Best Robo Advisors of 2026

Why a 0.25% advisory fee is not your total cost

A robo-advisor's advisory fee sits on top of the expense ratios of the funds it buys for you. It does not replace them. You pay both.

Here is the stack. The advisory fee goes to the robo-advisor for building and rebalancing the portfolio. The expense ratio goes to the fund company that runs each ETF, and it is deducted inside the fund before you ever see a return. E*TRADE says this outright: its advisory fee does not cover the underlying management fees and expenses of any fund in the portfolio. Betterment says the same, noting fund fees are in addition to its management fee.

So a 0.25% robo-advisor holding ETFs that average 0.08% costs about 0.33% a year all in. That is still cheap, but it is a third more than the headline number.

Vanguard Digital Advisor is the exception in how it handles this. It charges a gross fee of 0.20% for an index portfolio, then subtracts a credit for the revenue Vanguard keeps from the funds you hold. The stated result is a net cost of no more than $20 per $10,000 a year.

One more structural detail worth knowing: Betterment's $24,000 crossover is exact math, not marketing. Its flat price is $5 a month, or $60 a year. 0.25% of $24,000 is also $60. Below that balance without recurring deposits, the flat fee is the more expensive option measured as a percentage. On $5,000, $60 a year is 1.2%. To model what any of these fee rates cost over decades, use our investment growth calculator.

When tax-loss harvesting is actually worth paying for

Tax-loss harvesting sells a fund that has dropped below what you paid, books the loss, and buys a similar fund to keep your allocation intact. The loss offsets capital gains, and up to $3,000 a year of ordinary income.

The benefit scales with your balance, but the ceiling does not. A portfolio has to be large enough to produce meaningful unrealized losses in a given year. On a $5,000 taxable account, a 10% drawdown creates a $500 loss. At a 24% marginal rate that is worth about $120 - and only if you have gains or income to apply it against.

Providers build their thresholds around exactly this. Schwab requires $50,000 in the account and makes you enroll. Fidelity Go requires $25,000 in a taxable account. Wealthfront and E*TRADE Core Portfolios apply no balance floor at all.

Three conditions have to hold for harvesting to be worth a fee premium. You need a taxable account, because the strategy does nothing inside an IRA or 401(k) where gains are already sheltered. You need capital gains or ordinary income to offset. And you need to expect a similar or lower tax rate when you eventually sell, because harvesting lowers your cost basis and defers tax rather than erasing it.

E*TRADE flags that last point directly: if you expect to be in a higher bracket later, enrolling may not make sense.

The wash-sale trap that can permanently kill a harvested loss

The wash-sale rule disallows a loss if you buy the same or a substantially identical security within 30 days before or after the sale. That is a 61-day window in total.

Most people know that much. What most people do not know is what happens when the replacement purchase lands in your IRA.

The IRS addressed this in Revenue Ruling 2008-5. If you sell a security at a loss in your taxable account and your IRA or Roth IRA buys the substantially identical security inside that window, the loss is disallowed under section 1091. And the basis of the IRA shares is not increased. In a normal wash sale, the disallowed loss is added to the basis of the replacement shares, so you get it back later. In the IRA case, you do not. The loss is gone for good.

This matters for robo-advisors specifically. Your robo-advisor coordinates trades only inside the accounts it can see. Wealthfront's Form ADV states this plainly: clients are responsible for monitoring accounts outside Wealthfront, wash sales can occur across different accounts, and Wealthfront may lack visibility into unlinked accounts. It also warns that if you hold the same securities elsewhere, you cannot trade them for 30 days before or after a harvest.

The practical rule is simple. If your robo-advisor harvests losses on a total-market or S&P 500 ETF in your taxable account, do not hold an automatic-investing schedule for the same or a near-identical fund in your IRA or 401(k). A routine payroll contribution can quietly nullify the harvest.

For how taxable and retirement accounts differ more broadly, see our brokerage vs. IRA comparison.

How a robo-advisor with no advisory fee makes money

Schwab Intelligent Portfolios charges no advisory fee and no commissions. Schwab explains where the revenue comes from instead, and it is worth reading before you assume free means free.

Every Intelligent Portfolios account holds a required cash allocation that is swept into FDIC-insured deposit accounts at Schwab Bank. Schwab states that it does not charge an advisory fee for the program in part because of the revenue Schwab Bank generates from that cash. It also states that the bank earns more the larger the cash allocation, and that some cash alternatives outside the program pay a higher yield.

That is a real cost, just not an itemized one. Cash held at a below-market yield inside a long-term portfolio is a drag on returns that grows with your balance and with the size of the allocation. Schwab also earns fund-level revenue, because the portfolios hold Schwab ETFs managed by a Schwab affiliate.

None of this is hidden - Schwab publishes it in its disclosure brochure. The point is that the comparison is not "free versus 0.25%." It is an explicit percentage fee versus an implicit cash drag, and which one costs more depends on your allocation and on where short-term rates sit.

The same logic applies to cash held outside the portfolio. Betterment and Wealthfront both offer separate cash accounts with variable APYs, and those balances are not part of the managed portfolio. Check the current rate before treating any of them as a savings substitute.

What it costs to add a human CFP to a robo-advisor

Every service here that offers human advice prices it as a separate tier with its own minimum. The jump is usually larger than the base fee itself.

Betterment Premium charges 0.65% a year, made up of the 0.25% base fee plus a 0.40% Premium fee, and requires $100,000 in eligible investments per household. On $100,000 that is $650 a year instead of $250.

Schwab prices it as a subscription instead of a percentage. Schwab Intelligent Portfolios Premium charges a $300 one-time planning fee plus a $30 monthly advisory fee, billed as $90 quarterly, and requires $25,000. That is $660 in year one and $360 a year after. The flat structure flips the usual math: at the $25,000 minimum it is roughly 1.4% a year ongoing, but at $250,000 it is about 0.14% - cheaper than every percentage-based CFP tier here.

Vanguard splits it by size. Vanguard Personal Advisor starts at $50,000 and charges approximately $30 to $31 per $10,000 a year, or about 0.30%. Vanguard Personal Advisor Select charges no more than $30 per $10,000 for a dedicated CFP and requires $500,000 in enrolled assets.

Fidelity Go includes unlimited 30-minute coaching calls once your balance reaches $25,000, at the same 0.35% fee and no surcharge. That is the cheapest human contact on this list, though coaching calls are narrower than an ongoing planning relationship.

Wealthfront, E*TRADE Core Portfolios, and Acorns do not include human advisor access at these tiers.

Before paying for an upgrade, be clear on which service you are buying. A dedicated CFP relationship is a different product from a wealth-management engagement - see financial advisor vs. wealth manager - and the SEC's Investor Bulletin on robo-advisers is a good primer on how much human interaction any given program actually provides.

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