Manual-first by design. Aggregator-based by default.
Empower (formerly Personal Capital) is the most-recognized free wealth tracker for HNW operators. It uses the Yodlee aggregator to log into your brokerage and bank accounts on your behalf, several times a day. HELM does not. This page is the side-by-side, with the architectural choice surfaced clearly.
The architectural choice underneath
Empower's free dashboard runs on Yodlee. When you "link" Schwab, Fidelity, or your bank, your credentials flow to Yodlee's servers, where they're stored encrypted. Yodlee then logs in as you several times a day to refresh balances and transactions. This is the same architecture used by Mint, Monarch, Copilot, Tiller, and most consumer-grade wealth tools. The convenience is real — your dashboard refreshes without you doing anything. The architectural risk is also real: any breach of Yodlee exposes credentials for tens of millions of accounts simultaneously.
HELM is built the other way. We never request your brokerage password. There is no field for one anywhere in our codebase. You log into your brokerage directly, export a CSV statement (Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard, E*TRADE, IBKR, and Coinbase all support this natively), and upload it to HELM. The CSV is parsed in-memory by a serverless function and discarded — only the normalized rows make it into the database. The aggregator-credential breach class is impossible for HELM by design, not by policy. Read the fuller treatment at /blog-the-aggregator-problem.
Side-by-side
| Capability | HELM | Empower (Personal Capital) |
|---|---|---|
| Account-data architecture | Manual CSV import + manual position entry | Yodlee aggregator with stored brokerage credentials |
| Brokerage login required? | No — never asks | Yes — for every linked account |
| Aggregator-credential breach exposure | Impossible by design | Architectural risk class |
| Wash-sale detection (cross-account, ±30 days) | Yes (IRS §1091, with replacement-buy citations) | No |
| Tax-loss harvest opportunities (long vs short term) | Yes — ranked + estimated | Surface in advisor pitch only |
| QSBS §1202 5-year hold tracking | Yes | No |
| RMD calendar (SECURE 2.0 age 73) | Yes — per account | Generic retirement projection only |
| IRA / 401(k) contribution-room helper | Yes — with catch-up | No |
| AMT estimate for ISO exercise | Yes (in Scenario builder) | No |
| Monte Carlo cash-flow forecast | 10K runs · Box-Muller · P10/P50/P90 paths · sequence-of-returns risk visible | Retirement Planner — basic stochastic projection |
| What-if scenarios (sell / exercise / donate) | Yes — bracket-stacked LTCG + NIIT + AMT layers | No |
| AI assistant trained on your portfolio | Ask HELM — Claude Sonnet 4.5, persistent threads, 60-day context | No |
| Encrypted document vault | Netlify Blobs, scoped per operator, 25 MB cap | No |
| Banker-grade quarterly review PDF | Yes — print-ready, 10 pages | No |
| Tracking pixels / reverse-enrichment | None | Standard marketing telemetry per privacy policy |
| Pricing | $79 founding (lifetime lock) · $149 Standard · $299 Studio | Free dashboard · advisory at 0.49–0.89% AUM |
| Investment advisor sales motion | None — software only, never a fiduciary, never sells advisory | Built-in — Empower Personal Wealth pitches at $100K+ NW |
Where Empower wins
Honest answer: convenience and price-of-entry. Empower's dashboard is free, refreshes automatically, and does not require you to upload anything. For a user who is comfortable with the aggregator architecture and primarily wants a dashboard view of net worth, it does that job well. The retirement-planning tool is genuinely useful at a basic level. The fee analyzer surfaces hidden fund-expense ratios.
If real-time refresh is your top priority and the aggregator tradeoff is acceptable to you, Empower is a reasonable choice — particularly at the free tier. We are not arguing it shouldn't exist. We're arguing it isn't the right fit for the operator who has read the Plaid 2022 settlement, who has 5+ accounts spanning brokerages and banks and crypto, and who refuses to centralize all that in a third-party aggregator's vault.
Where HELM wins
Three places, decisively.
- Privacy architecture. No aggregator means no aggregator-breach exposure. Full list of what we never store: atthelm.com/security#never-store.
- Tax depth. Wash sales (cross-account, IRS §1091), QSBS clock, RMD calendar, IRA contribution helper, AMT, §1031, charitable-stock-gift math. Empower surfaces a retirement projection; HELM surfaces actual tax-aware decisions. Tax Brain runs on every login.
- AI specialization. Ask HELM is a Claude Sonnet 4.5 specialist trained on tax code, with persistent threads and 60-day context against your portfolio data. Empower has no equivalent.
Who should pick which
Empower fits if: $100K–$1M NW, comfortable with aggregator-based connections, wants free + automatic, tolerates the eventual advisor outreach, doesn't need tax-aware scans.
HELM fits if: $1M–$10M+ NW, refuses to give brokerage credentials to a third party, runs 5+ accounts spread across institutions, wants tax-aware scans (wash sale, QSBS, AMT) on every login, wants AI that reads the portfolio without an advisor upsell, willing to spend 12 minutes a month on CSV uploads to get all that.
Built for the operator who refuses to share brokerage credentials.
Manual-first wealth OS. Tier-1 specialist AI. Founding-25 lock $79/mo for the lifetime of the subscription.
Become a founding operator →Educational only. This page is not investment or tax advice. Tax features described in HELM are educational tools — confirm any tax-impacting decision with a licensed CPA. HELM is software, not an investment advisor or fiduciary.