Loading comparison
vs
Clarity vs Empower (Personal Capital): pricing, features, and fit
Empower's net-worth dashboard is the cleanest free one in the category — and that's the whole pitch. The catch is the advisor sales call that funds it, and the cost-basis math that doesn't survive contact with a wash sale across brokerages. Clarity is the picture without the sales pipeline, with books that actually hold up at tax time.
Empower (Personal Capital)Dashboard free · ~0.5-0.9% AUM upsellClarity Pro$19/mo or $179/yr
30-day money-back guarantee. Read-only — Clarity never moves your money.
Best fit for Clarity
Flat fee. No AUM. No advisor calls. Banks + brokerages + 130+ crypto exchanges + 40+ chains.
Best fit for Empower
High-asset users who want a free brokerage dashboard and don't mind advisor outreach.
Score at a glance
Average across 7 criteria — every cell dated and sourced below.
- Clarity4.3
- Empower3.0
Where Clarity goes further
130+ crypto exchanges + 40+ chains
Empower (Personal Capital): No native crypto exchange APIs or on-chain wallet support — US traditional accounts only.
Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, MetaMask, Phantom, Ledger — direct APIs and on-chain reads.
Lot-level cost basis + Form 8949
Empower (Personal Capital): No Form 8949 or tax-lot crypto workflow; investment-performance reports for traditional brokerages only.
FIFO/HIFO/LIFO across exchanges and wallets; wash-sale flags; tax-ready exports.
Life-event planner with mutable budget state
Empower (Personal Capital): Retirement-planner output is the planning surface — and links into an advisor-call funnel.
Model a job change, baby, or home purchase — forecast cash flow against real accounts.
Merchant-level analytics
Empower (Personal Capital): Spending categorization is light — the product is tuned for portfolio and retirement views.
Amazon, DoorDash, Spotify normalized and rolled up across years — beyond category averages.
Flat subscription, no AUM, no sales calls
Empower (Personal Capital): Free dashboard, AUM-fee advisor pipeline.
Pro $19/mo or $179/yr. 30-day money-back. No advisor pipeline.
AI grounded in your real transactions
Empower (Personal Capital): No AI assistant grounded in your transactions — advisors handle questions in advisory tier.
Every answer cites the underlying transaction; nothing fabricated.
Clarity AI in action
Four questions Clarity can answer without a 1% AUM upsell
Empower's free dashboard is a funnel for its AUM advisory. Clarity is a flat-fee workspace — you pay us, we show you your money. Crypto, on-chain wallets, and lot-level tax math included.
Tax-loss harvesting
You: Anything worth harvesting before Dec 31?
$9,400 in losses · ~$2,250 saved at your bracket.
VXUS −$3,200 LT (replace with IXUS, avoids wash). BND −$2,100 LT (AGG ok). ETH lot from Mar 2024 −$1,400 ST. Crypto exempt from wash-sale today. Lot citations included.
Cost basis across venues
You: What's my cost basis on AAPL after the Schwab transfer?
$182.40 average (FIFO) across 312 shares.
218 shares from Schwab (transferred basis preserved) + 94 shares purchased at Fidelity. Lot table linked. Wash-sale check clean.
On-chain risk
You: Is my Aave loan close to liquidation?
Health factor 1.42 — 28% buffer to liquidation.
3.2 ETH supplied (Base) · $4,200 USDC borrowed. Liquidation price $1,640 vs spot $2,278. Refreshed 4 min ago. Alert threshold set at 1.20.
Cross-asset concentration
You: What's my real tech exposure including target-date funds and crypto?
42.1% — higher than your stock-screen number.
Direct $184k (AAPL, MSFT, NVDA) + lookthrough $94k (VTSAX 28% tech + 401(k) TDF 23% tech) + RSU $62k + $38k ETH+SOL on-chain. Above your 30% concentration target.
