Pricing is rarely the most exciting part of an investment product. But the shape of the fee — flat subscription versus percentage-of-assets — quietly determines who wins as your account grows: you, or the firm.
This piece is the math. Slide the sliders, watch the lines.
The two fee shapes
Almost every wealth product on the market today charges one of two ways:
- AUM (Assets Under Management) fee — a fixed percentage of your account, every year. Wealthfront PassivePlus is 0.25%. Schwab Personalized Indexing is 0.40%. A traditional advisor is 1.0–1.85%. The fee is small as a percentage but compounds with the account.
- Subscription — a fixed dollar amount, every month. HarvestEngine Guided is $49/month. The fee doesn't change when your account grows.
The crossover happens at a single number — the account size where the AUM fee equals the subscription fee. Below it, AUM is cheaper. Above it, subscription wins, and the gap widens forever.
Try it yourself
Sliders below let you set the AUM rate, the subscription monthly, and the year horizon. The first chart shows the per-year fee at every account size from $50K to $5M. The second is the cumulative fee paid over 30 years.
The numbers that don't move
Three crossover points are worth committing to memory. They're where flat-fee subscription beats common AUM rates from the first year:
| AUM rate | Annual cost | Crossover at $49/month | Crossover at $99/month | Crossover at $199/month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.25% (Wealthfront) | $2,500 on $1M | $235K | $475K | $955K |
| 0.40% (Schwab) | $4,000 on $1M | $147K | $297K | $597K |
| 1.00% (low-cost RIA) | $10,000 on $1M | $58.8K | $118.8K | $238.8K |
| 1.85% (typical full-service advisor) | $18,500 on $1M | $31.8K | $64.2K | $129.1K |
Read the rightmost column slowly. At $199/month, an Alpha-tier HarvestEngine subscription beats a 1.85% advisor at any account above roughly $130K. Most direct-indexing customers have ten times that.
Why does anyone pay AUM, then?
Two reasons, and they're worth taking seriously:
- Custody simplicity. When the same firm holds your money and manages it, there's no broker connection to wire up. Wealthfront, Betterment, and Schwab Personalized are one-stop. HarvestEngine is software you bolt onto an existing E*TRADE / Schwab / Fidelity account — that's an extra setup step.
- Behavioral. A 0.25% fee on a $250K account feels invisible — it's $625, deducted quarterly. A $99 charge on a credit card is more visceral. Some people prefer the percentage precisely because they don't see it.
The first is a real product gap and it's why we ship a "connect-your-broker" wizard with OAuth-only auth. The second is just psychology. Money you don't notice is still money.
The compounding part nobody mentions
Here's the part that's easy to miss when you're staring at "0.25%."
That 0.25% isn't a one-time fee. It compounds against your account every year — including the years when your portfolio grew. So the same $1M account that paid $2,500 in fees year one pays $2,750 in year two (at 7% growth, the account is now $1.07M, less the fee), then $3,025, then $3,328. The percentage is constant; the dollars grow. That's the same compounding that's supposed to be working for you, working for the firm instead.
What you'd want from us
If we ever raise prices, the fair thing is to tier by features, not by your account size. So we did:
- Free — paper portfolio simulator, no real money.
- Guided ($49/month) — one taxable brokerage, daily harvest scans, manual approval per trade.
- Autopilot ($99/month) — multiple accounts, one-tap auto-execute, custom rules.
- Alpha ($199/month) — short overlay, household wash-sale tracking, priority support.
None of those numbers move when your account grows. Reinvest the difference between what you'd have paid an advisor and what you pay us. That's roughly $1,900 per year on $1M, or $11,500 per year on $5M. Compound it for ten years.
You'll be surprised what a flat fee does to your wealth curve.