ZBee vs Boldin
Last reviewed: September 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 holdings ever being stored on our servers. Both now give you a safe yearly spending figure with guardrails, so the honest side-by-side is about what that figure is built from, where it is worked out, and whether you can check it.
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, priced as of your last sync, and the projection is built on them | Holdings, synced daily, for a view of your mix. Boldin says they don't change your plan: its projection uses a rate of return you set for each account |
| Core question | Most you can safely spend | Will your money last? |
| A yearly spending figure with guardrail thresholds |
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 | Yes, since May 2026: a Safe Spending Target (about an 80% chance of success in its simulations), with upper and lower guardrails |
| 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: enter the Roth plan you or your adviser chose and see exactly what it does | Yes (explorer) |
| Shows its methodology & what it won't model |
Yes — cited sources, published | Partial |
| Price / year | $132 | $144 |
Boldin's price, account sync and spending guardrails checked against Boldin's own pages in September 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 from a screenshot, a PDF 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. Since May 2026 every Boldin user also gets a Safe Spending Target with upper and lower guardrails. 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 the projection is built from: Boldin now syncs your holdings daily, but it says they don't change your plan; its projection runs on a rate of return you set for each account. ZBee pulls every actual position at your broker's latest synced prices, read-only, straight to your Mac, and the projection is built on those positions: what you actually own, not an assumed return standing in for 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 holdings are never stored on ZBee's servers, a design constraint, not a settings toggle. Add the parts of the table above that follow from ZBee's focus (guardrails from published Guyton-Klinger rules you can check by hand, with this year's trigger points in dollars, 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: enter the Roth conversion plan you or your adviser chose and see exactly what it does. It doesn't recommend you restructure it, because 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 — ZBee is free for 30 days on your own numbers, with no account, and is a fair
place to start.
See pricing · The full comparison · ZBee vs ProjectionLab · ZBee vs Pralana · ZBee vs MaxiFi · Guyton-Klinger spending guardrails · How much can you safely spend? · Read the methodology