Personal Capital vs Mint 2026: Which Personal Finance App Actually Wins?

If you've never stress-refreshed your bank account at 11pm wondering where the last $400 vanished, honestly, are you even adulting? Because most of us have been there — and someone always swoops in with the genius advice to "just get a budgeting app." Cool, thanks. Except now you're 45 minutes deep into a Reddit thread arguing whether Personal Capital or Mint is better, and you're somehow more confused than when you started.

I've been there. I've used both tools, linked up my accounts, poked around every dashboard, and yes, I've also rage-quit one of them mid-setup (it was Mint, and it was during a particularly cursed bank syncing session I'd rather not relive). This Personal Capital vs Mint 2026 comparison is for anyone who's tired of vague takes and wants to know what these apps actually feel like to use day-to-day.

Here's the deal though — there's a major plot twist in this comparison. Mint was shut down by Intuit in early 2024 and officially retired. So if you're searching for "Personal Capital vs Mint 2026," you deserve the real picture: what Mint's legacy looks like, where its users landed, and whether Personal Capital (now rebranded as Empower Personal Dashboard) is the right next step for you.

Let's dig in.

Quick Comparison Table: Personal Capital vs Mint 2026

Personal Capital (Now Empower) — A Deep Dive

Personal Capital

Let me be upfront: Personal Capital rebranded to Empower Personal Dashboard after being acquired by Empower Retirement. The free financial tracking tools are still very much alive and genuinely impressive. The name changed; the product actually got better — which, honestly, is not something you can say about most rebrand situations.

What Personal Capital / Empower Actually Does

The free dashboard is where the magic happens for most people. You link your bank accounts, investment accounts, credit cards, mortgages — and suddenly you've got a full financial picture in one place. What sets it apart from most budgeting apps is the investment focus. This isn't just "did you spend too much on DoorDash this month?" It's asking deeper questions about your portfolio allocation, retirement trajectory, and net worth over time.

Key features include:

• Net Worth Dashboard — updates in real time as markets move. Honestly, it's addictive in a way that's either motivating or anxiety-inducing depending on what the S&P is doing that day.
• Retirement Planner — runs Monte Carlo simulations to model whether you'll actually have enough money to retire. I've spent embarrassing amounts of time in this tool. Like, embarrassing.
• Investment Checkup — flags if your asset allocation is off-target for your age and goals.
• Fee Analyzer — this one genuinely surprised me. It surfaces hidden fees inside your mutual funds and 401(k)s. Mine were quietly costing me around $900 per year I had no idea about. That's a flight to somewhere nice, just evaporating.
• Cash Flow Tracking — basic income vs. expense view. It works, but it's clearly not the centerpiece.
• Savings Planner — newer feature that helps you set savings targets.

Personal Capital Pricing

The free dashboard costs $0. Full stop. You can use every tracking and planning tool without paying a cent.

The paid tier is their wealth management service, where human advisors manage your investments. Fees run from 0.49% to 0.89% of assets under management per year — the more you invest, the lower the percentage. You need a minimum of $100,000 to access advisors, so this is clearly aimed at higher-net-worth individuals. If you're not in that bracket yet, the free tools are genuinely all you need and then some.

Who's Personal Capital Actually Best For?

Look, people who already have money invested — or who are actively building toward that — will get the most out of this. It's less about tracking your grocery budget down to the last $12 rotisserie chicken and more about understanding your financial life at a macro level. If you're still mostly focused on not overdrafting, this might feel like overkill. But if you've got a 401(k) and a brokerage account and you've never really seen them side by side? Personal Capital is kind of a revelation.

Mint — What You Need to Know in 2026

Mint

Honest truth: Mint no longer exists. Intuit shut it down on January 1, 2024, and redirected users toward Credit Karma (another Intuit product). It was genuinely sad news for a lot of people — Mint had been the gold standard of free budgeting apps for over 15 years, which in tech years is basically ancient history. The fact that it lasted that long at that quality level is actually kind of impressive when you think about it.

What Mint Was (And Why People Loved It)

Mint was brilliant at one specific thing: making budgeting feel approachable. You'd link your accounts, and it would automatically categorize your transactions, set up budget envelopes, send spending alerts, and show your credit score — all for free. It was opinionated in the right way. It told you what you were overspending on, even when you absolutely did not want to hear it. That tough-love quality was, honestly, Mint's superpower and I think it's underrated compared to all the sleeker apps that replaced it.

Key features Mint had:

• Automatic transaction categorization (surprisingly accurate most of the time)
• Budget creation with monthly limits by category
• Bill tracking and payment reminders
• Free credit score monitoring
• Goals (pay off debt, save for vacation, etc.)
• Net worth snapshot

Where Did Mint Users Go?

