Pure Benchmarks · Head to head

Koyfin vs Morningstar Investor

Short answer

Pick Koyfin for allocation vs selection. Pick Morningstar Investor for self-serve retail. They overlap on 0 of the 9 capabilities scored here. Neither one covers decision attribution, which is the gap our own product, Pure Benchmarks, is built around.

Koyfin and Morningstar Investor get compared constantly because both sit in the performance attribution category and both start from your real holdings. They are not the same product. Koyfin is the most complete Brinson attribution available outside an institutional contract, sold on advisor plans (Free plan, attribution from $209 per month). Morningstar Investor is holdings analysis rather than attribution, and the most widely recognised name a retail investor will meet first (Subscription, free trial). This page scores both on the same capability list, shows the 2 places they actually diverge, and names what neither of them does. Pure Benchmarks is our own product and appears in the table with its own gaps marked.

What Koyfin does that Morningstar Investor does not

1 capability: Allocation vs selection. Separates performance against the benchmark into allocation, selection and interaction effects. Factors in every rebalance during the period, using the portfolio's weights throughout rather than only the weights at the end. That matters for advisors, and individuals willing to pay an advisor price, who want allocation and selection effects done properly.

What Morningstar Investor does that Koyfin does not

1 capability: Self-serve retail. Portfolio X-Ray breaks down allocation, sector weightings, style and fees across funds and stocks together. Benchmarks can be chosen across a range from aggressive to conservative, and indexes added for comparison. That matters for fund-heavy investors who want overlap, style and fee analysis against a chosen benchmark.

Where Koyfin and Morningstar Investor are the same

They share none of the capabilities scored here, which is unusual and means they are solving different problems rather than competing directly. Compare them on which problem you actually have, not on price.

What neither Koyfin nor Morningstar Investor does

7 capabilities are missing from both: Decision attribution; Your real portfolio; Any broker; Peer baseline; Advisor review; Decision journal; Free real output. Pure Benchmarks, our own product, covers 6 of them: Decision attribution; Your real portfolio; Any broker; Peer baseline; Advisor review; Free real output. It does not cover Decision journal.

Which one to choose

Koyfin is built for advisors, and individuals willing to pay an advisor price, who want allocation and selection effects done properly. Morningstar Investor is built for fund-heavy investors who want overlap, style and fee analysis against a chosen benchmark. The capability table above is the fastest way to settle it: find the row you actually care about and read across. Main limitation of Koyfin: attribution sits on the advisor tiers, so the entry price for the feature is $209 per month. Main limitation of Morningstar Investor: analyzes what you hold rather than what your changes did.

How this comparison works

Which matters more to you: what Koyfin does, or what Morningstar Investor does?

Decision journals and attribution tools are both marketed as decision tracking and they are not the same thing. A journal records your reasoning before the trade. Attribution measures the outcome afterwards. This page compares attribution tools and marks the journal capability as its own row.
The second question is who is allowed to buy it. Several of the strongest attribution engines in this category are sold to advisors or to institutions, and the attribution module specifically sits above a retail price point.
The third question is what the result is measured against. Every tool here can measure against an index. Only one measures against other real portfolios as well.
Capabilities and prices were read from each vendor's own published pages on the date shown. Vendors change both.
Pure Benchmarks is our own product. It does not produce a Brinson decomposition and it has no journal, and both gaps are marked in the table rather than described around.
FactSet, Bloomberg PORT, Confluence StatPro and Zephyr also serve this category and are institutional products sold through direct sales; they are outside the scope of a page about tools an individual can actually buy.

The comparison

Capabilities verified against each vendor's published pages on September 17, 2026.

Capability	Koyfin	Morningstar Investor	Pure Benchmarks
Decision attribution	No	No	Yes
Allocation vs selection	Yes	Partly	No
Your real portfolio	Partly	Partly	Yes
Self-serve retail	Partly	Yes	Yes
Any broker	Partly	Partly	Yes
Peer baseline	No	No	Yes
Advisor review	Partly	No	Yes
Decision journal	No	No	No
Free real output	No	No	Yes
Price	Free plan, attribution from $209 per month	Subscription, free trial	Free account

✓ yes · ~ partly · ✗ no

What each capability means

Attributes results to the individual changes you made, not only to holdings or sectors

Classic attribution answers which holding or sector drove the return. Decision attribution answers a narrower and more uncomfortable question: did your trading decisions beat doing nothing? It is a buy-and-hold counterfactual — the tool freezes the portfolio as it stood before the change, runs that do-nothing portfolio forward alongside the real one, and reports the dollar difference. Those are different calculations and most tools only do the first.

Produces the classic allocation, selection and interaction decomposition

The institutional standard, usually called Brinson attribution. It separates the return you earned by weighting a group differently from the benchmark from the return you earned by picking better holdings inside that group.

Runs on your own linked accounts rather than a model or a manually built portfolio

Attribution on a hypothetical portfolio is an exercise. Attribution on the account you actually own, with the trades you actually placed, is a review.

