers and the parser reconciles tickers, dividends, splits, and fees automatically.

Step 3 — Get the same metrics, plus more

You will see Sharpe, Sortino, Calmar, Treynor, Information Ratio, Alpha, Beta, R², Maximum Drawdown, Ulcer Index, XIRR, and 60+ other metrics computed live from your real transactions. No need to re-input weights or rebalance dates — Foliolytic uses the actual cash flows.

Who Should Use Foliolytic

Foliolytic is the right tool for you if any of these describe your situation:

• You are a DIY investor with a brokerage account and you want to know how your real portfolio is actually performing on a risk-adjusted basis.
• You have stopped trusting your broker's "Total Return" headline number and you want to see what XIRR, Sharpe, and drawdown actually say.
• You don't want to pay $35+ per month for analytics, especially when the analytics you need are ex-post (historical), not forward-looking.
• You hold crypto in addition to stocks and you want the same analytics applied across asset classes without manual data engineering.
• You care about privacy and you don't want your full transaction history in a third-party database.
• You hold securities listed outside the U.S. (LSE, Euronext, TSX, ASX, JPX) — Foliolytic resolves international tickers automatically, including ISINs.

Who Should NOT Use Foliolytic

Foliolytic is the wrong tool for you if any of these are core to your work:

• You are doing retirement Monte Carlo simulation, sequence-of-returns research, or safe-withdrawal-rate modeling.
• You need to optimize an allocation by solving for the maximum-Sharpe or minimum-variance portfolio across an asset universe.
• You are running Fama-French 5-factor or Carhart 4-factor regressions today (Foliolytic's 2026 roadmap includes these but they are not shipped yet).
• You are backtesting hypothetical model portfolios you don't actually own — Foliolytic analyzes real transactions, not what-if allocations.
• You need a financial advisor, tax-loss harvesting, or rebalancing automation. Foliolytic is an analytics tool, not a managed-account or robo-advisor product.

If any of these are central, Portfolio Visualizer Premium remains a reasonable spend. Many users keep both: Portfolio Visualizer for hypothetical research and Foliolytic for real-portfolio reporting.

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