The short version: if you want hands-on budgeting, Monarch or Copilot are built for it. If you want free portfolio analytics and mostly hold stocks and funds, Empower is hard to beat. If you want to model your retirement in depth, ProjectionLab is the specialist. If you have a large, complex, multi-currency estate with NFTs and alternative assets, Kubera earns its price. Ascend is for the person in the middle who wants one private, trustworthy net-worth number across traditional accounts and keyless crypto — without paying a premium or wading through budgeting.
Who each one is actually best for
Ascend Free · $99/yr
Net-worth-first tracking across brokerages (SnapTrade), banks and 401(k)s (Plaid), real estate (FHFA index), and keyless on-chain crypto across 10 chains — read-only, no seed phrase, no budgeting.
Best for: people who hold both traditional accounts and crypto, want one clean private number, and do not want a budgeting app or a premium annual bill.
Join the waitlist →Kubera $250/yr
Premium balance sheet with the widest asset coverage anywhere — crypto, DeFi, NFTs, alternative and private assets, multi-currency — plus an estate-planning beneficiary handoff.
Best for: high-net-worth and fatFIRE investors with complex, global, multi-asset portfolios who want maximum breadth and will pay for it.
Kubera vs Ascend →Empower Free
Free, genuinely strong investment analytics — allocation x-ray, a fee analyzer, and a solid retirement planner — funded by an optional human advisory service.
Best for: US investors with mostly stocks, funds, and retirement accounts who want free premium portfolio tools (crypto is manual entry only).
Empower vs Ascend →Monarch $99.99/yr
The polished, ad-free Mint replacement built around hands-on budgeting, with best-in-class real-time sharing for couples and households.
Best for: couples who want shared budgeting and people whose net worth is mostly traditional accounts (crypto is Coinbase-only).
Monarch vs Ascend →Copilot $95/yr
The design leader — the most beautiful, Apple-native budgeting and spending tracker, with AI categorization that learns your transactions.
Best for: solo users living in the Apple ecosystem who want a gorgeous budgeting app (no native Android; crypto is BTC/ETH plus exchanges, no Solana, L2s, or DeFi).
Copilot vs Ascend →ProjectionLab Free · $129/yr
A powerful, privacy-first retirement planner — Monte Carlo, Roth conversions, withdrawal strategies — that deliberately does not link your accounts.
Best for: DIY FIRE planners modeling the future. It pairs well with a live tracker rather than replacing one — many people use both.
ProjectionLab vs Ascend →Want the middle-ground option?
One private net-worth number across your brokerages, banks, retirement, real estate, and keyless crypto — with a genuinely useful free tier and no budgeting to babysit.
Get early accessHow we picked these
These six are the tools people most often weigh when they leave Mint, a spreadsheet, or a single-asset tracker and search for a real net-worth app. They split into four jobs: net-worth tracking (Ascend, Kubera), a free investing dashboard (Empower), budgeting-first apps that also show net worth (Monarch, Copilot), and planning (ProjectionLab). The right pick depends on which job you actually need — so the table above leads with focus and price, not a single winner.
The gap Ascend was built for shows up in the crypto rows. Budgeting-first apps treat crypto as an afterthought — Empower is manual entry, Monarch is Coinbase-only, Copilot covers Bitcoin and Ethereum but not Solana, layer-2s, or DeFi. Kubera covers crypto deeply but costs $250 a year and is aimed at large, complex estates. If your money is a normal mix of a brokerage, a 401(k), some cash, a home, and on-chain crypto across a few chains, most tools make you either overpay or duct-tape two apps together. That is the seam Ascend sits in.
Common questions
What is the best free net worth tracker?
Empower has the most mature free tier for traditional portfolios, with strong investment analytics — but its crypto support is manual entry only. Ascend’s free tier covers your full net worth including keyless on-chain crypto across 10 chains, a net-worth percentile, and a Monte Carlo retirement projection. ProjectionLab has a capable free planning tier but does not track live balances.
Which net worth tracker is best for crypto?
Kubera has the widest coverage (wallets, exchanges, DeFi, and NFTs) but has no free tier and starts at $250/year. Ascend reads on-chain balances keylessly — public wallet address only, no private keys or seed phrase — across Bitcoin, Ethereum, its major layer-2s, Solana, and more, and flags DeFi positions, on a free tier. Budgeting-first apps (Monarch, Copilot, Empower) have limited or manual crypto support.
What is the best Mint alternative that is not a budgeting app?
If what you actually miss from Mint is the net-worth screen rather than transaction budgeting, a net-worth-first tool fits better than a budgeting-first replacement. Ascend and Kubera are both built around the total number rather than spending categories. See our Mint alternative guide for the full breakdown.
Do these apps ask for my private keys?
None of them need your seed phrase or private keys to track crypto. Ascend reads public wallet balances by address only and can never move funds; TradFi connections across all of these tools are read-only. Always confirm the trust model on each provider’s security page before connecting anything.
Sources: pricing and feature details verified July 6, 2026 against each provider’s official site — Kubera, Empower, Monarch, Copilot, and ProjectionLab. Prices change — check the current figures before purchasing.