Best Portfolio Management Apps of March 2024
Empower
Costs
Free
Best For
Sophisticated, cost-sensitive investors who need portfolio management tools
On Empower's Website
Free
Sophisticated, cost-sensitive investors who need portfolio management tools
Why We Picked It
Empower is a robo-advisor tailored to hands-off investors’ needs. The platform also offers free and well-regarded investment portfolio management tools.
You can access Empower’s very well-regarded investment management tools without signing up for the robo-advisor service. The only drawback is that you may need to field a phone call and pitch from an Empower representative, which is a small price to pay to access this valuable resource.
After linking your investment accounts to Empower, the platform aggregates your data and provides a look at your total net worth and an estimate of your home’s value. The software offers multiple reports and analyses and includes banking, investing and planning tools, and each of these categories offers multiple reports.
The investing category provides you with a view of your total holdings across all linked accounts, sector weighting of the holdings, performance statistics, asset allocation and more.
Empower’s retirement fee analyzer calculates your overall expense ratio across all your investments. It then shows you the number of fees you’ll pay over time and the effect they will have on your portfolio returns.
The planning category includes savings information, a fee analyzer, an investment check and a superb retirement planner. There is also an excellent retirement tool that lets you test drive various saving and spending scenarios.
Simplifi by Quicken
Costs
$3.99 per month (one-month free trial)
Best For
Beginning investors with modest portfolios
$3.99 per month (one-month free trial)
Beginning investors with modest portfolios
Why We Picked It
Simplifi is a recent addition to Quicken’s lineup of money management tools. It’s billed as an easy-to-use budgeting and personal finance app and includes basic portfolio management features.
Users link their financial accounts to Simplifi, plugging in checking and savings accounts, credit cards, loans and investment accounts. Simplifi then provides a holistic view of your financial situation and offers guidance and suggestions for improvements.
When you connect investment accounts to Simplifi—IRAs, 401(k)s and brokerage accounts—you get a unified view of your total investment portfolio balance across all linked accounts.
The app gives you a dashboard view of how the total balance and each individual balance have changed over time. You also get a complete list of holdings across your accounts and a news feed for all the stocks you own.
You can filter by just retirement accounts, taxable brokerage accounts, or any combination of individual accounts you prefer. The dashboard provides a clean interface, and the customizable investment tracking chart shows various views of investment growth by account and an aggregate view.
Simplifi is not free, but fees are reasonable and there is a phone and chat customer service. A one-month free trial allows you to try out the app before buying. Consider the free Mint app if you’re a new investor who’s not ready to pay for these tools.
Quicken Premier
Costs
$6.99 per month (other service tiers charge higher or lower fees)
Best For
Experienced investors who want an in-depth investment management app
On Quicken's Website
$6.99 per month (other service tiers charge higher or lower fees)
Experienced investors who want an in-depth investment management app
Why We Picked It
Quicken is a comprehensive budgeting and financial planning platform that’s been around for decades. Among many other features, it offers great tools for tracking your investments, making it the best choice for experienced investors looking for a complete portfolio management solution.
Quicken offers four service tiers: Starter, Deluxe, Home and Business, and Premier—the latter is best for investment portfolio tracking.
Users link their financial and investment accounts to the Quicken platform, from IRAs to 401(k) accounts to taxable brokerage accounts. The platform gives you a unified view of your total investment portfolio across accounts, lets you set asset allocation goals, compares your actual allocation to goals, and compares your portfolio’s performance to common benchmarks. You can review the asset allocation at the portfolio, account level, or individual security.
You can track investment opportunities and create stock watch lists. There is a top-notch retirement planner, investment activity reports, performance data and buy/sell previews. Nearly all features are customizable.
There are nine investment reports, highlighting asset allocation, income generation, total performance and portfolio value versus cost.
Quicken Premier integrates directly with Morningstar’s Instant X-Ray tool, which we discuss above. The direct integration is helpful, as with Quicken, and there’s no need to enter your mutual fund holdings into Morningstar’s tool manually.
