At a glance
Killion is planning and simulation software with read-only account linking. Empower Personal Dashboard is described below in its own terms. Where a figure is quoted it comes from the vendor's published pricing and was checked on the date shown.
| Killion | Empower Personal Dashboard | |
|---|---|---|
| Individual price | $14/mo, or $11/mo billed annually ($132/yr). Max tier $24/mo or $19/mo annually. | Dashboard and planning tools free. Wealth management charged on assets: 0.89% on the first $1M, tiering to 0.49% above $10M, $100k minimum. |
| Free entry point | Live no-signup Monte Carlo demo on a fictional household, plus a 5-day free trial of the full product. Card required for the trial; no charge until it ends. | The full dashboard, retirement planner and fee analyzer are free. |
| Account linking | Read-only brokerage and crypto linking via SnapTrade. Cash and bank balances are entered manually while automatic bank linking moves to a new provider. | Broad account aggregation across banks, brokerages and retirement plans. |
| Simulation method | 1,000-path regime-switching Monte Carlo with fixed seeds, so a run reproduces. | Monte Carlo retirement planner built into the free dashboard. |
| Historical backtesting | Historical backtesting against real market data going back to 1928. | Not offered. |
| Withdrawal rules | Nine named rules: fixed real dollar, fixed percentage, Guyton-Klinger, Vanguard dynamic, endowment smoothing, VPW, CAPE-based, risk-based guardrails, and Merton. | Spending assumptions rather than named withdrawal policies. |
| Sales contact | None. There is nothing to upsell you to. | Linking six figures of assets typically triggers adviser outreach. |
| Human advice | None. Killion is software; it is not a registered investment adviser. | Yes, through the paid advisory service. |
Empower Personal Dashboard details checked on against the Empower financial tools page. Vendors change prices; verify before deciding.
What "free" is buying
Empower’s free tools are good, and calling them a trap would be unfair. But they are a customer-acquisition channel for an advisory business, and the advisory business charges a percentage of assets — starting at 0.89% on the first million and stepping down as balances grow.
A percentage fee compounds against you the same way returns compound for you. On a $750,000 portfolio, 0.89% is about $6,675 in year one, and it grows with the balance. Our own simulation of fee drag found that a 1% annual charge removes a large share of the terminal balance over a 40-year horizon — the effect is far bigger than the number sounds.
None of that applies if you only ever use the free dashboard. It applies the moment you accept the upsell, which is the point of the free dashboard.
Retirement planner versus simulation engine
Empower’s retirement planner is a solid Monte Carlo tool inside a dashboard. Killion is the inverse: a simulation engine that happens to also show your net worth.
The practical difference shows up when you ask harder questions. Backtesting a plan against every starting year since 1928, comparing Guyton-Klinger guardrails with fixed-percentage withdrawals on identical markets, or scheduling a crash in a specific year to isolate sequence risk are Killion features, not dashboard features.
Which one to choose
Choose Killion if
- You want the arithmetic of a percentage fee to stop applying to you.
- You want backtesting, named withdrawal rules and reproducible runs, not a planner tab.
- You do not want a phone call after linking your accounts.
Choose Empower Personal Dashboard if
- You want a capable net-worth and cash-flow dashboard at no cash cost.
- You want the fee analyzer to audit your 401(k) fund expenses.
- You actually want managed money and are comparing advisory options.