Intuit pushed everyone toward Credit Karma, but most people quickly figured out it's not a like-for-like replacement — Credit Karma is really about credit scores and loan offers, not comprehensive budgeting. So the Mint diaspora scattered, and based on what I've seen across personal finance communities, here's where most people landed:

• YNAB (You Need A Budget) — Try YNAB — the most popular landing spot for serious budgeters ($14.99/month)
• Copilot — beautiful iOS app, $13/month
• Monarch Money — very Mint-like in feel and features, $14.99/month
• Empower (Personal Capital) — great if you care about investments

If you came here specifically hunting for a Mint replacement, Personal Capital is a strong contender — but YNAB or Monarch Money will probably scratch that budgeting itch more completely.

Personal Capital vs Mint: Feature-by-Feature

User Interface & Ease of Use

Personal Capital's dashboard is clean and data-dense. It's designed for people who like looking at graphs and don't mind a bit of a learning curve. The first time I set it up, I probably spent two hours just exploring different views and tools. (I mean that as a compliment, not a complaint — it's genuinely interesting if you're a personal finance nerd.)

Mint was warmer and more guided. It held your hand a bit more, which was exactly what casual budgeters needed. You could hand Mint to someone's parents and they'd probably figure it out in 20 minutes. Personal Capital requires a bit more financial literacy to fully appreciate.

Winner: Mint was more approachable. Personal Capital wins on depth.

Core Features

Mint had the edge for budgeting — category-based budgets, spending alerts, and bill reminders were baked in and worked well. Personal Capital's budgeting is functional but clearly not its priority. It feels like a feature someone added because users kept asking for it, not because the team was passionate about it.

For investment tracking, retirement planning, and net worth analysis? Personal Capital isn't even close. It's in a completely different league.

Winner: Depends entirely on your goal. Budgeting → Mint. Investing and wealth building → Personal Capital, no contest.

Integrations

Both tools connected to thousands of financial institutions. Personal Capital (Empower) currently supports 14,000+ institutions through Plaid and their own aggregation. Mint had supported over 17,000 at its peak — so a slight edge there, though in practice both covered the vast majority of accounts people actually use.

Personal Capital handles investment accounts (Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, 401(k) providers) particularly well — better than Mint ever did.

Winner: Roughly tied. Personal Capital edges ahead for investment account connectivity specifically.

Pricing & Value

Here's where things get interesting. Both tools offered their core features for free. Personal Capital still does. Mint's free tier was ad-supported and came with occasional upsells that could get a little annoying after a while.

In 2026, Personal Capital's free dashboard is genuinely one of the best deals in personal finance. You get institutional-grade portfolio analysis tools without paying a single dollar unless you want managed investing. Fun fact: most standalone portfolio analysis tools with this level of sophistication charge upward of $30/month.

Winner: Personal Capital. Still free, still excellent.

Customer Support

Honest take? Neither tool was remarkable here, and I think that's an underappreciated weakness of the free-app model in general. Mint's support was notoriously slow — email tickets that took days, a community forum that was hit-or-miss on a good day. Personal Capital was slightly better, especially if you were anywhere near the wealth management tier, where they'd actually assign you a financial advisor who would call you like a real human person.

Winner: Personal Capital, but only slightly.

Mobile App Experience

Personal Capital's mobile app (now the Empower app) is genuinely excellent. It's fast, the net worth and portfolio views translate well to a small screen, and — look, I check it more than I probably should. Ratings sit around 4.7/5 on both iOS and Android, which for a finance app is pretty remarkable.

Mint's app was well-loved too, consistently rated around 4.5/5 before shutdown. Its budget tracking on mobile was arguably better than Personal Capital's mobile budgeting experience, which still feels a bit like an afterthought.

Winner: Personal Capital for investment features. Mint was better for budgeting on mobile.

Security & Compliance

Both tools use 256-bit encryption, multi-factor authentication, and read-only access to your financial accounts — meaning they can see your transactions but they cannot move your money. Personal Capital is now backed by Empower Retirement, one of the largest retirement services companies in the US (managing over $1 trillion in assets), which brings serious institutional-level security infrastructure.

Mint was owned by Intuit, a publicly traded company with substantial security resources. Neither tool has had a major publicized breach.

Winner: Tie. Both were and are serious about security.

Pros and Cons

Personal Capital (Empower) — Pros & Cons

Mint — Pros & Cons (Historical Reference)

Who Should Choose Personal Capital (Empower)?