Every answer cites the underlying transactions, lots, or positions. Read-only — Clarity never moves money, never trades, never trains on your data.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Clarity | Empower (Personal Capital) |
|---|---|---|
| Account Coverage Range of financial accounts and asset types supported. | Leads, score 5 out of 5 Banks · brokerages · 130+ crypto exchanges · 40+ chains · manual assets. May 2026 | Behind, score 3 out of 5 Banks, brokerages, 401(k)s. No crypto exchanges or on-chain wallets. May 2026 ↗ |
| Sync Reliability How consistently account data syncs without errors or manual intervention. | Tie, score 4 out of 5 Automatic retry · connection-health monitoring · explicit error states. May 2026 | Tie, score 4 out of 5 Mature aggregation via Yodlee/Plaid for traditional accounts. May 2026 ↗ |
| Pricing Predictability How transparent and stable the pricing is over time. | Leads, score 5 out of 5 Pro $19/mo · $179/yr · 30-day money-back · no AUM %. May 2026 | Behind, score 2 out of 5 Dashboard free. Advisory monetized at ~0.49–0.89% AUM with ~$100k minimum. May 2026 ↗ |
| Data Freshness How quickly new transactions and price changes appear. | Leads, score 4 out of 5 Multi-sync daily · on-demand refresh · real-time crypto prices. May 2026 | Behind, score 3 out of 5 Daily sync. Prices update with market hours. May 2026 ↗ |
| Historical Depth How far back transaction and portfolio history extends. | Behind, score 3 out of 5 ~24 months from Plaid. Daily net-worth snapshots after sign-up. May 2026 | Leads, score 4 out of 5 Multi-year net-worth and investment-performance history for long-time users. May 2026 ↗ |
| Export & Reporting Ability to export data and generate financial reports. | Leads, score 4 out of 5 CSV · net-worth · portfolio performance · Form 8949–ready crypto exports. May 2026 | Behind, score 3 out of 5 Investment performance + spending reports. Limited CSV. No tax-form exports. May 2026 ↗ |
| Privacy & Security Data protection practices, encryption, and privacy controls. | Leads, score 5 out of 5 Read-only · encrypted at rest · no ad model · no advisor cross-sell · deletion ≤30 days. May 2026 | Behind, score 2 out of 5 Contact info is shared with Empower advisors; the free dashboard is an advisor lead-gen funnel. May 2026 ↗ |
Where Empower genuinely wins
Empower's free dashboard is a remarkable piece of software — real net-worth tracking, retirement modeling, fee analyzers — at no cost. The cost is the AUM pitch at the end. If you're going to take their advisory, the dashboard is a fair deal.
What we verified
- Advisory fees are 0.49–0.89% AUM
- Empower Wealth Management charges tiered AUM fees with a ~$100k minimum — the dashboard's actual price for users who convert. Empower wealth management pricing ↗
- Free dashboard is an advisor lead-gen funnel
- Empower's terms and privacy policy contemplate contact from Empower Advisors after account linkage; the free tools exist to qualify wealth-management prospects. Empower privacy policy ↗
- No crypto or on-chain support
- Empower's public materials list banks, brokerages, and retirement accounts. No crypto exchanges or wallets. Empower personal investors ↗
Deeper, if you want it
How to get started with Clarity
easy·15 minutes
- 01Sign up for Clarity and re-add the same bank and brokerage connections via Plaid — there's no CSV export from Empower, so you're starting fresh.
- 02Add the crypto exchanges and wallet addresses Empower doesn't support (Coinbase API key, MetaMask address, etc.).
- 03In Empower, opt out of advisor outreach: Settings → Communication Preferences → uncheck advisory contact (or reply STOP to advisor calls/emails).
- 04Decide whether to keep Empower around as a free secondary dashboard, or delete the account to fully stop advisor outreach.
Frequently asked questions
Related comparisons
Related calculators
Net worth without the AUM upsell.
Banks, brokerages, crypto, and DeFi together. 30-day money-back guarantee — a full refund if Clarity isn't for you.
Sources
Trademarks belong to their owners. Clarity is independent and not affiliated with Empower (Personal Capital). Comparison reflects publicly available info as of 2026-05-18; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.