A 401(k) here, an IRA there. A taxable account at Vanguard, one at Fidelity and, oh yeah, one other brokerage account you opened and forgot about. Keeping track of your investment performance and asset allocation becomes time-consuming when you have money in different accounts, as most of us do. The best portfolio trackers make it easy to visualize all your investments in one place and track performance and asset allocation across multiple accounts.
We’ve spent years using many of the top portfolio tracking tools out there and enthusiastically recommend Empower Personal Dashboard™ as the best app to track stock portfolios for most investors. Formerly known as Personal Capital, Empower Personal Dashboard™ is a 100%-free portfolio tracking app that can track all of your financial information, including your bank accounts and cash flow (spending). It also includes a powerful retirement planning calculator.
Overview: The best portfolio tracking apps
- Best portfolio tracker: Empower Personal Dashboard™
- Best for alternative investments: Vyzer
- Best for mutual funds: Morningstar
- Read about the competition
Empower Personal Dashboard™
The Empower Personal Dashboard™ is, hands-down, one of the best and most useful personal finance apps anywhere. It’s so good, it’s hard to believe it’s 100% free. It’s our pick for the best overall stock portfolio tracker app.
Empower is a hybrid digital wealth management company and powerful finance app. In addition to paid investment management and advisory services, Empower offers a number of free tools and calculators to help with everything from net worth tracking to saving and retirement planning.
- Easy-to-use app provides financial 'big picture'
- Tools and calculators are completely free to use
- Great security, including two-factor authentication
- Wealth management fees can be be high
- May be subject to upsells
The Empower Personal Dashboard can help you:
- Track investment portfolio performance
- Track bank accounts
- Visualize your asset allocation
- Create budgets and track spending across financial accounts
- Plan for retirement
Empower is a rapidly-growing wealth management service and 401(k) custodian that acquired this app, formerly Personal Capital. They offer this service for free as a service to investors who hold Empower 401(k) plans but also as a lead-generation tool for their private investment advisory service. If you create an account and are “rich enough” you can expect to receive sales pitches for wealth management services.
The app’s investment tracking is helpful because it gives you a quick picture of your total investment portfolio and asset allocation in one place. If you simply want to check your net worth, you can do so quickly after logging into the dashboard.
Empower has options to show you your portfolio’s performance over time compared to benchmarks; the changing makeup of your portfolio over time; and how your portfolio is allocated across all asset classes and sectors. It also has an investment checkup feature to show how your portfolio stacks up to their recommendations and a fee analyzer to help you see how much you’re paying to invest.
Pros
- Portfolio tracking tools are 100% free.
- Investment checkup tool offers objective portfolio assessment.
- Fee analyzer shows how much fees are eating into your investments.
- Use the retirement planner to see how changes affect retirement readiness.
Cons
- Expect sales pitches for investment products or wealth management services.
» MORE: Create a free Empower Personal Dashboard™ now or read our Empower review
Vyzer
Vyzer is an elegant portfolio management software app that offers a feature most competitors can’t: the ability to track private investments including real estate, business, and private equity investments.
Vyzer is smart, data-driven investment portfolio tracking and financial planning.
Vyzer offers a comprehensive digital solution that combines performance tracking for both public and private investments, advanced financial planning tools, and personalized account management.
- Track all investments, including real estate & private companies
- First 3 accounts are free
- Handles even the most sophisticated portfolios
- May be overkill for average investors
As alternative investments become increasingly popular, you may want an app that tracks more than just your stock portfolios. Enter Vyzer.
For a stock portfolio, Vyzer gives you everything a portfolio tracker should: Chiefly, the ability to view the aggregate returns and asset mix of multiple investment accounts. But let’s say you also invest in real estate (including real estate syndication deals), are a shareholder in a private company, or even have private equity or hedge fund investments. Vyzer can track these, too, and features tools specific to these kind of investments.
Vyzer combines automated performance tracking for public and private investments with advanced financial planning tools.
You can get data-driven projections, peer benchmarking, and reporting, forming a comprehensive approach to wealth management.
It’s free to create a Vyzer account, and the Starter Plan remains free for new investors who want to track up to 3 investment accounts or bank accounts. For intermediate and advanced investors who need access to more accounts, the Plus Plan costs $36 per month (or $29 per month, billed annually). Premium plans cater to financial advisors, ultra high net worth individuals and family offices.
