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.
New money harvests its biggest losses early. In published direct-indexing results, a fresh deposit booked roughly 8–12% of what was put in as harvestable losses in its first year — and this calculator uses the conservative low end. Those are other providers' figures, not ours, and a harvested loss is worth that percentage × your tax rate, not the percentage itself. Sources & the fine print ↓
How to read this. The harvest percentage is the size of losses booked — from other providers' published direct-indexing results, not a return, not a saving, and not a HarvestEngine result. Its value is that percentage × your marginal rate (the left figure); harvesting defers tax rather than erasing it; and the value assumes you realize gains of matching character — without them, losses offset about $3,000 of ordinary income a year, the rest carried forward. The rate shown is the top of the band you picked, so most people's is lower. Illustration only; not tax, legal, or investment advice. Full sources & assumptions ↓
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.
What that's worth, specifically. On the Guided annual plan ($490/yr), at a $1,000,000 account, HarvestEngine costs about one-fifth of a 0.25% AUM fee and about one-eighth of a 0.40% AUM fee, using each provider's published rate as of August 2026. At $3,000,000 it's about one-fifteenth and about one-twentieth. Below roughly $200,000 a 0.25% AUM fee costs less than $490/yr, and Wealthfront's cheaper S&P 500 Direct product stays cheaper much further up than that — see “Where AUM costs less” under the table.
| Account size | Wealthfront Automated Investing (0.25% AUM — US Direct Indexing is bundled into it; $100,000 minimum for that feature) |
Schwab Personalized Indexing (0.40% on the first $2M, 0.35% above; $100,000 minimum) |
HarvestEngine Guided ($490/yr annual) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $100,000 | $250 / yr | $400 / yr | $490 / yr — we cost more here |
| $250,000 | $625 / yr | $1,000 / yr | $490 / yr |
| $500,000 | $1,250 / yr | $2,000 / yr | $490 / yr |
| $1,000,000 | $2,500 / yr | $4,000 / yr | $490 / yr |
| $3,000,000 | $7,500 / yr | $11,500 / yr | $490 / yr |
Where AUM costs less. A flat fee is not always the cheaper option and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Against a 0.25% AUM fee, HarvestEngine Guided ($490/yr) is more expensive below about $196,000. Against 0.40%, below about $122,500. And Wealthfront's S&P 500 Direct — a narrower product than the Automated Investing account shown above — is 0.09% with a $5,000 minimum, which is cheaper than $490/yr all the way up to about $544,000. Frec's S&P 500 direct-indexing strategy is also 0.09%, with a $20,000 minimum. If your taxable account is smaller than those numbers, the fee argument is not the reason to choose us.
What each price buys — these are not the same product. HarvestEngine's $490/yr is software only. You keep your own brokerage account, you pay your broker's commissions and you bear the bid-ask spread on every harvest and replacement trade (direct indexing trades often), and no one manages your money or owes you a fiduciary duty. The AUM fees above buy a managed account: custody, discretionary management, trade execution, and an advisory relationship with a registered investment adviser. The two sides are also stated on different bases — our $490 is the total we charge, while Wealthfront and Schwab both disclose that the expense ratios of the funds held in your account are charged on top of their advisory fee. This table compares fees. It does not claim the products are equivalent, and we are not a registered investment adviser.
Illustrative comparison — not an offer or a promise of savings. The Wealthfront and Schwab figures are each provider's published direct-indexing rate as of August 2026, verified against the provider's own pricing pages on that date; rates change, so confirm current pricing with each provider. Minimums differ — both Wealthfront's US Direct Indexing and Schwab Personalized Indexing require $100,000 — so the smallest row is at the minimum, not below it. HarvestEngine figures use the Guided annual plan ($490/yr); your total cost depends on the tier and billing term you choose.
Private placement-class direct-indexing funds are a separate category and are deliberately not in this table. They are sold only to accredited investors under offering documents that are not published, so their fee terms cannot be verified against any public source — which is a reason to read those documents closely, not a number we can put in a column. Background: why big firms push TLH and the founder note about the 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 sits between roughly $120,000 and $545,000 depending on which competitor and which product you compare against. 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 for trading today. Schwab and Fidelity connect read-only, so they sit alongside it for reference while you place any trades there yourself. Your money stays at your broker. For E*TRADE, HarvestEngine reads positions, tax lots, and account state to propose smarter actions. Schwab and Fidelity supply positions with average cost rather than per-lot history.
Choose a benchmark — S&P 500, Russell 1000, or NASDAQ 100. The engine designs a 60–80-stock direct-index sleeve that seeks to track your benchmark (some tracking error is expected) 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, sets a harvest threshold scaled to each lot's cost basis with a dollar floor, screens replacement candidates for volatility-adjusted drops, 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 fixed percentage threshold | By default, a loss must clear 7% of the lot's cost basis and a $750 floor, so small positions do not churn; configured or Sandbox thresholds can differ |
| Replacement logic | Sector substitution | Multi-factor similarity + quality filter + AI re-rank with deterministic cache |
| Replacement screen | — | Volatility-adjusted: candidates whose recent drop exceeds about 2σ of their own EWMA volatility are screened out |
| 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. Keep in mind TLH generally defers tax rather than eliminating it — harvesting lowers your cost basis, so a larger gain can be realized when you eventually sell. 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 supports full harvesting and trading today. Schwab and Fidelity connect read-only: we sync them so you see your whole picture, but we never place orders there. 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. We never see your broker password, we do not sell your personal information, and we share it only as described in our Privacy Policy.
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