Viewing your investments in one place can go a long way toward simplifying your financial life. Seeing your balance increase over time can also be very motivating.
In this article, we’ll list our favorite investment tracking apps and offer tips on using these tools to improve your financial decision-making.
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. 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.
#3. 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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