» MORE: Create a free Vyzer account now or read our Vyzer review
Morningstar
Morningstar is the world’s largest source for independent analysis and ratings of mutual funds, so it’s no surprise they earn our pick as the best portfolio tracker app for the mutual fund investor.
Morningstar is a renown provider of high quality investment research. It offers both free and paid options for portfolio tracking on its website. The free portfolio tracking features are pretty basic, but they get the job done. To track your investments, you’ll need to input the ticker symbol, number of shares, date purchased, purchase price, and commission paid.
Once you input your portfolio holdings, Morningstar will display your portfolio, including information such as:
- Current share price
- Dollar change in price
- Percentage change in price
- Shares held
- The market value of your holdings
- Percentage of a holding compared to your entire portfolio
Morningstar also gives a fund ranking for mutual funds and exchange traded funds (one to five stars), but individual stocks’ rankings require you to sign up for the premium service (Morningstar Investor). You can view the latest news on your holdings; your gain/loss for your holdings based on today’s price; and fundamental information about each holding, such as earnings per share, price-to-earnings ratio, and the stock’s industry or fund category.
Other Morningstar Investor benefits include analyst reports, top investment picks, advanced screener options, and more. Morningstar Investor costs $34.95 per month or $249 per year.
Pros
- Star ratings offer users an easy means of comparing funds.
Cons
- Paid account needed to see Morningstar’s assessments of individual stocks.
- Morningstar Investor’s $34.95 monthly price tag (or $249 annually) is a bit more expensive than some competitors.
The competition
A number of investment portfolio tracking solutions exist that might be right for certain investors, but not everybody. We generally excluded apps from our top picks that required hefty annual subscriptions or focused too exclusively on intermediate and advanced investors.
Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha is our pick for the best peer-reviewed investment advice.
Seeking Alpha calls itself “the world’s largest investing community” and backs up that claim by curating well-informed debates and discussions among its 20 million users — not unlike the Reddit of investing.
However, what separates Seeking Alpha from, say, r/WallStreetBets is that most of its primary content — 10,000 fresh articles and ideas a month — comes from a pool of over 15,800 trusted contributors. These are successful advisors, analysts, and traders who have a proven track record of sharing quality, research-based advice. Therefore, the comments sections tend to remain civil, focused, and cooperative.
In addition to a constant flow of fresh investing ideas, a Seeking Alpha Premium membership grants you access to their proprietary Quant Ratings — an algorithm which sniffs out bullish stock ideas like a prize truffle pig. It seems to be working just fine, too, as its “Strong Buy” suggestions have outperformed the S&P 500 every year since 2010.
In terms of tracking, once you build your portfolio, Seeking Alpha provides an impressive amount of alerts, analytics, newsletters, Wall Street Ratings, and plenty more to ensure you stay in the know, even with its free, most basic membership. Unfortunately, the platform’s generosity with tracking tools comes with a catch; even its paid Premium membership is an “ad lite” experience. Plus, you’ll need to pony up for at least the Premium membership to link your brokerage accounts.
But at least Seeking Alpha does connect to every major U.S. brokerage, plus many international ones. And the process is safe and secure, thanks to SA’s partnership with Plaid.
Overall, if you’re looking for a more curated version of an investing subreddit — one that’s more TED than r/WSB — Seeking Alpha may be the platform for you.
Premium membership costs $239 per year (or $29.99 monthly).
Pros
- Free for Basic version
- Constant flow of fresh investing tips and ideas from 7,000+ trusted contributors
- Quant Ratings help guide trades for Premium members.
- Proven track record with Strong Buy recommendations
Cons
- Must be at least a Premium member to link brokerage accounts and see Quant Ratings.
Kubera
Kubera calls itself a “time machine for your net worth”.
Kubera features many of the same features as our top picks, Empower Personal Dashboard™ and Vyzer: Stock portfolio tracking, net worth tracking, asset allocation visualization, the ability to track private investments and more. And while we love Kubera’s functionality, there’s no free option: Plans start at $150 per year. There’s also a professional plan, geared toward financial advisors.
