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Pure Benchmarks · Free calculator

Financial Advisor Fee Calculator

Updated

Short answer

A 1% advisory fee on $500,000 is about $5,300 in the first year at a 6% return. Over 20 years, with no new money added, the account ends near $1.31 million instead of about $1.59 million at a 0.05% index-fund cost, a gap of roughly $276,000 once lost growth is counted. Enter your own balance, fee and time frame below to see your numbers.

See your fee in dollars

Fee in year one

$5,300

$174,142 paid over 20 years

Balance after 20 years

$1,311,569

vs $1,587,608 at 0.05%

What the higher fee costs

$276,039

fees plus the growth they would have earned

Assumes the same return every year and the fee charged on the year-end balance. Fund expense ratios are extra unless you include them in the fee.

Advisory fees are quoted as a percent, which makes them easy to underestimate. This calculator turns the percent into dollars: what you pay in the first year, what you pay over the whole period, and how much smaller the account ends up compared with a lower fee, including the growth the fees would have earned. It runs in your browser and nothing you enter is stored. A higher fee can still be worth paying if the advice adds more than it costs, which is a separate question the last section covers.

Link the account your advisor manages and see whether each change made in it beat leaving the portfolio alone, and how the account ranks against real investors in the same risk category.

See Your Free Benchmark Report

How the calculation works

Each year the account grows by the return you enter, any yearly amount you add is invested, and the fee is taken as a percent of the balance. The same steps run with the comparison fee. The difference between the two ending balances is the full cost of the higher fee: the fees themselves plus the growth those dollars would have produced.

Why the long-run cost is bigger than the yearly fee

Every dollar paid in fees stops compounding. Over a few years the gap is close to the fees paid, but over decades the lost growth can add up to more than the fees themselves. That is why a difference that looks small as a percent becomes large as a dollar figure.

Fees the calculator does not see

Most advisory fees sit on top of the expense ratios of the funds in your account, and some accounts carry trading costs or wrap fees. If you know those costs, add them to the fee you enter to get a closer total.

Is the fee worth it?

Cost is only half the question. The other half is what the advice adds through the decisions made in your account. Pure Benchmarks, our own product, scores each change made in a connected account against leaving the portfolio alone and ranks the account against real investors in the same risk category, so you can weigh the fee against measured results.

Link the account your advisor manages and see whether each change made in it beat leaving the portfolio alone, and how the account ranks against real investors in the same risk category.

See Your Free Benchmark Report

Frequently asked questions

How much does a 1% advisory fee cost?

A 1% fee costs $1,000 a year for every $100,000 invested, charged in good years and bad. Over 20 or 30 years the total cost, including lost growth, is usually far larger than the yearly fee suggests. The calculator shows the figure for your own balance.

What do Empower, Vanguard Personal Advisor and Betterment charge?

The presets use published headline rates: Empower 0.89%, Vanguard Personal Advisor 0.30%, Betterment 0.25% and Fidelity Go 0.35%. Rates vary by balance and plan, so check the provider’s current fee schedule for your account size.

Does the calculator include fund expense ratios?

No, unless you add them to the fee you enter. Advisory fees are usually charged on top of the funds’ own expense ratios.

Is a lower fee always better?

A lower fee leaves more money invested, but the right comparison is the fee against what the advice adds. This page is information, not a recommendation about any advisor or product.

Keep exploring

See how real portfolios at a specific firm rank against everyone else:

New here? Read the portfolio benchmarking FAQ or the Pure Benchmarks blog.

This page is an information baseline for comparison only. It is not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy, sell, replace, or transfer any specific asset, account, or firm. Past performance does not guarantee future results. All figures shown are illustrative.