Forbidden Finance · Comparison
Forbidden Finance vs Empower Personal Dashboard
Empower Personal Dashboard (formerly Personal Capital) is a genuinely free net-worth, portfolio-analysis, and retirement-planning dashboard. The free product is the acquisition channel for Empower’s fee-based wealth management ($100k+ minimums), which is how it stays free.
Empower Personal Dashboard is best for: Investors who want serious free portfolio and retirement analysis — and don’t mind the advisory funnel.
Facts about Empower Personal Dashboard were checked against their published pages in August 2026; every cell links its source. Spot something out of date? Tell us at support@403fin.io and we'll fix it.
At a glance
| Dimension | Forbidden Finance | Empower Personal Dashboard |
|---|---|---|
| The basics | ||
| Price | Free tier forever; paid plans $4.99–$14.99/mo. No free trial — 30-day money-back guarantee on web purchases. | $0 — the dashboard and all tools are free. Paid advisory is separate ($100k+ invested for Personal Strategy; $1M+ for Private Client, AUM fees).↗ |
| Business model | Subscriptions only. No ads, no data sales, no cross-sells. | Free dashboard as lead generation for fee-based advisory. Linking accounts includes consent to promotional calls/SMS about Empower and affiliate products; Empower pays publishers up to $250 per referred lead.↗ |
| Security & privacy | ||
| Data selling & ads | We never sell user data, share it with advertisers, or build behavioral profiles for third parties. | States it does not monetize user data or share it for monetary gain; acknowledges third-party cookies may meet broader state-law definitions of "sale"/"share" (controls + GPC honored).↗ |
| Bank credentials & tokens | Bank credentials never touch our servers (entered with regulated aggregators); sensitive tokens encrypted with AES-256-GCM before storage. | AES-256 encryption; credentials handled via Yodlee FastLink (users agree to Yodlee’s terms); MFA.↗ |
| Encryption inside the database | Sensitive financial fields are sealed under encryption keys unique to each account before they reach the database; keys live in a separate key service. Amounts are aggregated in memory after decryption, so financial values never need to sit readable in the database. | Documents "AES-256 multifactor key management, including user specific keys and salts" — the strongest published encryption claim among the apps compared here.↗ |
| Database-level isolation | PostgreSQL row-level security enforces per-account isolation inside the database engine itself. | Not publicly documented (as of 2026-08).↗ |
| Deletion & export | Self-serve: 30-day recovery window, then permanent deletion and destruction of the account’s encryption keys. Full data export on every tier. | Dashboard deletion via support ticket (no documented self-serve); CSV export of transactions on web and iOS.↗ |
| Sign-in security | Passkeys, authenticator-app (TOTP) MFA, biometric unlock, session management. | Multi-factor authentication. Passkeys: not publicly documented (as of 2026-08).↗ |
| Security testing & audits | Built by a founder with a professional penetration-testing background; an independent, human-led penetration test is scheduled ahead of full launch. Not yet SOC 2 certified — we say so plainly. | Clean annual SOC 2 Type II ("no exceptions"), external penetration testing, NIST-aligned policies — the strongest published assurance in this comparison.↗ |
| Features | ||
| Bank sync | US & Canada via regulated aggregators (daily + updates when your bank reports changes); UK/EU via bring-your-own open-banking connections; CSV & JSON import. | Yodlee FastLink; US institutions only; manual accounts for everything else.↗ |
| Budget methods | All 8 methods: 50/30/20, Pay Yourself First, Zero-Based, Envelope, Kakeibo, FIRE, Values-Based, Custom. | A monthly cash-flow/budget view with automatic categorization — no named budget methods; budgeting is secondary to the investment focus.↗ |
| Investment tracking | Brokerage connections with holdings, activity & cost basis (Pro+); per-lot detail and tax-lot CSV export (Premium). | Deepest free investment analysis in the category: Monte Carlo Retirement Planner, Fee Analyzer, Investment Checkup, portfolio allocation. No per-lot/tax-lot export documented.↗ |
| Multi-currency | 1 / 3 / 10 / unlimited currencies by tier, with exchange-rate conversion. | US institutions and USD only; international accounts must be entered manually, no conversion.↗ |
| Partner / household | 1 partner (Pro) or up to 5 users (Premium). You choose exactly which accounts to share; partners work in a shared budget while each also keeps a private budget; connection slots can be lent. | One joint owner with full all-or-nothing access; no support for more than two people.↗ |
| Platforms | Web (installable PWA), iOS, Android. Android direct download available today; app-store listings Coming Soon. | Web, iOS (+ Apple Watch), Android.↗ |
| Open source / self-host | Proprietary, not self-hostable. The exit stays open: full data export on every tier. | Proprietary, no self-host.↗ |
Security, side by side
We compare only what Empower Personal Dashboard publicly documents. "Not publicly documented" means exactly that — it is not an accusation, and plenty of solid engineering never makes it to a marketing page. Here's what each side is willing to put in writing.
What Forbidden Finance puts in writing
- Data selling & ads: We never sell user data, share it with advertisers, or build behavioral profiles for third parties.
- Bank credentials & tokens: Bank credentials never touch our servers (entered with regulated aggregators); sensitive tokens encrypted with AES-256-GCM before storage.