Kubera has some of the most robust financial planning tools out of this list, making it worth a look if you’re looking for more retirement planning tools or want to run scenarios to see what changes to your investment strategy or spending would do to your net worth over time.
Stock Rover
Sometimes the best apps and platforms aren’t made by billion-dollar companies, but just a couple of guys or gals who saw a market need. Stock Rover is a great app for value investors.
Two such guys were Howard Reisman and Andrew Martin, who in 2008 had grown tired of checking 17 different websites to see 41 different analytics about a particular stock. So they built Stock Rover — a canine-themed analytics aggregator that lets you “sniff out” several hundred performance metrics of a stock or ETF from a single dashboard.
In three words, Stock Rover is simple, cheap, and effective. Even its most basic, free membership will let you connect to your U.S.-based brokerage account, upload your portfolio, and set alerts for dips, unusually high trading volume, etc. Upgrade to an Essentials membership and you’ll unlock the ability to analyze over 7,000 stocks and ETFs for over 260 metrics, plus an overall viability assessment from Stock Rover’s proprietary screening algorithms.
Now, Stock Rover’s low price does come with a few shortcomings. The platform lacks the social/community features of many of its contemporaries, it doesn’t track forex or crypto, and it doesn’t have a mobile app. That makes it much less appealing for day traders who probably seek a more fully-featured playground.
But for passive investors and long-term holders, Stock Rover is an excellent companion to have. Like its mascot, Stock Rover is always ready to play — but chill and low maintenance when you’re not around.
Pros
- Free, basic membership facilitates portfolio monitoring.
- Essentials membership offers great features (portfolio rebalancing, detailed analytics, alerts, etc.) at an affordable price ($7.99 per month; $79.99 per year).
Cons
- No mobile app
- No cryptocurrency or forex tracking
Yahoo! Finance
Yahoo! Finance offers a portfolio tracker that allows you to link accounts with certain brokers for automatic portfolio tracking. If your broker is omitted, you can still manually input your investments for monitoring.
The free version offers interactive charts to help you keep track of performance, unlimited portfolio inputs, watch list items, and lot creation for each investment lot you buy. If you want extra features, you can pay to upgrade to Yahoo Finance Plus starting at $20.83 per month.
Yahoo Finance Plus helps more with active investors than those just looking to watch their investments. It offers daily trade ideas, curated research, advanced portfolio tools and analytics, premium notifications and alerts, monthly education webinars, and more.
Pros
- Free portfolio tracking
- Daily trade ideas with Yahoo Finance Plus
- Paid version is more affordable than competitors’ premium versions
Cons
- Free version doesn’t automatically link with all brokers.
» Learn more about Yahoo! Finance
Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets
If you’re worried about sharing passwords, information, or the security of your investment accounts, Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets may be the answer you’re looking for. These spreadsheet software tools allow you to create virtually anything you want. There are plenty of pre-built templates you can download, too.
These options are more secure because you have to input the information about your holdings into these tools manually. You may be able to build import tools that strip information from your investment firm’s downloadable CSV (comma separated values) files, but that’s beyond the standard investor’s knowledge.
Excel offers tools to download and update data based on investment ticker symbols. If you input your current share number holdings and create a reliable spreadsheet, you should only have to update your holdings to see how your investments perform.
The manual process helps you appreciate the information more. You have to log in to each account and manually input each number, allowing you to think about your investments a bit more than a passive aggregation tool. It also makes you consider simplifying your investment life so you don’t have to log in to so many accounts each time you want to update your spreadsheet.
Pros
- Completely free
- You likely already use these apps.
- Completely customizable based on what you want to build.
Cons
- Manual input can be very time consuming.
» Go to Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets
How we picked
We chose our best portfolio trackers based upon multiple years of using them to track our own stock portfolios and asset allocation. Thinking about the best stock portfolio trackers for young adults, we focused our picks on free portfolio management apps.
The best portfolio management apps should have the ability to securely aggregate all of your financial data and investment accounts, display your investment performance across all accounts, and paint a picture of investments by asset class so you can ensure your portfolio is balanced.
A portfolio manager app should also be able to:
- Aggregate all your assets
- Link to investment research
- Help with tax reporting
- Show portfolio risk
- Paint a comprehensive picture of your financial situation
Although not necessary, the best portfolio tracker apps can also advise your investment strategy, project expected dividend income, offer optional advisory services and, in some cases, create model portfolios for you to consider or follow.
