Empower's free dashboard is the funnel; the real product is a 0.89% AUM advisor service with a $100,000 minimum. Foliolytic is the free, no-signup, no-broker-login analytics layer that does what their dashboard cannot — Sharpe, Sortino, drawdowns, alpha. Honest 2026 comparison.
Try Foliolytic Free →Replace Empower's portfolio analytics with Foliolytic if you want real risk-adjusted return depth — Sharpe ratio, Sortino, drawdowns, alpha vs benchmark — without the advisor calls and without an AUM fee. Keep Empower's free dashboard if your priority is unified net-worth aggregation across many accounts, retirement projection, or eventually using the managed service. They solve different problems: Empower aggregates accounts, Foliolytic analyzes portfolios. The smart move is using both — Empower's dashboard for net-worth, Foliolytic for the analytics Empower never offered.
Free · No signup · 70+ metrics · No broker credentials · No advisor callsEmpower (formerly Personal Capital) is two products glued together: a genuinely useful free dashboard that aggregates every brokerage and bank account into one net-worth view, and a paid wealth-management service that charges between 0.49% and 0.89% of assets annually with a $100,000 account minimum. The free dashboard is the lead generator for the paid service. Sign up and an Empower advisor will call you. That is the business model, and it is honest about it — but it is not what most retail investors searching for "portfolio analytics" are looking for.
Foliolytic is built for the workflow Empower's dashboard does not address: deep risk-adjusted return analytics on the portfolios you already hold. Drop a brokerage CSV, get Sharpe ratio, Sortino, max drawdown, alpha against S&P 500, beta, R-squared, Value at Risk, and 60+ other metrics — in seconds, free, without linking any credentials. There is no advisor at the end of the funnel because there is no funnel.
The table below reflects the public state of both tools as of May 2026. Empower's pricing is from their wealth-management page; verify the current rate before evaluating the managed service.
Empower has earned its position as the default free net-worth dashboard for a reason. If your dominant workflow matches any of the below, Empower is the right tool and Foliolytic does not try to compete in that lane.
Empower's dashboard answers "what am I worth?" Foliolytic answers "is what I'm doing actually good?" These are different questions, and Empower's product never really tried to answer the second.
$0 / month, $0 / year, no AUM fee. Every metric, every brokerage format, every chart is free. No holdings cap, no time limit. Foliolytic has no VC investors and no revenue obligation — the project is funded by a self-imposed budget.
Empower's pricing has two layers:
The fee math at common balances:
Over 20 years, a 0.89% drag compounded on a 7% nominal return reduces ending wealth by approximately 16 percent versus an unmanaged equivalent. That is the cost of the advisor — fair for what you get if you actually want financial planning, but not invisible.
Empower's product structure requires storing your full financial picture on their servers. Account aggregation needs persistent credentials with Yodlee or Plaid; the dashboard needs that data refreshed daily; the managed service needs your full holdings to recommend allocation changes. This is not a Empower-specific issue — it is structural to any tool that promises automatic account refresh.
Foliolytic took the opposite trade. You upload an exported CSV manually rather than connecting your brokerage account, so we never hold credentials and you don't surrender broker-side access. The compromise is real: you re-upload a CSV when you want refreshed analytics. For a tool used a few times a year for portfolio review, that compromise is small. For a daily aggregator, it would be unworkable — which is exactly why Foliolytic doesn't try to be one.
If you are using Empower only for the portfolio-analytics screens (not for net-worth aggregation or the managed service), the migration is a one-time CSV export.
Empower's exports are summary-level. Go directly to your brokerage (Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard, Interactive Brokers, Robinhood) and export the transaction history CSV. Foliolytic's format detector recognizes 30+ brokers automatically.
Drag the CSV onto foliolytic.com or click to upload. Format detection takes under a second. Tickers, dividends, splits, and FX are reconciled automatically against the historical price database.
Sharpe ratio, Sortino ratio, max drawdown, alpha vs S&P 500, beta, R-squared, XIRR, Value at Risk, Calmar, Treynor, plus 60+ other metrics — all calibrated against historical market data, all available immediately.
Most DIY investors don't actually replace Empower; they add Foliolytic for the analytics layer Empower never built.
Drop a brokerage CSV and see Sharpe, Sortino, drawdowns, alpha, and 70+ metrics — for free, no signup, no broker login, no advisor calls.
Analyze My Portfolio Free →The Personal Dashboard is free — net-worth aggregation, spending, budgeting, retirement planner, and fee analyzer. The wealth-management service is not. Empower Personal Strategy charges 0.89% AUM on the first $1 million, 0.79% above $3M, dropping to 0.49% above $10M, with a $100,000 account minimum for the managed service. The free tier is also Empower's sales funnel: signing up triggers calls from their advisors.
Empower's free dashboard requires linking real brokerage and bank credentials through an aggregator (Yodlee or Plaid). Your transaction history, balances, and account numbers are stored on Empower's servers — that is the structure required to refresh holdings automatically. Empower's privacy policy permits sharing with affiliates and service providers. Foliolytic requires no signup, no broker login, and no PII — and we don't sell or share data with third parties.
No. Empower's dashboard requires account creation with email, phone, and linked brokerage credentials. After signup, expect outreach from their advisors recommending the managed service. Foliolytic requires no signup — drop a CSV and you have analytics immediately.
Use Foliolytic if you want deep risk-adjusted return analytics on portfolios you already hold — Sharpe, Sortino, drawdowns, alpha, beta, R-squared, XIRR — without paying 0.89% AUM, linking broker credentials, or taking advisor calls. Foliolytic computes 70+ metrics Empower does not, with no signup and no broker login, for free. Use Empower if your priority is unified net-worth aggregation across many accounts plus optional managed-portfolio service from human advisors.
No, and intentionally so. Empower aggregates accounts via bank-credential linking; Foliolytic ingests one CSV at a time. Empower offers a paid advisor; Foliolytic offers no advice. Empower's free retirement planner and fee analyzer are useful and have no direct Foliolytic equivalent. Where Foliolytic is stronger: 70+ risk-adjusted return metrics, hedge-fund-grade analytics, no AUM fee, no advisor calls, no broker credentials stored anywhere.
On a $500,000 portfolio, Empower's 0.89% annual fee is $4,450 per year. On a $1M portfolio, $8,900 per year. On a $2M portfolio (blended 0.84%), approximately $16,800 per year. Over 20 years, a 0.89% drag compounded on a 7% nominal return reduces ending wealth by approximately 16 percent vs unmanaged. The fee is fair for what you get — advisor calls, financial planning, tax-loss harvesting — but it is not a substitute for portfolio analytics.
Yes. Personal Capital was acquired by Empower Retirement (a Great-West Lifeco subsidiary) in 2020 and rebranded as Empower Personal Wealth between 2022 and 2023. The free dashboard is now called Empower Personal Dashboard; the managed service is Empower Personal Strategy. The product is the same one Personal Capital users grew up with, with deeper integration into Empower's larger retirement-services business.