HarvestEngine is the tax-aware automation layer for self-directed investors who want to understand the engine — not just trust the wrapper. Your assets stay at your broker. The fee doesn't scale with your wealth. Every trade can be explained.
No broker connection required to start. No card. Build the sleeve in the sandbox, watch the engine find harvest opportunities, then decide whether to connect a real account.
A research-grounded estimate based on a diversified direct-indexed sleeve harvesting roughly 1.1% of portfolio value per year — Wealthfront, Frec, and Parametric publish similar figures. Your actual results depend on volatility, holding length, and how aggressive your sleeve is.
Most direct-indexing services charge an assets-under-management fee — usually shortened to AUM: a yearly charge calculated as a percentage of your whole portfolio. As your account grows, the fee grows with it, even when the software is doing exactly the same work. HarvestEngine charges flat software pricing.
| Account size | Wealthfront (0.25% AUM) | Schwab Personalized Indexing (0.40%) | Gotham Triple Advantage* (2.625% all-in) | HarvestEngine Guided ($490/yr annual) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $100,000 | $250 / yr | $400 / yr | $2,625 / yr | $490 / yr |
| $250,000 | $625 / yr | $1,000 / yr | $6,563 / yr | $490 / yr |
| $500,000 | $1,250 / yr | $2,000 / yr | $13,125 / yr | $490 / yr |
| $1,000,000 | $2,500 / yr | $4,000 / yr | $26,250 / yr | $490 / yr |
| $3,000,000 | $7,500 / yr | $12,000 / yr | $78,750 / yr | $490 / yr |
*Gotham Triple Advantage S&P 500 Strategy via Morgan Stanley placement class: 1.85% management + 0.625% financing + 0.15% operating = 2.625% recurring annual drag, plus a one-time 1–3% upfront placement fee paid in addition to the capital you invest (a $1M account starts with $10K–$30K of placement fee on top of the year-one ongoing costs). At $3M, year one is ~$108,750 all-in. See the full breakdown and the founder note about the 1.85% quote that started this project.
Guided shown at the annual rate ($49/mo × 10 — two months free). Monthly billing is $49/mo × 12 = $588/yr. Autopilot is $99/mo ($990/yr) and Alpha is $199/mo ($1,990/yr) — see the full tier breakdown. The crossover happens surprisingly early for serious taxable accounts. That's why fee shape matters.
The core problem with many direct-indexing products isn't that they're wrong — it's that they're opaque. You get a polished experience, but you can't see why a harvest fired, why a replacement was chosen, or whether the engine is doing something thoughtful or just convenient. HarvestEngine is built for customers who want better software and clearer logic, not another black box attached to their capital.
Every harvest proposal can be explained in plain English: why the loss matters, why the replacement is acceptable, and what exposure tradeoff the engine is making.
Software pricing instead of a percentage of your portfolio every year. If your account grows, the fee doesn't quietly grow with it.
Your assets stay where they are. HarvestEngine sits on top of the brokerage you already use instead of forcing a custody move.
Connect E*TRADE today, with Schwab + Fidelity + IBKR coming. Your money stays at your broker. HarvestEngine reads positions, tax lots, and account state to propose smarter actions.
Choose a benchmark — S&P 500, Russell 1000, or NASDAQ 100. The engine designs a 60–80-stock direct-index sleeve that tracks your benchmark while creating many more harvest opportunities than a single ETF can offer.
The engine scans continuously for losses worth realizing, scores replacements, checks wash-sale and risk constraints, then shows a reviewable proposal before anything meaningful happens.
HarvestEngine doesn't just swap losers for random substitutes. The production engine ranks the long universe with a four-leg composite factor model, uses volatility-aware harvest thresholds instead of one naive trigger for every symbol, and scores replacements by business similarity, beta proximity, volatility, and correlation behavior. For advanced users it includes a gated short-overlay path grounded in published finance research — not guesswork.
| What matters | Typical lightweight tool | HarvestEngine |
|---|---|---|
| Harvest trigger | One static threshold (-5% of cost) | Volatility-aware: −2σ EWMA scaled per symbol |
| Replacement logic | Sector substitution | Multi-factor similarity + quality filter + AI re-rank with deterministic cache |
| Tax-rule enforcement | Wash-sale window only | Wash + earnings blackout + restrictions + §1259/§1091/§1092 gates for shorts |
| Explainability | Minimal | Reviewable per-trade rationale + structured audit trail per decision |
Read the full breakdown in The algorithm behind HarvestEngine, and why customers should care.
Tiers are organized by trust and complexity, not account size. Start free in the sandbox. Upgrade only when the added automation is actually worth it.
Try the engine in the sandbox. No broker connection, no money at risk.
The core live tier. Direct-indexing TLH on your existing brokerage. You approve trades.
Rule-bound auto-execution. The system runs your policy; you set the rails.
Sharper tools for the complexity-heavy edges. Margin overlay, concentrated stock, RSU planning.
No. HarvestEngine is software. You connect your own brokerage, you set the rules, you approve every meaningful action. We don't take custody of your money or make discretionary trades on your behalf.
Tax-loss harvesting realizes losses that offset capital gains and, for most filers, up to $3,000 of ordinary income annually with the rest carried forward. Holding 60–80 individual stocks instead of one ETF creates many more harvest opportunities while staying close to the benchmark's overall shape. TLH 101 walks through the math.
E*TRADE today. Schwab, Fidelity, and Interactive Brokers are on the roadmap. The goal is to sit on top of the brokerage stack serious self-directed investors already use — not force a custody move just to access better tooling.
Those products are managed stacks with percentage-of-assets pricing. HarvestEngine is software on top of the brokerage you already use, with flat pricing and full visibility into the actual portfolio logic. The algorithm article shows the engineering side; the fee math shows the economic side.
Yes. The free Sandbox tier is exactly that. Inspect how the engine builds the sleeve, where losses would have been harvested, and how the tax-aware workflow behaves before you connect anything real.
Broker OAuth tokens are encrypted at rest using Google Cloud KMS envelope encryption — the encryption key never leaves Google's hardware security modules. We don't see your broker password (OAuth) and we don't sell or share data with anyone. Full breakdown on the privacy page.
Build the sleeve, watch the engine find harvest opportunities, inspect the replacement logic, see the tax math. Then decide whether HarvestEngine has earned the right to touch a real account.
Try the sandbox