ZBee vs Boldin
Last reviewed: August 2026 · Boldin was formerly named NewRetirement
Boldin is the mainstream choice in DIY retirement planning — a guided, full-picture web planner that wants to hold your whole financial life, from bank accounts to your mortgage. ZBee is a narrower, more private instrument: a native Mac app that answers one question — the most you can safely spend — from your actual brokerage holdings, without your data ever touching a server. They overlap less than you'd think, so an honest side-by-side is mostly about which shape of tool you want.
The one-line version: Boldin plans more of your life in their cloud; ZBee measures your spending answer on your own Mac, from your real holdings.
| ZBee | Boldin | |
|---|---|---|
| Where your data lives | On your Mac — by design, not policy | Their cloud |
| Platform | Native Mac app | Web |
| Native iPhone app | Free iPhone & iPad app — a private, on-device estimate | No app — mobile-friendly site |
| Uses your real accounts | Yes — read-only, direct to your Mac | Yes — linked to their cloud |
| What linking brings in | Your actual holdings — every position, live prices | Balances only — holdings typed by hand |
| Core question | Most you can safely spend | Will your money last? |
| Yearly spending guidance in retirement |
Yes — this year's trigger points in dollars: the level below which the rules trim (and to what), and where a raise is earned. Published Guyton-Klinger rules you can verify by hand | Modeled inside projections — no live yearly readout |
| Would it have survived real market history? |
Yes — automatically: your safe-spend number is replayed through every real market sequence since 1928 (1929, 1966, 1973 and all) and reported as "survived N of M," with any failing years named | Monte Carlo only — no historical replay |
| Year-by-year tax detail (you can audit) |
Yes — federal, state, IRMAA, NIIT, RMDs, shown | Yes (no NIIT/AMT) |
| Roth-conversion optimizer | No — by design (see below) | Yes (explorer) |
| Shows its methodology & what it won't model |
Yes — cited sources, published | Partial |
| Price / year | $99 | $144 |
Boldin's price and features as published July 2026; they change — check Boldin for the current details. ZBee isn't affiliated with Boldin.
Where Boldin does more
Being straight about this: Boldin's account linking covers more kinds of institutions — banks, mortgages, and many workplace 401(k) plans — where ZBee links brokerages (and takes anything else pasted in or by hand). Boldin also has a guided, hand-holding interface that walks you through building a full household plan, and a Roth-conversion explorer. If you want one website that models your whole financial life and coaches you through it, Boldin is built for exactly that, and it's a fine reason to pick it.
Where ZBee is different
Two differences do most of the work. First, what linking actually brings in: Boldin's link carries the balance figure — your holdings are typed by hand — while ZBee pulls every position with live prices, read-only, straight to your Mac. Your projection is then built on what you actually own, not on a hand-entered approximation of it. Second, where the data lives: Boldin is a cloud service and your plan lives on their servers; ZBee's whole model runs on your Mac and your financial life never leaves it — a design constraint, not a settings toggle. Add the parts of the table above that follow from ZBee's focus — the dollars-and-cents yearly spending readout and the automatic replay through every real market sequence since 1928 — and the trade becomes clear.
ZBee also deliberately has no Roth-conversion optimizer. It measures what your current situation supports rather than recommending you restructure it — optimizing is tax-strategy territory that depends on things software can't know, and that a CPA or CFP is licensed to advise on. The full comparison covers this line-drawing in detail.
Which should you choose?
Choose Boldin if you want a guided, whole-household planner — budgets,
mortgage, workplace accounts — and you're comfortable with your plan living in a vendor's
cloud.
Choose ZBee if the question you actually have is "how much can I safely
spend?", you want it answered from your real holdings, and you want your financial data kept on
your own machine. You can check ZBee's answer against Boldin's free tier and see which you
trust — the free demo mode runs on sample data with no account, and is a fair
place to start.
See pricing · The full comparison · ZBee vs ProjectionLab · ZBee vs Pralana · Read the methodology