Go with Personal Capital if you:

• Have investment accounts you want to track in one place — 401(k), IRA, taxable brokerage, all of it
• Are planning for retirement and want to model different scenarios. The Retirement Planner genuinely changes how you think about your savings rate.
• Want to understand your net worth holistically, including real estate and how market swings affect your overall picture
• Suspect you're paying hidden fees in your mutual funds — the Fee Analyzer alone makes signing up worth it
• Have $100k+ in investable assets and want access to a human financial advisor
• Don't need granular category budgeting, or you're comfortable using a spreadsheet for day-to-day tracking alongside it

Honestly? If you're in your 30s or 40s, have started investing, and want to get serious about your financial future, Personal Capital is one of the best free tools available. Period. I'd go as far as saying it's the most underrated free product in the entire personal finance space right now.

Who Should Choose Mint? (And What to Use Instead)

If you were a Mint user, you're not going back — it's gone. But the type of person who loved Mint should seriously look at:

• YNAB Try YNAB — for serious, envelope-style budgeting with actual methodology and a surprisingly supportive community behind it ($14.99/month, worth every cent for people who genuinely struggle with spending habits)
• Monarch Money — the closest spiritual successor to Mint in terms of UX and feature set ($14.99/month)
• Copilot — gorgeous design, excellent for iOS users ($13/month)
• Credit Karma — if credit score monitoring is your main concern (free)

If you were a casual Mint user who just wanted a spending overview, Personal Capital's free dashboard can actually cover that — and then surprise you with investment insights you didn't know you needed.

Verdict: Personal Capital vs Mint 2026

Look, there's no traditional head-to-head here — Mint is gone. But the spirit of the comparison still matters because people are actively choosing between investment-focused tools like Personal Capital and budgeting-focused tools like what Mint used to be.

If your financial life centers on budgeting, debt payoff, and spending awareness → Don't use Personal Capital as your primary tool. Go to YNAB Try YNAB or Monarch Money. They'll serve you so much better.

If your financial life centers on investing, retirement planning, and building wealth → Personal Capital (Empower) is genuinely one of the best free tools you'll find anywhere. Use it. Full stop.

If you're somewhere in the middle? Honestly, use both. Personal Capital for your investment dashboard, and a lightweight budgeting app like Copilot or even a simple spreadsheet for day-to-day spending. There's no rule that says you have to pick just one — and in my experience, pairing them is actually the move most people sleep on.

Here's my hot take: Personal Capital wins this comparison both by default and on pure merit. The free tools are legitimately impressive, and they've kept improving post-rebrand. The only things I genuinely miss from Mint are the credit score widget and those gentle "hey, you're $47 over budget on restaurants" nudges. Those were charming in a way that the newer, prettier apps haven't quite replicated. But charm doesn't pay retirement bills — and that's kind of the whole point.

→ Try Personal Capital free here: Personal Capital

FAQ: Personal Capital vs Mint 2026

Q: Is Mint still available in 2026? Nope. Mint officially shut down on January 1, 2024. Intuit redirected users to Credit Karma, the app and website are gone, and it's not coming back.

Q: Is Personal Capital the same as Empower? Yes — Personal Capital was acquired by Empower Retirement and rebranded as Empower Personal Dashboard. The free financial tracking tools are all still there, and the core product has actually improved since the acquisition, which honestly surprised me given how these things usually go.

Q: Is Personal Capital really free? The financial dashboard — including net worth tracking, investment analysis, fee analyzer, retirement planner, and cash flow tracking — is completely free. The only paid tier is their optional wealth management service, which requires a $100,000 minimum investment and charges between 0.49% and 0.89% AUM annually. If you're not at that level yet, you don't need to think about it.

Q: What's the best Mint alternative in 2026? Depends on what you actually need. For serious budgeting: YNAB Try YNAB at $14.99/month — it has a learning curve but it's worth it. For a Mint-like experience with less friction: Monarch Money at $14.99/month. For investment tracking: Personal Capital/Empower, which is free. For credit monitoring: Credit Karma, also free.

Q: Does Personal Capital offer credit score monitoring? No, and this is a real gap. If you want free credit score tracking, Credit Karma or Experian's free tier are your best bets. The good news is you can easily run both alongside Personal Capital without any overlap issues.

Q: Is Personal Capital safe to link my bank accounts to? Yes. Personal Capital uses 256-bit encryption, multi-factor authentication, and read-only bank connectivity — it can view your transactions but it cannot move your money under any circumstances. It's backed by Empower Retirement's security infrastructure, which manages over $1 trillion in assets. That's about as institutional as it gets for a consumer-facing app.