ZBee vs Empower

Last reviewed: October 2026 · Empower's Personal Dashboard was formerly Personal Capital

Empower's Personal Dashboard is a free money dashboard from one of the largest retirement companies in the world, and its Retirement Planner is one of the tools inside it. Link your accounts, describe the retirement you have in mind, and it runs thousands of simulated markets to show how likely that plan is to work. ZBee is a narrower tool: a native Mac app that measures one thing from the accounts you hold, the most you can safely spend, and keeps your financial data on your Mac.

The one-line version: Empower shows how likely the retirement you plan is to work, for free and alongside the rest of your money; ZBee measures the spending your accounts support, on your own Mac.

Empower's features, apps and pricing checked against its own site, help center and app store listings in October 2026; they change — check Empower for the current details. ZBee isn't affiliated with Empower.

Where Empower does more

Being straight about this: Empower covers far more of your money than ZBee does, and it costs nothing. One sign-in shows your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, mortgage and investments together, with net worth, budgeting and cash flow, debt paydown and an emergency-fund tracker alongside the retirement planner. ZBee links brokerages (and takes other accounts from a download file, a screenshot or PDF, or by hand), and it answers one question. Empower's planner lets you add life events such as a home purchase or when you'll take Social Security, simulate a recession, and compare alternative plans; it works on the web and in apps for iPhone, iPad and Android. And if you want a person to help, Empower offers a free review with its financial professionals, with ongoing advice as a paid service. If you want one free place to see and plan all of your money, those are fine reasons to pick it.

Where ZBee is different

The first difference is the answer itself. Empower's planner starts from the retirement you describe, your spending goals and income events, and reports a success rate, with lines for your portfolio's future value; its sign-up page also says it shows how much you can afford each month. ZBee's number is the spending: the most your accounts support at the confidence you pick, with this year's guardrail trigger points in dollars beside it, the level below which the rules trim spending and the level where a raise is earned.

The second is how it is tested. Empower runs thousands of simulated markets and lets you simulate a recession. ZBee runs about a thousand simulated markets too, then replays your number through every complete stretch of real market returns since 1928, in their real order and with the inflation of those same years, and names any stretch it would not have survived.

The third is that ZBee shows its working. Each year's tax is worked out from where the money actually comes from: federal brackets, your state's own rules (Illinois does not tax retirement income at all, and Georgia excludes up to $65,000 of it per person from age 65), Medicare IRMAA surcharges, the 3.8% net investment income tax (NIIT) and required minimum distributions, all shown year by year. Every method is published with its sources in the methodology.

And where your data lives: Empower's dashboard is a cloud service, so the balances, transactions and holdings of every account you link are gathered on Empower's systems. ZBee's whole model runs on your Mac, and your holdings are never stored on ZBee's servers. ZBee also makes no recommendations: enter the Roth conversion plan you or your adviser chose and ZBee shows exactly what it does, year by year, taxes included. The full comparison explains where that line is drawn and why.

Median and 10th percentile, in plain words

Empower's planner draws two lines for what your portfolio may be worth in the years ahead. The median is the middle result of its simulated markets: half come out better, half worse. The 10th percentile is a poor-markets result: only one simulation in ten ends lower. The gap between the two lines is a picture of market risk. ZBee turns the same idea into a spending answer: you choose how confident you want to be, and it reports the highest yearly spend that stays solvent in that share of its simulated markets. At 90% confidence, for example, the figure is the most that lasts in nine simulated markets out of ten.

Which should you choose?

Choose Empower if you want one free place for all of your money (bank accounts, cards, loans and investments) with budgeting, net worth and a retirement planner you can test scenarios in, on the web and on your phone, with an adviser available if you ever want one.
Choose ZBee if the question you actually have is "how much can I safely spend?", you want it measured from the accounts you hold with your state's tax rules and real market history built in, and you want your financial data kept on your own Mac. The two don't exclude each other: Empower is free, and ZBee is free for 30 days on your own numbers — every feature, no account — a fair place to see the difference for yourself.

See pricing · The full comparison · ZBee vs Boldin · ZBee vs ProjectionLab · ZBee vs WealthTrace · Guyton-Klinger spending guardrails · How much can you safely spend? · Read the methodology