Retirement Calculators Compared: Which Ones Need Your Bank Login?
Fewer than you'd think — of Boldin, ProjectionLab, and Empower, only Empower is genuinely built around linking your accounts. Bank-linking isn't the real dividing line anymore. What actually differs, in detail: how each one simulates the future, what it actually models (Social Security strategy, taxes, healthcare, real estate), what's free versus paywalled, and what it costs. We went through each product's own pricing and help pages rather than take review-site summaries at face value — the tables below are the result, including the places we couldn't verify something confidently enough to state as fact.
Run your own numbers
Enter your numbers above to see your estimate.
Pricing and access
Boldin's PlannerPlus is $144/year, billed annually only — there's no monthly option despite that working out to $12/mo on paper. ProjectionLab's Premium tier is the same shape: $129/year, annual-only (a monthly option exists, but only on its separate $549/year tier built for financial advisors, not individual users). Empower doesn't charge for the planner at all — it makes money by referring you into its wealth-management arm, which has real asset minimums starting around $100K. MangoDime has no billing at all yet; everything described here is free.
| MangoDime | Boldin | ProjectionLab | Empower | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Full plan, no paywall on any of it | "Basic" — build a plan, limited depth | "Basic" — real Monte Carlo + backtesting included | Full dashboard + planner, no asset minimum |
| Paid tier price | None — no billing built yet | $144/year (PlannerPlus) | $129/year (Premium) | Free to use; monetized via advisory referrals (0.49-0.89% AUM, $100K+ minimum) |
| Billing cadence | N/A | Annual only — no monthly option | Annual only on Premium (monthly exists only on the $549/yr advisor-facing Pro tier) | N/A (advisory fee, not a subscription) |
| Signup required to see a real result | No | Yes (free account, no card) | No for a demo persona; yes to build your own real plan | Yes |
| Bank/account linking | Not yet — planned later as an optional convenience, never required | Optional (Plaid/MX/Finicity), manual entry always works | Optional, via plugins (YNAB, Monarch, Lunch Money); no native bank link | Central to the product; manual entry possible but loses real-time sync |
How each one actually simulates the future
“Runs Monte Carlo simulations” hides a real methodological difference. Boldin and Empower both use parametric Monte Carlo — they fit a statistical distribution (roughly, a bell curve) to historical average returns and volatility, then draw random samples from that distribution. MangoDime uses a historical bootstrap: every simulated year draws an actual U.S. market year at random from real data back to 1928, so the messiness of real history — fat tails, real bad stretches — comes through directly rather than through a smoothed statistical approximation. ProjectionLab goes further than either: it offers both a literal historical-sequence replay mode and a separate parametric mode, letting you choose. See our companion article on what your own retirement paycheck actually looks like for the full mechanics behind our number specifically.
Planning depth
This is where the real differences show up — not whether a tool links your bank, but whether it can actually model your specific situation: claiming Social Security at the right age, which account to draw from first, RMDs, a spouse, healthcare before Medicare, a mortgage, or a kid headed to college.
| MangoDime | Boldin | ProjectionLab | Empower | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simulation method | Monte Carlo: 5,000 paths, each drawing a real independent U.S. market year (1928+) | Monte Carlo: ~1,000 paths, parametric (normal distribution fit to historical average/volatility) | Both: literal historical-sequence backtesting, and a separate parametric Monte Carlo mode (up to 2,000 trials) | Monte Carlo, parametric, calibrated to historical asset-class returns; trial count not published |
| Social Security claiming comparison | Yes — Compare ranks ages 62-70 per spouse, with real early/delayed-claiming rules; no spousal-benefit math yet | Yes — compares ages, models spousal/survivor rules | Yes — full early/delayed-credit math, spousal/survivor, earnings test | Basic compare (62/FRA/70); not a full ranked optimizer |
| Withdrawal-order optimization | Compare ranks four named orders (default, Roth-last, Traditional-first, Taxable-first) by lifetime after-tax income; not a bracket-filling optimizer | Manual reordering to test sequences; not auto-optimized | Yes — auto-sequences withdrawals + Roth conversions against a chosen goal (min tax, max legacy, etc.) | Unclear if the free planner does this (their paid advisory tier does) |
| RMD modeling | Yes, per spouse independently | Yes | Yes, including the joint-survivor table for large spousal age gaps | Has a standalone RMD calculator; unclear if it's built into the planner itself |
| Household / spouse mode | Yes — independent ages, SS, RMDs, survivor-benefit preview | Yes | Yes, including survivor asset transfer and filing-status change | Yes |
| Healthcare cost modeling | ACA subsidy pre-65, Medicare + IRMAA post-65, both income-based | ACA subsidy cliffs, Medicare/IRMAA with correct 2-year lookback, HSA, long-term-care reserve | ACA/IRMAA as optimizer targets; explicit Medicare premium line-item unconfirmed | A flat elevated inflation rate on a healthcare cost input, not subsidy/bracket-aware |
| Real estate / mortgage | Yes — value, mortgage payoff, housing-cost step-down | Yes, including refinance mechanics | Yes — dedicated property types, rental income, mortgage payoff | Yes, with Zillow/lender-linked values |
| Kids / college costs | Yes — per-kid, ages 18-21, 529-aware | Yes, as dated expense ranges | Yes, with 529 as a real account type | Generic one-time goal expenses, not 529-specific |
We now rank both Social Security claiming ages and withdrawal orders against your own plan too (see claiming age and withdrawal order in Compare) — ours ranks a handful of named strategies rather than searching for a mathematically optimal one the way ProjectionLab's auto-sequencing does. Where we're ahead: the household, healthcare, real estate, and college modeling above is free in full detail here, not gated behind a subscription or an advisor referral.