- Encryption inside the database: Sensitive financial fields are sealed under encryption keys unique to each account before they reach the database; keys live in a separate key service. Amounts are aggregated in memory after decryption, so financial values never need to sit readable in the database.
- Database-level isolation: PostgreSQL row-level security enforces per-account isolation inside the database engine itself.
- Deletion & export: Self-serve: 30-day recovery window, then permanent deletion and destruction of the account’s encryption keys. Full data export on every tier.
- Sign-in security: Passkeys, authenticator-app (TOTP) MFA, biometric unlock, session management.
- Security testing & audits: Built by a founder with a professional penetration-testing background; an independent, human-led penetration test is scheduled ahead of full launch. Not yet SOC 2 certified — we say so plainly.
The full story, including what we're NOT certified for, is on the Security & Privacy page.
What Empower Personal Dashboard documents
- Data selling & ads: States it does not monetize user data or share it for monetary gain; acknowledges third-party cookies may meet broader state-law definitions of "sale"/"share" (controls + GPC honored).↗
- Bank credentials & tokens: Empower’s own Terms of Use name Yodlee as the aggregator — several third-party reviews incorrectly say Plaid.↗
- Encryption inside the database: Credit where due: Empower is the one competitor here that publicly claims user-specific encryption keys.↗
- Database-level isolation: Empower does publish an unqualified annual SOC 2 Type II ("no exceptions"), pen testing, and NIST-aligned policies.↗
- Deletion & export: No published retention or recovery window. No documented CSV/JSON import path INTO the dashboard.↗
- Sign-in security: Multi-factor authentication. Passkeys: not publicly documented (as of 2026-08).↗
- Security testing & audits: Clean annual SOC 2 Type II ("no exceptions"), external penetration testing, NIST-aligned policies — the strongest published assurance in this comparison.↗
Where Empower Personal Dashboard is a better fit
An honest comparison cuts both ways. If these match what you need,Empower Personal Dashboard is a fine choice — we'd rather you pick the right tool than churn out of the wrong one.
- You want everything free with no caps: unlimited linked accounts, unlimited history, every tool at $0 — our free tier is deliberately limited by comparison.
- You want serious free retirement analysis: the Monte Carlo Retirement Planner, Fee Analyzer, and Investment Checkup run on your real aggregated accounts (our dedicated FIRE tools are Coming Soon).
- You want the strongest published security assurance in this category: AES-256 with user-specific keys, a clean annual SOC 2 Type II, external pen testing, and NIST-aligned policies.
- You have $100k+ invested and want an actual human advisor attached to the same tool.
- You want to know what your retirement funds cost you: the Fee Analyzer totals expense ratios against your real holdings.
Trade-offs to know about Empower Personal Dashboard
- Budgeting is a monthly cash-flow view — no named methods, no envelopes
- Signing up consents to promotional calls/SMS for Empower and affiliate products
- US institutions and USD only; no import path for your own CSV data
- Two-person cap with all-or-nothing access; deletion is by support ticket
Why pick Forbidden Finance over Empower Personal Dashboard
Shipped today
- Budgeting is the actual product: all 8 methods versus a cash-flow view bolted onto a portfolio tool.
- No advisory funnel: nobody calls you, because subscriptions — not $100k accounts — pay for the product.
- Granular sharing: pick which accounts each person sees, with private budgets — Empower is two people, all-or-nothing.
- Multi-currency with conversion and CSV/JSON import; Empower is USD-only with no import path.
- Self-serve deletion with a 30-day window and key destruction, versus deletion by support ticket with no published window.
- 30-day money-back guarantee on web purchases instead of a trial that auto-converts.
On the way
- Flexible budget periods — pick your own start date and frequency, or alternate phases: run a 6-month budget, or three high-income months followed by three lean ones, the way contractor income actually works Coming Soon
- AI-powered insights (privacy-gated, on open models) Coming Soon
- API access Coming Soon
- MCP connector for AI assistants Coming Soon
- Dedicated FIRE planning tools Coming Soon
- Debt payoff tools Coming Soon
Unshipped features stay labeled until they're real — that's the same honesty rule the rest of this page runs on.
Switching from Empower Personal Dashboard?
Export your data from Empower Personal Dashboard, then bring it in with Forbidden Finance's CSV & JSON import — available on every tier, including Free, so you can test-drive with your real data before paying anything. The help docs walk through imports step by step.
Common questions
Different business models. Empower’s dashboard is free because it feeds its wealth-management business — its Terms of Use include consent to promotional calls and texts, and it pays publishers up to $250 per referred lead. Forbidden Finance charges subscriptions so it never needs to market advisory services at you or share data with marketing partners.
Investments, clearly — its free Monte Carlo retirement planner, Fee Analyzer, and portfolio checkup are the deepest free analysis tools in the category. Its budgeting is a monthly cash-flow view with no named methods. Forbidden Finance is the inverse: eight budget methods plus investment tracking with cost basis from Pro.
Empower publishes the strongest security documentation of the major free/consumer dashboards: AES-256 with user-specific keys and salts, a clean SOC 2 Type II, and pen testing. Forbidden Finance also encrypts per account inside the database (with key destruction on deletion) but is not SOC 2 certified — we say so plainly on our security page.
No — US institutions and USD only; anything else is manual entry with no conversion. Forbidden Finance supports US/CA sync, a UK/EU bring-your-own rail, and multi-currency conversion.
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