Best Robo-Advisors of 2023

Wealthfront is our pick for best overall robo-advisor and best robo-advisor for goal planning. It offers a unique mix of fully automated investing and curated portfolios, where you can choose to invest in a specific area, and Wealthfront picks the underlying investments.

For balances of at least $100,000, you get access to Wealthfront’s US Direct Indexing feature that allows for tax-loss harvesting at the individual stock level. For balances of $500,000 or more, you get access to Wealthfront’s Smart Beta program designed to build you your own portfolio of stocks based on five factors to optimize how your money is invested.

Investment accounts require a 0.25% annual fee, which is charged monthly. There are no other commissions or fees charged by Wealthfront, though the ETFs and mutual funds in your portfolio may set their own fees. For taxable accounts, automated tax-loss harvesting improves returns an average of 1.8%, according to Wealthfront, which would be more than enough to cover the annual fee.

Betterment is one of the first automated investment services and registered with the SEC in 2009. Betterment is suitable for beginners to investing and those who want to take an entirely hands-off approach to their investment management. Basic accounts have no minimum required deposit and charge a competitive 0.25% annual fee. You can also upgrade to an account with full financial advising with a $100,000 minimum balance and 0.40% yearly fee.

In addition to the flagship automated investment accounts, investors can choose several specific responsible investment themes or take more control with flexible portfolios where you can make adjustments according to your investment goals. Retirement accounts are available, and taxable accounts have an automatic tax-loss harvesting feature. While the complete financial advising account is more expensive and requires a significant minimum investment, the digital account and banking options are more affordable and have lower requirements.

We chose M1 Finance as best for low costs because most common investing activities are all free. You won’t pay a fee as long as your account has at least $20 or has had activity at least every 90 days.

For more advanced investors, the flexible Pie portfolio system allows for fine-tuning and control over investments. M1 displays assets from each account using pie charts called Pies. Each Pie can have up to 100 different investments called Slices. M1 has more than 6,000 stocks and ETFs from the top U.S. stock exchanges, but, like most robo-advisors, it doesn’t offer mutual funds, options trading, or cryptocurrencies. M1 automatically works to keep your portfolio in line with your Pie target percentages.

Newer investors can use pre-built Expert Pies, which are professionally designed portfolios for specific investment goals. However, M1 does not provide access to a financial advisor or investment advice.

Core Portfolios is a robo-advising platform from E*TRADE that offers suggested portfolios based on your answers to questions during the set-up process. More advanced investors may appreciate the options to customize your portfolio, including with socially responsible investments (SRIs) or ETFs.

E*TRADE Core Portfolios, with a 0.30% annual fee, is a little more expensive than some competitors. One very useful feature that E*TRADE Core Portfolios offers is semi-annual automatic rebalancing to align the portfolio with the investor’s target asset allocation.

While there is no automated tax-loss harvesting, E*TRADE uses municipal bond ETFs to help reduce taxes. E*TRADE is a full-service investment platform where you can easily manage all of your banking and investments with one mobile app.

Founded in 2010, Interactive Advisors began using its current name in 2019, changing from Interactive Brokers Group. To invest with Interactive Advisors, you’d need a minimum of $100. While the broker does not charge trading commissions, you can expect to pay asset-based management fees ranging from 0.08% to 1.5%. You can choose from conservative to aggressive automated Asset Allocation Portfolios, which require a 0.12% annual fee.

Interactive Advisors offers over 75 portfolios focus on a wide range of themes and focus areas. Themes include investments by risk, business sector, socially responsible, index, and financial metrics, among others. Socially responsible investing themes include water, ocean life, racial equality, mindful business models, land health, LGBTQ inclusion, gender equality, fair labor, and ethical leadership.

In addition to portfolios managed by Interactive Advisors, you can pick professionally managed portfolios from partners like Franklin Templeton, Greenwich Wealth Management, Lakeland Wealth Management, State Street Global Advisors, WisdomTree, and others.

Empower provides investment management service that is a hybrid of robo-advising and human advising. Rather than do everything yourself with a computer, you start with Empower on the phone with a human financial advisor who will help you create a custom plan for your goals. You can always call your advisor for help if you’re a Empower client.

Emower offers three tiers of service with the lowest tier requiring a minimum investment of $100,000. When you invest $200,000 or more, you get a team of two dedicated financial advisors to work with and regular reviews. Investment greater than $1 million would unlock access to more features.

Fees start at 0.89% and decrease for portfolios over $1 million. With robo-advising built-in, Empower also offers tax-loss harvesting, automatic rebalancing, socially responsible portfolios, and other features.

Even if you’re not investing with Empower, the financial tools can be useful. The free Empower app analyzes your investments and spending across all banks, investment accounts, credit cards, and other loans to give you a complete picture of your money and detailed information about your portfolio allocation and fees.

Merrill Guided Investing is the robo-advising product offered by Merrill Lynch. Its online platform requires a $1,000 minimum to get started, which is fairly low compared to other options. However, its 0.45% annual fee is higher than most competitors for similar features.

Merrill Guided Investing features an extensive education section that helps round out your investment knowledge and skills for the future. It offers resources on a range of topics for beginning to advanced investors. Other benefits include the fact that it’s part of the Bank of America Preferred Rewards program. If you have a combined balance of at least $20,000 across all accounts, you qualify for discounts and benefits, including a savings of 0.05% to 0.15% for guided investing.

You can access advisors at any time, but you have to upgrade to a more expensive account for full one-on-one investment support year-round. Investment choices include socially responsible portfolios and your portfolios will get automated rebalancing.