“What would 2008 have done to my plan?”
ProjectionLab and Empower both let you see this directly — replay a specific real crash against your actual numbers. MangoDime's Stress Test tool does too now: pick one of five named historical crashes (2008, the 2000-02 dot-com bust, 1973-74 stagflation, the 1931 low point of the Depression, or 2022's rare stocks-and-bonds-both-fell year) and see what it does if it hits your very first year of retirement, isolated from the rest of the plan's randomness. That's different from ProjectionLab's full multi-year sequence replay — ours isolates one bad year's timing rather than replaying an entire historical stretch year by year.
Everyday stuff
| MangoDime | Boldin | ProjectionLab | Empower | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "What would 2008 have done to my plan?" | Yes — a Stress Test tool applies five named historical crashes to your plan's first retirement year, isolated from other randomness | Custom stress-test tool ("Market Risk Explorer"); a named historical replay is unconfirmed | Yes — its historical-sequence mode literally replays real rolling past periods | Yes — a named "Recession Simulator" applies a specific past crash to your plan |
| Percentile / range-of-outcomes chart | Yes | Yes | Yes | Unclear — described mainly as a single success percentage |
| Live what-if re-simulation | Yes when editing any field; no one-click preset toggles yet | Yes, a headline feature | Yes, with baseline-vs-scenario overlay | Yes — retirement-age slider, live comparison |
| Native mobile app | No — responsive web only | No — web only | No — installable as a PWA, not a native app | Yes |
| Data export | Not built yet | PDF report + data download | PDF, CSV, and full JSON export/import | Unconfirmed for planner results specifically |
| Support | In-app chat, email, paid live classes and 1:1 sessions | Active Discord community, email, paid 1:1 sessions | Self-service + a free consultation call; deeper advisor access above $100K |
Frequently asked questions
Is it safe to link my bank account to a retirement calculator?
Tools that link accounts (Empower centrally, Boldin and ProjectionLab optionally) use aggregators like Plaid, which use read-only, bank-grade connections rather than sharing your actual login credentials with the app. It's a widely-used, real approach — but it's still your call whether you want a third party holding that connection. MangoDime never asks today, which removes the question entirely; we plan to eventually offer linking as an optional convenience, never a requirement.
Do I need to link accounts to get an accurate number?
No — linking only saves you the effort of updating balances yourself over time. Accuracy depends on entering real numbers and real assumptions, not on whether they arrived by typing or by sync.
Which one should I actually use?
If you want the deepest tax-optimization and historical-replay tools and don't mind an annual fee, ProjectionLab is the most fully-built of the three. If you want a household net-worth dashboard and don't mind linking accounts, Empower is free and strong at that. If you want a fast, free, no-signup answer to “is my retirement paycheck covering my spending,” with real household/healthcare/real-estate modeling and nothing gated behind a subscription — that's what we built MangoDime for. For how to think about your own number before comparing tools at all, see how much you actually need to retire.
Is MangoDime free?
Yes — the estimate above, your chance-of-success percentage, and the full detailed plan (real accounts, Social Security, spending, household/spousal support) are all free, with no account required to see a result.
See your own number, no signup
Enter your numbers above to see your estimate.
By the MangoDime team · Last updated September 19, 2026