Empower vs Monarch Money vs Copilot: Best Net Worth Tracking App in 2026

Three popular apps promise to show you your full financial picture in one dashboard — here’s how they actually stack up once you connect real accounts.

If you’ve searched for the best net worth tracking app, you’ve almost certainly landed on these three names: Empower, Monarch Money, and Copilot. All three connect to your bank, credit cards, loans, and investments, then boil everything down to one number — what you actually own minus what you actually owe.

This isn’t a piece about crowning one universally “correct” winner. The best net worth tracking app for a solo iPhone user chasing an AI-categorized budget is a different app than the best net worth tracking app for a couple splitting a mortgage and two 401(k)s. We’ll walk through how Empower, Monarch, and Copilot actually differ, where each one wins, and where a halal-conscious user should slow down before connecting accounts.

You Don’t Have to Pick Just One

Before you commit to a single subscription, it’s worth knowing that Empower’s core dashboard is free. That means plenty of people run it purely as a net worth tracking app in the background — watching the portfolio and retirement numbers — while paying for Monarch or Copilot separately for day-to-day budgeting and categorization. It’s not the tidiest setup, but it’s a genuinely common one, and it costs nothing extra beyond the paid app you were already going to choose.

At a Glance: The Best Net Worth Tracking App Compared

Criteria-by-Criteria Breakdown

Pricing & Free Trial

Empower’s dashboard, net worth roll-up, and retirement tools cost nothing — the company makes its money from an optional wealth-management service charging 0.49% to 0.89% of assets under management, which most dashboard-only users never touch. Monarch runs $99.99 a year for its Core plan or $199 a year for the newer Plus tier aimed at business owners and long-term planners, with a 7-day free trial. Copilot sits close to Monarch’s Core price at $95 a year or $13 a month, backed by a 30-day trial that’s the most generous of the three.

Automatic Account Syncing

All three sync through standard bank-data aggregators, and all three occasionally hit the same snag: a credit union or smaller bank that won’t connect cleanly. Monarch claims coverage of more than 15,000 institutions. Empower has the longest track record as a net worth tracking app, going back to its Personal Capital days, though it doesn’t backfill your balance history before the day you sign up. Copilot leans on Plaid and layers a Mint CSV importer on top, which matters if you’re migrating years of transaction history.

Investment & Portfolio Tracking

This is where Empower still leads. Its fee analyzer, allocation checkup, and retirement fee comparison go deeper than either competitor, which makes sense given the company’s wealth-management roots. Monarch tracks stocks, mutual funds, 401(k)s, ETFs, and Coinbase crypto in real time, though other exchanges need manual updates. Copilot’s standout trick is aggregating the same ticker across five different accounts into one holdings view, which is genuinely handy if your investments are scattered.

Platform & Device Support

Empower and Monarch both run on web, iOS, and Android, so household members on different phones aren’t locked out. Copilot remains Apple-only for its native apps — iPhone, iPad, and Mac — with a web app (launched December 2025) as the sole option for Android users. If anyone in your household carries an Android phone, that alone may decide this comparison for you.

Household & Couples Sharing

Monarch was built around shared households from day one: partners each get their own login into the same data, and 2026’s “yours, mine, and ours” labels make it clear whose transactions are whose without a spreadsheet argument. Empower supports a single login rather than true multi-user access. Copilot doesn’t offer meaningful household sharing at all, which is one of its clearest limitations against the other two.

AI & Automation Features

Monarch’s AI Assistant lets you ask plain-English questions about your spending and net worth. Copilot’s AI categorization engine is widely considered the most accurate of the three, learning from every correction you make until miscategorized transactions become rare. Empower automates the net worth roll-up itself and emails a weekly snapshot, but it doesn’t offer conversational AI tools the way its two newer competitors do.

Security & Data Handling

Empower encrypts data with AES-256 and requires device verification through phone, email, or SMS. Monarch and Copilot both use bank-grade encryption and route account connections through standard aggregators; Copilot states plainly that it doesn’t sell user data, and its business model is the subscription itself rather than data monetization.

Worth noting for anyone comparing these tools closely: none of the three let you skip bank-level linking entirely if you want full automation. You can add manual accounts in all three apps — useful for cash, collectibles, or a private loan — but the core sync for checking, savings, credit, and investment accounts runs through a third-party data aggregator either way. If that’s a dealbreaker for you, a manual spreadsheet or an app built around manual entry, like Kubera for complex assets, is a better starting point than any of the three apps compared here.

Migrating From Mint or Another App

A large share of the traffic around this comparison still traces back to Mint’s shutdown in early 2024, and both Monarch and Copilot built dedicated importers specifically to catch that wave of displaced users. Monarch accepts a CSV export of your Mint transaction history directly. Copilot offers the same, marketed as one of its clearer growth features after Mint closed. Empower doesn’t offer a Mint importer and won’t backfill your balance history at all — it starts counting from the day you connect your accounts, which is the single biggest complaint in Empower reviews from long-time users who wanted historical continuity.

Why Net Worth Is the Number That Actually Matters

Income tells you how much is coming in. A budget tells you where it’s going. Net worth tells you whether any of it is sticking. It’s the one figure that captures your entire financial position — assets minus liabilities — in a single line, which is exactly why every net worth tracking app in this comparison treats it as the headline metric rather than a secondary feature.

It’s also a number that rewards consistency over precision. A net worth figure that’s off by a few hundred dollars because a property estimate is stale still tells you far more than no number at all — what matters is the trend line moving up over months and years, not the exact figure on any single day. That’s the real argument for automating the tracking rather than rebuilding a spreadsheet every few months: the app keeps the trend visible even when you don’t have time to sit down and calculate it by hand.

5 Startups to Watch

Empower, Monarch, and Copilot aren’t the only companies building in this space. A few newer names worth keeping an eye on:

Where Each App Wins

Which Net Worth Tracking App Is Right for You

If you want a free, permanent net worth tracking app with real investment depth: Empower is the clear pick, especially if you already hold a sizable portfolio you want analyzed for fees and allocation.

If you’re budgeting as a couple or household: Monarch’s shared access and dual budgeting styles were built for exactly this, and the AI Assistant adds a genuinely useful shortcut for quick questions.

If you’re a solo Apple user who wants minimal manual categorization: Copilot’s learning AI and native Mac/iPhone/iPad design make daily check-ins faster than either competitor, provided nobody in your household needs Android.

If you’re halal-conscious and want to start with zero cost: Empower is the lowest-friction starting point precisely because it’s free — you can get a full picture of your assets and liabilities first, then decide separately, account by account, how to handle anything interest-bearing without also committing to a subscription.

For a broader look at budgeting apps beyond these three, NerdWallet’s roundup of the best budget apps for 2026 covers Empower, Monarch, and Copilot alongside YNAB, Goodbudget, and PocketGuard. And if you’re building out your own financial dashboard from scratch, our FinWiser home page has more comparisons across budgeting, investing, and net worth tools.