Pure Benchmarks · Comparison

Portfolio Decision Attribution Tools in 2026

Performance attribution answers the question total return cannot: not what your portfolio did, but which parts of what you did produced it. The problem for an individual investor is that the category splits three ways and almost nothing in the middle is buyable. At one end sit decision journals, which record your reasoning before a trade and measure nothing afterwards. At the other sit institutional attribution engines sold to asset managers through a sales call. In between, the strongest retail-adjacent option puts attribution behind an advisor tier. This page compares six tools on what each one attributes a result to, who is actually allowed to buy it, and what the result gets measured against.

Decision journal and decision attribution are not the same product

Both get marketed as decision tracking, which is why searches for one return the other. A journal captures intent before the trade: your thesis, your reasoning, what you expected. Attribution measures outcome after the fact: what the change was worth in dollars against the alternative of not making it. Journalling makes you a more deliberate investor. Attribution tells you whether the deliberation worked. The table below marks journalling as its own row so the distinction is visible rather than assumed.

What classic attribution actually measures

The institutional standard, usually called Brinson attribution, splits your return against a benchmark into an allocation effect and a selection effect. Allocation is what you earned by weighting a sector or asset class differently from the benchmark. Selection is what you earned by picking better holdings inside that group. It is rigorous, it is the methodology the rest of the category is measured against, and it attributes performance to groups rather than to the specific moves you chose to make.

Why decision-level attribution is a different calculation

Attributing to a sector answers which part of the portfolio carried the result. Attributing to a decision answers whether one particular action was better than inaction. That requires holding the portfolio as it stood the instant before the change and running it forward in parallel with the real one, so the comparison is against the portfolio you gave up rather than against an index. Neither calculation replaces the other. They answer different questions and most tools implement only the first.

The access problem in this category

Attribution quality and attribution availability are not the same axis. Koyfin has the most complete Brinson implementation outside an institutional contract, and it sits on plans starting at $209 per month because Model Portfolios and Client Portfolios are advisor features. MSCI does not publish a price at all and is sold to asset managers and performance teams. IBviz is genuinely cheap and genuinely good, and only reads Interactive Brokers accounts. For an individual with accounts at more than one broker and no advisor licence, the list of options gets short quickly.

What the result is measured against

Every tool on this page can measure a result against an index or a chosen fund, and that is the standard baseline. A second baseline is what comparable investors did with the same market over the same days. It is rarer because it requires a verified cross-custodial dataset of real portfolios rather than a price feed, and it answers a question an index cannot: whether the outcome was unusual or entirely ordinary for someone holding what you hold.

How this comparison works

Which of these tools attributes a result to the decisions you actually made, and which ones attribute it to sectors, to holdings, or to nothing at all?

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	Pure Benchmarks	Koyfin	MSCI (Barra)	IBviz	Morningstar Investor	Sharesight
Decision attribution	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Allocation vs selection	No	Yes	Yes	Partly	Partly	Partly
Your real portfolio	Yes	Partly	Partly	Yes	Partly	Yes
Self-serve retail	Yes	Partly	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Any broker	Yes	Partly	Partly	No	Partly	Yes
Peer baseline	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Advisor review	Yes	Partly	No	No	No	No
Decision journal	No	No	No	No	No	No
Free real output	Yes	No	No	Partly	No	Partly
Price	Free account	Free plan, attribution from $209 per month	Enterprise, price on request	Free tier, Pro at $15 per month	Subscription, free trial	Free plan up to 10 holdings, paid plans above that

✓ 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: was the specific switch you made in March better than leaving the portfolio alone? 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

Pure Benchmarks

Attribution at the level of each change you made, scored against the 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 it forward alongside the real one, so every change carries its own dollar figure
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

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

MSCI (Barra)

The institutional reference implementation, and not purchasable by an individual.

Best for: Asset managers, asset owners and performance teams.

Pricing: No published price and no self-serve signup. The published route is "Request a demo" or "Get in touch".

Strengths

Brinson, fixed income, factor-based and multi-portfolio attribution models in one system
Proprietary framework for detailed curve and spread attribution on fixed income
The methodology much of the rest of the category is measured against

Limitations

Sold to "asset managers, asset owners and performance teams", not to individuals
No published price and no self-serve access point
Attribution is to factors and groups, not to the decisions a private investor made

IBviz

Deep attribution visualizations at a retail price, for one broker only.

Best for: Interactive Brokers clients who want contribution and risk analytics without an advisor subscription.

Pricing: Lite is free with 80+ visualizations on a 6-month lookback. Pro is $15 per month for the full analytics and extended lookback. Corporate is $350 per month.

Strengths

Shows which assets drove returns, the FX impact on profit and loss, and risk concentration
A genuinely free tier with the full visualization set on a six-month lookback
The cheapest real attribution on this page by a wide margin

Limitations

Interactive Brokers accounts only, so anything held elsewhere is invisible to it
Attributes to assets and asset classes rather than to the decisions you made
No comparison against other investors at all

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

Sharesight

The strongest record of what happened, which is the input attribution needs, rather than attribution itself.

Best for: Investors who want accurate multi-broker performance, dividend and tax records with a benchmark attached.

Pricing: A free plan tracks up to 10 holdings with no credit card. Benchmarking is listed on the Starter plan and above.

Strengths

Separates capital gains, dividends and currency movement, which is the decomposition most retail tools skip
Benchmarks against any of more than 750,000 supported stocks, ETFs and funds
Excellent multi-broker and multi-currency record keeping

Limitations

Contribution and benchmark comparison rather than attribution to decisions
Benchmarking sits on the paid plans
No comparison against other investors

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Frequently asked questions

What is portfolio performance attribution?

Performance attribution decomposes a portfolio return into the parts that produced it. The institutional standard, Brinson attribution, splits the result against a benchmark into an allocation effect, from weighting groups differently, and a selection effect, from the holdings picked inside those groups. Decision-level attribution is a narrower variant that attributes the result to each change the investor made rather than to a sector or asset class.

What is the difference between a decision journal and decision attribution?

A decision journal records your reasoning before you trade. Decision attribution measures what the trade was worth afterwards, usually against the alternative of not trading. Tools such as InvestJournal, Finviz Portfolio Notes and similar trade journals do the first. Attribution tools do the second. They are routinely confused because both are described as decision tracking, and very few products do both.

Can an individual investor get real performance attribution without an advisor subscription?

Yes, but the options are narrow. Koyfin’s attribution sits on advisor plans starting at $209 per month. MSCI is enterprise-only with no published price. IBviz costs $15 per month and reads Interactive Brokers accounts only. Pure Benchmarks, our own product, runs decision-level attribution on a free account across linked brokerages, and does not produce the Brinson decomposition.

Which attribution tool works across more than one brokerage?

Sharesight and Pure Benchmarks both work across multiple brokers. IBviz is limited to Interactive Brokers. Koyfin’s custodian integration is an advisor-plan feature. Morningstar Investor supports import but is oriented around holdings analysis rather than attribution.

Does attribution tell me whether my financial advisor added value?

Only if it measures at the decision level. Group-level attribution shows which sectors drove a result, which does not isolate whether a specific change your advisor made beat the portfolio it replaced. Decision-level attribution does isolate that, which is the basis for reviewing managed and workplace accounts the same way you would review your own trades.

How were these tools compared?

Each capability and price was read from the vendor’s own published pages on the date shown on the page, and anything a vendor does not publish is marked as unlisted rather than estimated. Pure Benchmarks is our own product; it is marked as not producing a Brinson decomposition and as having no decision journal, in the same table as everything else.

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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.