An individual can sign up and use it without an advisor licence or an institutional contract

Much of this category is sold to advisors and asset managers. If attribution sits behind an advisor tier or a sales call, it is not available to the person whose money it is.

Works across brokerages instead of being tied to one

A tool locked to a single broker can only attribute the part of your money that sits there, which for most people is not the whole picture.

Compares the outcome against other real investors, not only against an index

An index is one baseline. What comparable investors did with the same market over the same days is a second one, and it is the one that tells you whether the decision was unusual or ordinary.

Can be used to review decisions somebody else made on your behalf

If an advisor or a managed account is making the changes, attribution is the only way to see whether those changes earned their fee.

Records your reasoning before the decision, as a journal

Journalling captures intent in advance; attribution measures outcome afterwards. They are routinely confused because both are called decision tracking, and almost no tool does both well.

Free tier produces real attribution output rather than a trial countdown

Several tools here have a free plan where attribution specifically is the thing the free plan does not include.

Every tool in detail

Koyfin

The most complete Brinson attribution available outside an institutional contract, sold on advisor plans.

Best for: Advisors, and individuals willing to pay an advisor price, who want allocation and selection effects done properly.

Pricing: Free, Plus at $39 per month and Premium at $79 per month exist, but Model Portfolios and Client Portfolios, which is where Attribution lives, start at Advisor Core at $209 per month and Advisor Pro at $299 per month.

Strengths

Separates performance against the benchmark into allocation, selection and interaction effects
Factors in every rebalance during the period, using the portfolio's weights throughout rather than only the weights at the end
Any equity ETF can be the benchmark, and it uses that ETF's historical constituents rather than only its current holdings

Limitations

Attribution sits on the advisor tiers, so the entry price for the feature is $209 per month
Attributes to groups and holdings, not to the individual changes you chose to make
Custodian integration is an advisor-plan feature, so an individual is often working from a model portfolio rather than a live linked account

Morningstar Investor

Holdings analysis rather than attribution, and the most widely recognised name a retail investor will meet first.

Best for: Fund-heavy investors who want overlap, style and fee analysis against a chosen benchmark.

Pricing: Sold as a subscription with a free trial. No price is published on the product page, so none is stated here.

Strengths

Portfolio X-Ray breaks down allocation, sector weightings, style and fees across funds and stocks together
Benchmarks can be chosen across a range from aggressive to conservative, and indexes added for comparison
Backed by Morningstar's own fund research and ratings

Limitations

Analyzes what you hold rather than what your changes did
No decomposition of a result into the decisions that produced it
A trial rather than a free tier

Pure Benchmarks

A buy-and-hold counterfactual for every change you made: each decision is scored against the do-nothing portfolio you would still hold if you had left it alone.

Best for: Individual investors reviewing their own decisions, or an advisor's, without an advisor-tier subscription.

Pricing: A free account produces the decision report on a linked portfolio. Attribution is not held back for a paid tier.

Strengths

Freezes the portfolio as it stood immediately before each change and runs that buy-and-hold version forward alongside the real one, so every trading decision carries its own dollar figure against doing nothing
Adds a second baseline beyond the index: verified connected portfolios in the same standardized risk category
Applies identically to changes an advisor or workplace plan made on your behalf
Read-only by design and unable to move money in any linked account

Limitations

Does not produce the classic Brinson allocation, selection and interaction decomposition; the unit of analysis is the decision rather than the sector weight
No decision journal. It measures what a change did, not what you expected it to do
Requires a read-only brokerage connection; there is no manual-entry-only portfolio
Does not track real estate, private holdings or self-custody crypto wallets

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Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Koyfin and Morningstar Investor?

Koyfin is the most complete Brinson attribution available outside an institutional contract, sold on advisor plans. Morningstar Investor is holdings analysis rather than attribution, and the most widely recognised name a retail investor will meet first. On the capability list scored here they overlap on 0 and differ on 2, with Koyfin alone covering Allocation vs selection and Morningstar Investor alone covering Self-serve retail.

Is Koyfin or Morningstar Investor better value?

Koyfin: free plan, attribution from $209 per month. Free, Plus at $39 per month and Premium at $79 per month exist, but Model Portfolios and Client Portfolios, which is where Attribution lives, start at Advisor Core at $209 per month and Advisor Pro at $299 per month. Morningstar Investor: subscription, free trial. Sold as a subscription with a free trial. No price is published on the product page, so none is stated here. Value depends on which of the differing capabilities you will actually use, not on the headline price.

Can Koyfin or Morningstar Investor compare my portfolio to other real investors?

Neither does. Both compare you against an index or a model allocation rather than against other real portfolios. That comparison is what Pure Benchmarks, our own product, is built to provide, by sorting connected portfolios into nine standardized risk categories and ranking inside them.

How were Koyfin and Morningstar Investor compared?

Both were scored against the same performance attribution capability list, checked against each vendor's own published pages. Anything a vendor does not publish is marked as unlisted rather than estimated. Pure Benchmarks is included as our own product with its gaps shown in the same table.

Keep exploring

See how a specific firm's advisor decisions compare to other firms:

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.