Is there a free alternative to Sharesight?
Sharesight details checked September 14, 2026
For the ETF look-through, yes: PortLens shows what your funds actually hold, free and without an account, for up to 20 typed holdings. For the tracking, no. Sharesight is a portfolio tracker that also reports what is inside your ETFs, and PortLens only does the second half: a running record of performance, dividends and tax across brokers is Sharesight's job and not something PortLens attempts.
What is Sharesight?
It is a portfolio tracking and reporting service — its own terms are explicit that it is not a bank, broker or trading platform and that you cannot move money or securities through it. Alongside performance, dividend and tax reporting it publishes an Exposure Report, which its help centre describes as showing the underlying holdings within your ETFs and, where you own several, identifying the overlapping ones. Its free plan is one portfolio and ten holdings, counting positions you have already closed. All of that was read from Sharesight's own pricing page and help centre on September 14, 2026.
What does PortLens do instead?
One job: it takes tickers and share counts typed in by hand — there is no broker connection and no CSV import — and opens each fund into the equity constituents its SEC N-PORT filing publishes, summing each company across all of them and across shares held directly. Out of that come effective holdings, top-ten concentration, a dominant sector, a diversification score, portfolio beta against the S&P 500 total return, and a weighted expense ratio that names the funds it left out for want of a published ratio rather than costing them at zero. It runs free and signed out at up to 20 typed holdings, and every figure is defined on the methodology page.
Manual entry is a deliberate choice rather than a missing integration; why manual entry is the point sets out what linking an account actually shares and what you give up by not doing it.
What does each one measure?
| Question | PortLens | Sharesight |
|---|---|---|
| What is it for? | Look-through only: what companies you own across your funds. | Tracking: performance, dividends, corporate actions and tax reporting, with an exposure report on top. |
| Does it need an account? | No. A scan runs signed out, capped at 20 typed holdings. | Yes. Its free plan covers one portfolio and ten holdings, counting positions you have closed. |
| How does it look through a fund? | Reads the equity positions the SEC N-PORT filing lists, with no per-fund ceiling of its own on how many it keeps. An unresolved fund contributes no underlying companies, and the stated look-through coverage is an upper bound rather than a measure of completeness. | Shows the top 50 to 500 underlying holdings of an ETF and groups anything past that, or anything it cannot match, as a residual. |
| Which listings does the look-through reach? | Strongest for US-listed funds. Funds whose SEC N-PORT filings cannot be resolved contribute no underlying companies. | ETFs listed in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, the USA and the EU. It states it cannot look through managed funds identified by APIR code or by GB, IE or LU ISIN. |
| Tax and cost-basis reporting | None, and none is planned — PortLens publishes no tax content of any kind. | A core part of the product. |
Can you use both for different things?
Nothing stops it, and the two barely intersect outside look-through. A tracker answers “what has this done and what do I owe on it”; a look-through answers “what am I holding right now, once the funds are opened up”. If your question is the second one and you would rather not create an account to ask it, the ETF overlap checker answers the two-fund version outright, and what ETF overlap measures explains what the resulting percentage does and does not say.
Where Sharesight does more than PortLens
Sharesight is the larger product and does several things PortLens does not do at all. It keeps a continuous record rather than a snapshot: performance over time, dividends and corporate actions handled automatically, imports from brokers, and tax reporting — a whole category PortLens excludes on purpose and will not enter.
Its look-through also reaches further by listing venue. Its own help centre states the exposure report covers ETFs listed in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, the USA and the EU, where PortLens is strongest on US-listed funds and cannot look through funds whose SEC N-PORT filings cannot be resolved. On the funds where PortLens is weakest, that is a real advantage and not a rounding difference.
Both draw their own line on depth, in opposite places. Sharesight states that its report shows the top 50 to 500 underlying holdings of a fund and groups the rest as a residual, with no way to raise that limit — and argues, fairly, that a company below the top 500 of a fund is a negligible share of anyone's portfolio. PortLens sets no comparable per-fund ceiling on what it keeps from a filing, and its limit falls elsewhere: it opens up shares company by company but shows bonds and cash only by type, and its look-through coverage is an upper bound rather than a measure of completeness. Sharesight states where its own reading stops; PortLens states how much of the portfolio it reached at all. Those are different limits, not a better and a worse one.
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
- Sharesight tracks; PortLens looks through. Only the exposure half overlaps.
- Sharesight needs an account, and its free plan covers ten holdings including closed ones. PortLens needs none, and caps a signed-out scan at 20 typed holdings.
- Sharesight's look-through covers more listing venues and states a per-fund ceiling of 50 to 500; PortLens sets no such ceiling but shows bonds and cash only by type, and its look-through coverage figure is an upper bound on what it saw through rather than a measure of completeness.
- Tax and cost-basis reporting exist on one side only, and PortLens will not be adding them.
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.