Being able to view your investments in one place can go a long way toward simplifying your financial life. Not to mention, seeing your balance increase over time can be very motivating. And even more importantly, knowing exactly how you’re doing allows you to make better decisions with your finances.
There are many free tools for tracking your investments.
In this article, we’ll list our favorite investment tracking apps and offer tips on using these tools to improve your financial decision-making.
Should You Track Your Investment Portfolio?
Frequently monitoring your investment portfolio has become the default behavior for most investors. After all, it only takes a few seconds to open an app and get a customized dashboard that tells you exactly how your investments are doing.
But is checking your investments on a regular basis actually a good thing? And if so, how often is often enough?
A famous study titled “Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth” found that the more a person traded, the worse their portfolio performed.
This is why watching your portfolio closely can hurt more than help: if you’re the type of person who would buy or sell based on short-term events, the research says you’d be better off not paying such close attention.
So for long-term investors with the right asset allocation, a monthly, quarterly or even yearly check-in is best (because knowing how the market did this week should have zero impact on your investing strategy).
Monitoring your investments at regular intervals (no more frequently than monthly), is more of a way to:
- See the benefits of investing by viewing your progress.
- Help you make decisions that are in your control, such as whether to increase your savings rate after an app gives you an estimated retirement date.
So my recommendation is to develop the right asset allocation, and then just check in every so often (e.g., quarterly or yearly) to make sure you’re on track to reach your long-term goals.
Best Free Apps and Sites for Tracking Your Investment Portfolio
All the portfolio tracking apps listed below offer a free version of their core service, though some offer additional features for a monthly fee.
#1. Empower
- Platforms: iOS, Android and desktop.
- Cost: Free, with optional wealth management services.
- Best for: Analyzing your existing portfolio to understand whether it’s optimized for returns, given its level of risk.
One of our favorite apps is Empower. It’s an all-in-one financial app that lets you track your investments and spending, but it also provides a very good analysis of your existing portfolio (with actionable insights).
Empower gets its data by syncing with your existing accounts, including your retirement and taxable accounts. From there, you’ll get access to a suite of tools that includes:
- Portfolio Tracker. Provides real-time monitoring of your portfolio’s performance across all your investment accounts, including your IRA, 401(k) and taxable accounts.
- Investment Checkup. Lets you see how well your portfolio is performing compared to common benchmark portfolios. Plus, you can compare your portfolio’s allocation to the ideal target allocations designed for maximum returns with minimal risk (i.e., the efficient frontier).
- Retirement Planner. Shows whether your current portfolio balance and savings rate has you on track to retire at your targeted retirement age.
The more information you give Empower — such as your estimated retirement date, your expected retirement expenses and income, and your expected Social Security income — the better and more customized data you’ll get from the software.
Learn more: Check out our Empower review to see all the features the app has to offer, plus tips for getting the most out of the service.
#2. Mint
- Platforms: iOS, Android and desktop.
- Cost: Free.
- Best for: Getting a big picture view of your portfolio balance.
There are dozens of budgeting apps, both free and paid. The most popular is Mint (which is owned by Intuit). The primary benefit of Mint and similar budgeting apps is the ability to track income and expenses, but it does have a section that tracks your investment balances.
If your goal is to simply keep an eye on your overall portfolio — making sure the long-term trend is up — an app like Mint gives you a simple, big picture view.
What’s lacking is the in-depth analysis you can get with apps like Empower.
Learn More: See which budgeting apps we ranked as the best.
#3. SigFig
- Platforms: iOS, Android and desktop.
- Cost: Free.
- Best for: Getting a big picture view of your portfolio balance.
SigFig is an online app that helps you track your portfolio. Similar to Empower, it offers a free investment tracker that uses real-time data synced from your investment accounts. The company then makes money converting qualified users to wealth management clients.
While it doesn’t have as much to offer as Empower (for example, it lacks planning tools and the ability to make customizations), there’s still a lot to like about SigFig’s free tools, including:
- A risk questionnaire that analyzes your existing portfolio for potential improvements based on your answers.
- A weekly email summary of your portfolio balance.
- Analysis of the fees you’re currently paying.
SigFig is a good option for those who want a simple tracking tool and would benefit from a top-level analysis of their existing portfolio.
#4. Atom Finance
- Platforms: iOS, Android and desktop.
- Cost: $6.99 per month with a seven-day free trial.
- Best for: Active traders looking for advanced insights
While this article focuses mainly on investment apps that give you a big picture overview of your investment portfolio, Atom Finance was created for investors who want more advanced insights.
For $6.99 per month, Atom Finance aims to give you a similar type of information as professional investors and money managers. You can sync your brokerage accounts to get real-time updates and insights, portfolio modeling, access to backtesting, and a wide swath of analyst reports.
As discussed in our Atom Finance Review, something like this is overkill for buy-and-hold investors. However, for those who actively invest, the platform’s research capabilities are robust for the low monthly fee. For comparison’s sake, it has similar features as (and a much better user interface than) Yahoo Finance premium, which costs $25 per month.
#5. Yahoo Finance
- Platforms: iOS, Android and desktop.
- Cost: Free, with an optional paid upgrade.
- Best for: Tracking individual stock performance.
Yahoo Finance is one of the most popular sites for news and real-time updates on how your stocks are performing against major market indexes like the S&P 500. Their mobile app provides short-term traders with a quick way to stay abreast of how they’re doing.
There is an option to link your Yahoo account to an existing broker to get real-time updates and balances.
The optional premium upgrade — currently starting at $25 per month — provides more advanced portfolio analysis tools that are most useful for technical traders looking to chart price movements.
Overall, Yahoo doesn’t offer a lot of bells and whistles on the free side. However, it does have its use for tracking a handful of stocks you’re investing in, all in a single place.
Investment Tracking Apps FAQ
Investment tracking apps provide read-only access to your financial accounts. As a result, you don’t have to worry about security or making your account more vulnerable to hackers, as there’s no way for a hacker to change your portfolio.
Each one of the apps mentioned in this article has its own unique benefits and shortcomings. That’s why, first and foremost, it’s important to understand how you like to track your investments. If you need advanced analysis, Empower is probably your best bet. But if you’re just looking for a simple way to monitor your overall investment balance, any popular budgeting app (or even a spreadsheet) will work.
The best way to track your cost basis is through your brokerage firm. If you’re using a broker like M1 Finance or Webull, each has the ability to view your transaction history. Brokers will then issue you an IRS Form 1099 at the end of the year, as well as submit that information to the IRS.
Final Thoughts on the Best Investment Tracking Apps
The right investment tracking app for you is the one that’s going to help you make better financial decisions.
So when thinking about how to track your investment portfolio, take a moment and also think about how it fits into your existing financial goals.
- Is knowing your balances on a daily basis helpful for your short-term goals?
- Do you need some feedback with regards to your current allocation?
- Or are you just looking for a way to keep an eye on how your investments are performing at any given time?
Wherever you land, there’s no shortage of financial apps out there that can help. Just remember: you want the app to help you achieve your financial goals, not something that will distract you from them.
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