Morningstar Instant X-Ray
Costs
Free for one portfolio; $34.95 per month or $249 per year (seven-day free trial) for multiple portfolios
Best For
Mutual fund investors who need portfolio analysis
Free for one portfolio; $34.95 per month or $249 per year (seven-day free trial) for multiple portfolios
Mutual fund investors who need portfolio analysis
Why We Picked It
Morningstar is a top-shelf name in investment research, widely respected for its mutual fund rankings. The company’s premier product, Morningstar Investor, offers in-depth data access and research tools for stocks and funds.
Instant X-Ray is a one-of-a-kind feature of the Morningstar platform that can provide a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of a mutual fund portfolio, like the one you most likely own in your 401(k) account. Users with a paid Morningstar Investor account can save multiple Instant X-Ray portfolios, and a free version lets you analyze one portfolio.
Users enter each mutual fund in a portfolio into the Instant X-Ray tool. It then creates a report—here is a sample version—that shows you the various assets owned inside of each fund in your portfolio, plus a look at your cross-fund asset allocation, sector weightings, geographic distribution, and expense ratio fee.
The report helpfully shows you where you have asset overlap among different funds. It gives you valuation ratios and compares them with appropriate benchmarks, providing a picture of how your mutual fund investments compare to an ideal portfolio.
All in all, Morningstar’s Instant X-Ray can help you determine if your mutual fund portfolio is well-diversified or not and understand if the holdings owned inside the funds in your portfolio are suitable for your investing goals.
Most retirement investors who want insight into their current 401(k) account should be fine with the one-portfolio free version of Instant X-Ray.
Professionals who want to track multiple mutual fund portfolios should look at paying for a Morningstar subscription. This also gives you access to a wide range of research resources and other features, such as screeners, watchlists and net worth tracking.
Ziggma
Costs
Free for a single portfolio; $7.49 per month (billed yearly) for premium version
Best For
Sophisticated stock pickers and investors
Free for a single portfolio; $7.49 per month (billed yearly) for premium version
Sophisticated stock pickers and investors
Why We Picked It
Launched in April 2021, Ziggma is designed to monitor and optimize the portfolios of active investors. The platform’s unique dashboard, alerts and portfolio simulator are designed to enable sound investment decision-making.
The dashboard shows you your portfolio’s total yield and offers stock analysis, risk metrics and fundamental stock metrics like growth and profitability. Various alerts can be customized to tell you when your investments are poorly positioned based on risk, diversification and fundamentals.
For example, you can set an alert when your stock hits a predetermined buy or sell level. You can even use the alerts to monitor price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios and other similar investment ratios.
Creating virtual portfolios and backtest strategies allows you to test your investment ideas. The free version lets users test out the software before signing up for the paid version.
Summary: Best Investment Portfolio Apps
| Company | Company - Logo | Best For | Costs | Learn More CTA text | Learn more CTA below text | Learn More |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Empower |  | sophisticated, cost-sensitive investors who need portfolio management tools | Free | Learn More | On Empower's Website | |
| Simplifi by Quicken |  | Beginning investors with modest portfolios | $3.99 per month (one-month free trial) | Learn More | On Quicken's Website | |
| Quicken Premier |  | Experienced investors who want an in-depth investment management app | $6.99 per month (other service tiers charge higher or lower fees) | Learn More | On Quicken's Website | |
| Morningstar Instant X-Ray |  | Mutual fund investors who need portfolio analysis | Free for one portfolio; $34.95 per month or $249 per year (seven-day free trial) for multiple portfolios | View More | ||
| Ziggma |  | Sophisticated stock pickers and investors | Free for a single portfolio; $7.49 per month (billed yearly) for premium version | View More |
Methodology
Forbes Advisor’s list of best investment apps for portfolio management considers the needs of a diverse range of investors, from beginners to sophisticated stock pickers. We examined a broad range of investment apps, and selected those that charge low or no fees and offer superior features.
Our picks are divided between apps that are easier to use and tailored to new investors who want basic tools, and ones designed to meet the complex requirements of experienced investors who want comprehensive analytical tools. A primary source for this listing can be found at Robo-Advisor Pros.
To learn more about our rating and review methodology and editorial process, check out our guide on how Forbes Advisor rates investing products.
What Is Portfolio Management?
Portfolio management is the practice of analyzing, selecting and monitoring a group of assets—for example, stocks, bonds and cash—to achieve established financial goals. The manager seeks to achieve these objectives with a specified time horizon and level of risk in mind. Investors may choose to manage their own portfolios or entrust the task to professionals.
