Calculators
Advisor Fee Comparison Calculator
See what different advisor pricing models cost over time and how each fee changes your ending balance. The calculator compares cost. It does not measure the value of advice or recommend an advisor.
Advisor fees look small. One percent sounds like a rounding error. Over 25 years, the math says otherwise.
Take a hypothetical $1,000,000 earning 5% a year. With no advisor fee, you end with $3,386,355. Pay the 2026 average advisor fee of 0.96% of your assets each year and you end with $2,660,714. You give up $725,640, or 21% of your final balance. You paid $419,339 in fees, and every one of those dollars stopped earning returns the day you paid.
The SEC shows the same pattern on a smaller account. Put $100,000 in at 4% for 20 years. A 0.25% fee leaves you about $208,000. A 1% fee leaves you about $179,000. The 0.75-point gap costs you roughly $29,000.
The way you pay changes the result. A flat fee of $6,815 a year costs the same as 0.96% of assets on a $709,896 portfolio. Above $709,896, the percentage fee takes more each year. In the $1,000,000 example, a flat fee leaves you $3,061,095, or $400,381 more than the percentage fee.
Enter your own balance, return, years and fee below. The calculator shows what each fee costs you in dollars and in lost growth. The calculator measures cost only, so weigh each fee against the services you receive.
Your portfolio
Added at the end of each year. Enter 0 for none.
Enter your return after fund expenses. The calculator uses the same return before advisor fees on every path, so the difference you see comes from the advisor fee alone. The return is an assumption, not a forecast.
Fee models to compare
Prefilled with the 2026 average bundled AUM fee, 0.96 percent (Envestnet and Datos Insights, 491 advisors, Q1 2026).
Prefilled with the 2026 average planning retainer, $6,815 per year (same study). A planning retainer and AUM management cover different services, so check what each fee includes.
Enter your advisor’s schedule. Each rate applies only to the dollars inside its tier.
Prefilled rate is the median hourly rate for planning-fee-only advisors in the 2018 Kitces survey. Enter your own hours.
Results
| Fee model | Total fees paid | Ending balance | Growth lost vs DIY |
|---|
Balance over time
How advisor fees cut into your growth
Lower costs leave more of your return working for you. An advisor fee comes out of your balance every year. The dollars you pay are gone, and so is the growth those dollars would have earned for the rest of the period. The gap widens each year.
What a fee does to the same $100,000
| Annual fee | Ending balance after 20 years at 4% |
|---|---|
| 0.25% | about $208,000 |
| 0.50% | about $198,000 |
| 1.00% | about $179,000 |
From the SEC’s fee example. Moving from 0.25 to 1.00 percent costs about $29,000, roughly 14 percent of the ending balance.
Where to look for savings
- Size of the fee. The 2026 average bundled AUM fee is 0.96 percent. An AUM fee grows with your balance. A flat fee does not.
- Type of fee. A $6,815 flat retainer costs the same as a 0.96 percent AUM fee at a $709,896 portfolio. Above that size the AUM fee costs more each year.
- Questions to ask. How do you get paid? Do I have a choice in how I pay you? Should I pay by the transaction or a flat fee? These are the SEC’s own questions for advisers.
- Fund expenses. Expense ratios, sales loads and 12b-1 fees also reduce growth. The SEC lists them as common fee types to check.
- What you receive. A fee pays for services. This calculator measures cost only, so weigh the cost against what you get.
How this is calculated
Each year your balance grows by the return, the fee comes out of that year-end balance, then your contribution goes in. This is the method that reproduces the SEC’s published fee example ($100,000 at 4 percent for 20 years ends near $179,000 at a 1 percent fee). The SEC page does not state its method. The calculator uses the one that matches the SEC figures.
- AUM and tiered fees apply to the balance after growth. Tiered fees are marginal.
- Flat and hourly fees are fixed dollars each year. No inflation adjustment.
- Contributions arrive at the end of each year, after the fee. A fee never exceeds the balance. No withdrawals, taxes or fund expenses.
- Totals show whole dollars. Underlying math keeps full precision.
Sources
- Envestnet and Datos Insights, 2026 State of Financial Planning Fees
- Kitces Research, advisor fee survey (2018)
- SEC Investor.gov, Understanding Fees