What is a portfolio tracker app?
A portfolio tracker app allows you to keep an eye on all of your investments in one place. In some cases, these apps automatically import your investment transactions. In other cases, you have to manually input transactions.
Most investment tracking apps automatically update your investments’ value based on current prices and the number of shares you own. Some apps do not have this feature, though. Others may have delayed data that only updates once per day.
Who should use a portfolio tracker app?
Using a portfolio tracker app may give you the knowledge you need to manage your finances properly. If you have investment accounts at several brokerages, you need to look at the big picture of all your investments combined.
An investment tracking app that automatically updates your investments makes this much easier and less time-intensive. Some apps even give you insights into your overall costs, asset allocation, and other critical investing concepts that you can use to make better decisions about how to invest moving forward. Without this information, you may accidentally invest in a way that doesn’t help you meet your true investing goals.
For instance, you may not realize that mutual funds from two different brokerages actually hold similar investments and aren’t providing the diversification you were hoping for. In other cases, you may not realize your asset allocation is overweight in stocks, leaving you open to a larger-than-anticipated decline if markets drop in price rapidly.
Who shouldn’t use a portfolio tracker app?
Investment tracking apps aren’t perfect and many people have legitimate concerns with them. The most common concern is that the apps aren’t safe. Many require you to give login information to your brokerage accounts to set up automatic data feeds.
Giving away this information can seem like a bad idea for several reasons. First, data breaches are common in today’s world. The last thing you want to happen is to have your investment account password leaked out. Next, you may be worried that giving these apps access to your accounts could result in fraudulent activity.
Investment tracking apps generally have very detailed security procedures in place to help address these risks. For instance, most apps have read-only access to your investment accounts, which means they can’t make transactions in your accounts.
But even with all of those security measures in place, you shouldn’t use investment tracking apps if you’re really worried about your information being stolen. No app can be entirely secure, so there is always at least some level of risk.
A more secure alternative to automated portfolio tracking apps is to use a manual-input strategy for tracking your investments via Excel or Google Sheets.
How to choose the best portfolio tracker app for you
Choosing the best portfolio tracker app for you comes down to a handful of factors. First, you must decide if you want a free app or a paid app. Then, determine which features you absolutely want.
Each person will prioritize different features in an investment tracking app, such as:
- A big-picture view of your portfolio’s value
- An asset allocation breakdown across all your mutual funds and ETFs
- Proprietary ratings of individual stocks and funds
Check if the features you want are available among your shortlist of free or paid apps. And don’t forget to consider user reviews in the app store, as they may reveal common issues that the app may have.
FAQs
Are portfolio tracker apps safe to use?
Portfolio tracker apps are generally safe to use and our top picks use bank-level end-to-end encryption. It’s important to remember, however, that no app is truly bulletproof. While investment tracking apps put a great deal of effort into security, a data breach or hack is technically always possible.
You should feel reassured that portfolio management apps typically do not retain your account numbers, social security numbers, or other truly sensitive data. A hack might expose your net worth and some limited financial information (like which accounts you have and their balances), it would not give the bad guys the “keys” to your financial accounts.
How do I know which portfolio tracker apps work with my particular accounts?
If you want to be sure your investment accounts can be linked to a portfolio tracker app, look for a list of compatible accounts on the app’s website. If this doesn’t exist, try calling the customer service number and asking. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always produce an answer. If the app is free, consider signing up for an account and simply looking for your investment account. If there’s no free version of the app available, look to see if the app has a money-back guarantee before signing up.
Do different portfolio tracker apps work better for certain types of investors?
Not all portfolio tracker apps are built the same. An active trader likely needs much more detailed information than a long-term index investor. Simpler apps that track basic portfolio value may be perfect for the long-term index investor. That said, the active trader probably wants an app that provides information about asset allocation and tracks detailed historical data on their portfolio.
Summary
The apps listed above are a great starting place to find the right solution for complete portfolio oversight. Examine your investment situation and pick an app that helps you become a better investor.
For some, that means paying for a more robust app. For others, a free app or spreadsheet will take care of their needs.