Is there a free alternative to Empower Personal Dashboard?
Empower details checked September 14, 2026
Not really: Empower's Personal Dashboard is already free once you connect accounts, and PortLens replaces none of it. These two barely compete. The Personal Dashboard aggregates the accounts you connect to it into a net-worth, budgeting and retirement view of your whole financial life. PortLens does one thing, free and without an account for up to 20 typed holdings: it takes a list of tickers and share counts and reports which companies are inside the funds. The overlap is a single tile on one product and the entirety of the other.
What is the Empower Personal Dashboard?
It is a free financial dashboard, entered by creating an account and connecting your investment, cash, loan and other accounts, which then presents them in one place. Its own tools navigation lists Portfolio Analysis alongside Retirement Planner, Net Worth, Budgeting & Cash Flow, Savings Planner, Debt Paydown, Emergency Fund and Transactions, and describes Portfolio Analysis as showing how a portfolio performs, its risk level and where the money is invested. Checked on September 14, 2026.
What does PortLens do that a dashboard does not?
It opens the funds. A dashboard that shows a portfolio as five line items shows five line items; a look-through multiplies each company's weight inside each fund by that fund's weight in the portfolio and adds the same company up across all of them, so a position spread over three funds appears once, at its real size. That is what surfaces the concentration a fund-level view cannot contain, and it is why PortLens also reports effective holdings, top-ten concentration and a diversification score, all defined on the methodology page.
It also asks for far less. There is no account and no connection: you type the holdings, and a scan runs signed out at up to 20 of them. Why manual entry is the point sets out what connecting an account actually shares and what you trade away by not doing it.
What does each one measure?
| Question | PortLens | Empower |
|---|---|---|
| What is it built to answer? | What companies do I own once my funds are opened up? | Where does my whole financial life stand — net worth, spending, retirement? |
| How do holdings get in? | Typed by hand. No broker connection and no CSV import. | By signing up and securely connecting investment, cash, loan and other accounts. |
| Does it look through funds to the companies inside? | Yes, and it is the product's primary focus. | Its Portfolio Analysis tool is described as covering performance, risk level and where money is invested. Its tools page does not describe a constituent-level look-through. |
| Budgeting, net worth and retirement planning | None of them. | All three, plus savings, debt paydown, emergency fund and transaction categorisation. |
| Is it an investment adviser? | No. PortLens is not a registered investment adviser and gives no advice. | Its own disclosure states advisory services are provided for a fee by Empower Advisory Group, an SEC-registered investment adviser. |
What are the limits on the PortLens side?
The look-through is bounded by what a fund publishes. It opens up a fund's shares company by company and shows its bonds, cash and derivatives by type, with no bond analysis such as yield or duration. Where a fund's SEC N-PORT filing resolves, the scan reads what that source lists with no per-fund ceiling of its own; where it cannot resolve the filing, most often international listings and funds that file no US holdings report, the fund contributes no underlying companies. Below roughly three quarters reported look-through coverage the concentration figures understate reality. Nothing here is real-time. All investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal.
Where Empower does more than PortLens
Empower is enormously broader, and on scope there is no contest. Its own tools page lists a retirement planner, net worth tracking, budgeting and cash flow, a savings planner, debt paydown, an emergency fund tool, transaction categorisation and tax filing through a partner, all on the free dashboard once accounts are connected. PortLens has exactly none of those and is not trying to acquire them.
Aggregation itself is the bigger difference. Empower keeps a live picture because it connects to your accounts; PortLens sees only what you typed, on the day you typed it. And Empower's own page offers something PortLens structurally cannot: its disclosure states that advisory services are provided for a fee by Empower Advisory Group, an SEC-registered investment adviser. PortLens is not an investment adviser, employs none, and gives no advice of any kind. Read from Empower's own pages on September 14, 2026.
How do I look through my own portfolio?
Enter tickers and share counts; PortLens calculates the position weights. It runs free and without an account for up to 20 typed holdings; a longer list takes a free account. A scan shows how much of your money it could open up into companies; a fund counts as opened even when its published list is partial. The fund-cost figure names any fund with no published fee rather than counting it as free. What each figure means and how it is computed is on the methodology page. All investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal, and past performance does not guarantee future results.
Key takeaways
- Empower answers “where do I stand” across every connected account; PortLens answers “what am I actually holding” inside the funds.
- Empower needs an account and connected institutions. PortLens needs neither and keeps a signed-out scan to 20 typed holdings.
- Budgeting, net worth, retirement and debt planning exist on one side only.
- Empower's disclosure names an SEC-registered adviser offering paid advisory services. PortLens is not an adviser and offers none.
Other comparisons
This article is for information and education only and is not investment advice. Analytics referenced are computed as described in our methodology; see our disclosures.