TAIGA FINANCE$90 / yr or $12 / mo. $60 / yr for founding members, held at renewal
EMPOWERFree. Managed investing from 0.89% of assets a year
Taiga Finance vs Empower
Empower Personal Dashboard, formerly Personal Capital, is a free view of your investments, net worth and retirement outlook. Reviewers still rate it the best free net-worth tracker. It is free because it finds clients for Empower's advisory business: link around $100,000 and an advisor calls, offering to manage the money for 0.89% a year. Since the 2023 rebrand the dashboard has changed little.
Taiga Finance is paid, and the subscription is the whole business of a small independent team with no investors. Nobody will call. It has the same net-worth and retirement view and adds what Empower doesn't: a monthly budget you plan in advance, stock grants with the cost of exercising, home equity over time, reports you build yourself, and a partner login where either of you can keep an account separate. Those numbers each come with a chart, a scenario and the math behind them. Everything is in one price. The trade-offs: Empower is free, has native phone apps, measures your returns against an index, and will give you advice if you want it.
Price
Trial
TAIGA FINANCE14 days free, card required
EMPOWERNot needed
Business model
TAIGA FINANCESubscription only. No investors, ads or referral fees
EMPOWERFree dashboard that finds clients for an investment adviser
Couples
TAIGA FINANCEPartner included. Each account is Separate, Balance only or Joint
EMPOWERA joint owner sees and can change everything
Bank connections
TAIGA FINANCEPlaid
EMPOWERYodlee; reviewers report connection problems
Mobile
TAIGA FINANCEBrowser, on any device; phone apps planned
EMPOWERFull iOS and Android apps
Where Taiga Finance is different.
Taiga FinanceEmpower
Who pays
You do, and that's the whole business
No advisory arm, no referral fees, no call when your balance crosses a line.
The advisory business does
The dashboard finds clients. Managed investing starts at 0.89% of assets a year with a $100,000 minimum.
Budget
The month, planned before it starts
Both incomes at the top; investments and savings funded first, then spending by category, with rollovers.
One spending number
A monthly target and a cash-flow summary. No limits by category.
Equity compensation
Models each grant, including the cost of exercising
ISOs, NSOs, RSUs and ESPP. Vesting, 409A history, the spread at today's price, exercise cost, and when the exercise window ends after you leave.
Shares you already own
Holdings in a linked brokerage or entered by hand. No grants, no vesting, no exercise cost.
Reports
Build your own reports
Seven topics, grouped by date, merchant, category, account, recurrence or person, against the previous period. Save the ones you reuse.
Fixed dashboards
Net worth, cash flow, holdings, allocation and fees, as Empower lays them out.
Couples
Share some accounts, keep others separate
A Separate account reaches your partner only as a hidden rollup, so the household totals still add up. Balance only shows the balance and not the transactions.
A joint owner, all or nothing
A joint owner sees every account and can link, close or remove any of them; access can't be narrowed. Advisory clients can add up to five such users.
Real estate
Home equity as a line over time
Value, mortgage and equity over time, and a HELOC counted against the equity.
Home value from Zillow
An estimate, updated monthly, with the mortgage as a linked account.
Both track holdings, allocation, fund fees, net worth over time, crypto and retirement. Empower details from its support center and third-party reviews, checked September 2026.
Where Empower is stronger.
Taiga FinanceEmpower
Price
$90 a year
$60 for founding members. The subscription is Taiga Finance's only income.
Free
Net worth, holdings, a retirement planner and a fee analyzer at no charge. You can decline the advisory calls and keep using it.
Investment returns
No rate of return
Allocation by asset class, drift against a target, and the gain or loss on each holding. No return figure and no index comparison.
Return vs the market
The You Index tracks your holdings against market indexes. The investment checkup compares your allocation with the one Empower suggests.
Advice
None, on purpose
Taiga Finance shows the numbers and the math. It doesn't recommend an allocation or a move.
A recommendation, and a person
The checkup suggests an allocation. A fiduciary advisor is one call away if you want the money managed.
Mobile
Browser only, for now
Taiga Finance runs in the browser, on a phone too, and every page carries its data, reports and planners. Native phone apps are planned, Android first.
Full native apps
iOS and Android.
Choose Empower if…
Free is the deciding factor, and a monthly spending target is budget enough.
You want your portfolio's return measured against an index.
You'd consider handing the portfolio to an advisor, so the call is welcome.
You manage money alone, or sharing every account with a partner is fine.
Choose Taiga Finance if…
You want the net-worth view and nobody calling about it.
You want a real monthly budget in the same place as the ten-year picture.
You hold options, RSUs or ESPP shares and need to know what exercising will cost.
You share money with a partner and want some accounts kept separate.
You want to build your own reports.
Early access opens this autumn, with 14 free days.
Switching from Empower.
One CSV file.01
Connect
Link your banks, cards and brokerages first so the Empower file has accounts to land in.
02
Export
In Empower, open Transactions and download the CSV for the widest date range.
03
Import
Import the file. Taiga Finance matches accounts and asks you to confirm each category once.
04
Plan
History in place, duplicates skipped. Set up this month, then the planners.
Asked often.
Because you're the customer. Empower's dashboard is free because it finds clients for an advisory business. Taiga Finance's subscription is its only income: no investors, no ads, no referral fees. It reads your accounts and never moves money, so the app is the whole job.
No. Taiga Finance has no advisors and gives no advice. Support answers questions about the product; nobody looks at your balances to sell you something.
Yes. One plan. Planners, reports, equity comp, real estate and a partner login are all in it. There is no premium tier.
Transactions, yes. Export them as CSV and import the file. Net-worth history doesn't transfer; Empower exports it as a PDF, not data. Investment holdings come from your brokerage connection.
Not YNAB's kind. Taiga Finance plans the month from expected income: investments and savings first, then spending by category, with rollovers. A line can carry its unspent amount into next month, but it is funded from the plan, not from the cash in the bank. If strict envelopes or the four rules are the point, YNAB is the better fit.
There isn't one yet. Taiga Finance runs in the browser, on a phone too, and every page carries its data, reports and planners. Opt-in alerts for a first charge at a new merchant, a missing paycheck, RSU vesting dates, bill increases, card fees and connection problems arrive as browser notifications. Native phone apps are planned, Android first. If you live in an app on your phone, Empower is stronger today.
Your own numbers, when you ask it a question. It reads your data, writes nothing, and describes rather than advises. Your partner's Separate accounts and private rows are never sent to it. It's on by default; one switch turns every AI feature off.
Everything exports: any table as CSV, the whole account as an archive or JSON, or a Google Sheet kept in sync.
Nothing else to sell you.