In order to successfully manage a portfolio, it’s necessary to thoroughly understand vital concepts such as diversification, asset allocation and rebalancing. An active manager builds a portfolio by buying and selling assets with the goal of outperforming the broader stock market, often represented by the S&P 500. A passive manager replicates the composition of a chosen index in order to achieve similar results.
What Are Portfolio Management Apps?
Portfolio management apps are desktop programs or mobile apps that aggregate data from your various investment accounts, so that you can manage your portfolio yourself. These apps give you a view of which stocks you hold, how many shares of each stock you own and, in some cases, your current profit or loss from each investment.
Why use another app when your brokerage account or 401(k) already tells you this information? Most investors have more than one account—maybe a couple of tax-advantaged retirement accounts and also a taxable brokerage account—and portfolio management apps help them track all their assets in one place.
This sort of useful functionality provides investors with a holistic view of all their investments across different accounts and platforms. Anybody who wants to stay on top of all of their investments would benefit from employing a portfolio management app.
Key Features of a Portfolio Management App
Every portfolio management app, whether free or a paid subscription version, will have a dashboard that allows you to see your total portfolio composition and performance at a glance, using real-time data. The best apps will link to all your accounts to give you a complete overview of all your balances and activity. An app associated with a broker can facilitate transactions as well.
Apps also typically offer a variety of reporting functions as well as asset allocation and portfolio monitoring tools, and access to charting and research capabilities. A retirement planner and calculator will help track progress toward your goals, incorporating all of your retirement accounts.
In addition, a dividend calendar should notify you of upcoming payments and other stock-related corporate actions. You should also be able to view the performance of benchmark indices.
How to Choose a Portfolio Management App
Different investing portfolio management apps provide different features. The app you choose should correspond to your level of expertise and the amount of time and energy that you spend tracking your investments.
One critical feature to look for is the ability to link the portfolio management app to all of your accounts, also including checking and savings accounts, credit cards and loans. This gives you a holistic view of your entire net worth, which is a key goal of using a portfolio management app.
The best portfolio management apps should also give you a top-level view of all your investment assets across each of your accounts, with the ability to break down useful performance metrics for each type of asset.
Are Portfolio Management Apps Safe?
The above platforms share the same high-level security protocols as your bank or investment brokerage firm. That includes two-factor authentication, encryption and third-party security protocols. However, not all portfolio management software will provide you with the same security protection as the apps listed above.
This means that tracking your investments on the above platforms should be as safe as making the investments themselves. But no online system is entirely safe from hacks. It’s always recommended to make use of the maximum level of security protocols that a given platform allows.
How To Manage Your Investment Portfolio
Managing an investment portfolio requires you to balance your financial goals, risk tolerance and time horizon. Start by setting clear goals. Define short-term needs and long-term aspirations, whether it’s retirement, education or other life milestones. This will guide the selection of investment assets.
Diversification is the cornerstone of your investment portfolio. Allocating among different asset classes—stocks, bonds, real estate and cash—helps you manage risk. A diversified portfolio cushions you from losses in one sector with gains in another, and it prepares you to face inevitable market downturns.
Regular monitoring is crucial. Economic conditions, market trends and personal circ*mstances constantly change. Review and rebalance your portfolio to ensure it remains aligned with your goals. Avoid frequent trading, as it can lead to increased costs and emotional stress.
Risk management is paramount. While higher returns often correlate with higher risk, it’s vital to find a balance that suits your risk appetite. Avoid putting all your funds into high-risk assets. Emergency funds are also crucial to avoid having to sell investments during a downturn.
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Investing Portfolio Management App FAQs
What is the best investing portfolio management app?
The best portfolio management app depends on your level of experience and personal financial goals. New or hands-off investors will have different needs than experienced, hands-on investors. Online brokerage accounts also tend to offer portfolio management tools with more limited functionality.
What is the best free portfolio management software?
We recommend Empower to people who want a free investing portfolio management app. After linking your accounts, you’ll get access to a good range of investing calculators, portfolio review features, an investment fee analyzer and other sources of insight.
Can you trade stocks with portfolio management apps?
Unless your portfolio management software is included as a feature of a brokerage or retirement platform, you won’t usually be able to trade stocks within the app itself.
