ZBee vs WealthTrace
Last reviewed: October 2026
On paper, WealthTrace is the planner closest to ZBee: both link your real investment accounts, both look at the individual holdings rather than one balance, and both work out taxes year by year. The differences are in where the work happens and what question it answers. WealthTrace is a full planning workbench in your browser, built for individuals and for financial advisers alike, and its headline result is whether your money lasts. ZBee is a native Mac app that measures one thing from the accounts you hold: the most you can safely spend.
The one-line version: WealthTrace tells you whether the spending you enter is funded; ZBee tells you what spending your accounts support, on your own Mac.
| ZBee | WealthTrace | |
|---|---|---|
| Where your data lives | On your Mac — by design, not policy | Their cloud — a web app you sign into |
| Platform | Native Mac app | Web — any browser, on a Mac, a PC or a phone |
| Native iPhone app | Free iPhone & iPad app — a private, on-device estimate | No app — the site works in a phone's browser |
| 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 | Balances and holdings, updated daily, which the projection can use |
| Core question | Most you can safely spend | Will your money last? The chance of funding your goals, and the age money would run out |
| 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 | No spending guardrails published. A Solving Tool finds the change in spending that reaches a goal you set, such as an 80% chance of success |
| 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 | A bear-market scenario on the Deluxe plan: one bad year that you place, using past downturns such as 2008–09 |
| State income tax | Your state's own rules — its brackets, deductions, and how it treats retirement income and Social Security | One average rate you enter, applied to each dollar of income |
| Year-by-year tax detail (you can audit) |
Yes — federal, state, IRMAA, NIIT, RMDs, shown | Yes — federal, Medicare IRMAA and RMDs; state as the one rate above |
| Roth-conversion optimizer | No, by design: enter the Roth plan you or your adviser chose and see exactly what it does | Yes, on the Deluxe plan: Roth conversion scenarios and optimization |
| Shows its methodology & what it won't model |
Yes — cited sources, published | Yes — a published user guide |
| Price / year | $132 | $229 (Standard); $289 (Deluxe, which adds the Roth and bear-market tools) |
WealthTrace's prices, plans and features checked against its own site and user guide in October 2026; they change — check WealthTrace for the current details. ZBee isn't affiliated with WealthTrace.
Where WealthTrace does more
Being straight about this: WealthTrace plans far more of a financial life than ZBee does. It covers the working years (saving, employer matches, deferred compensation, 529 plans), weighs life and long-term-care insurance, and lets you change several things at once and compare the what-if scenarios side by side. Because it runs in a browser, it works on Windows and on a phone as well as a Mac. It also has a separate edition for financial advisers, with a client portal, so an adviser who uses WealthTrace can share your plan with you online. On the Deluxe plan it adds Roth-conversion optimization and an AI assistant that answers questions about your plan. If you want one tool for the whole plan, or you plan alongside an adviser, those are fine reasons to pick it.
Where ZBee is different
The first difference is the answer itself. WealthTrace starts from the spending you type in and tells you how likely it is to last; its Solving Tool can work backwards to the cut needed to reach a goal you choose. ZBee starts at the other end: the number it produces 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 second is how it is tested. A bear-market scenario drops one bad year where you put it. ZBee 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 state tax. WealthTrace's guide says it does not estimate state taxes and asks for one average rate instead. ZBee applies your state's own rules, which matter a great deal in retirement: Illinois does not tax retirement income at all, and Georgia excludes up to $65,000 of it per person from age 65. A single rate cannot follow either.
And where your data lives: WealthTrace is a web service that keeps your plan on its servers. ZBee's whole model runs on your Mac, and your holdings are never stored on ZBee's servers. ZBee also makes no recommendations, so it has no optimizer: 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.
Which should you choose?
Choose WealthTrace if you want one planner for your whole financial life, including
the working years and insurance, want it in a browser on any computer, or work with an adviser who
uses it.
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. 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 ProjectionLab · ZBee vs Boldin · ZBee vs MaxiFi · Guyton-Klinger spending guardrails · How much can you safely spend? · Read the methodology