7 best retirement planning apps for iPhone (2026)

The best retirement planning app for iPhone depends on what you actually do on a phone. For quick scenario checks and tax-aware what-if analysis, the native iOS option in Tier 3 models marginal brackets, capital gains stacking, and Social Security taxation on-device. For automated net worth tracking, Empower (formerly Personal Capital) aggregates accounts via Plaid for free. For multi-account planning with estate and healthcare modeling, Boldin's web app via Safari beats every native option, but it's a desktop tool wearing a mobile coat.

The category splits into three tiers, and each tier wins a different job. We organized this comparison around what you do with your phone, not which app has the prettiest UI. The honest answer for serious planners: you'll use 2-3 tools across tiers, because no single iPhone app covers quick analysis, automated tracking, and full financial planning at the same depth.

The Three-Tier Framework

Most "best retirement app" lists rank tools by feature count and App Store rating. That misses the actual decision. The phone is bad at long input sessions and good at quick lookups. A retirement planning workflow has different jobs (a few are phone-shaped, most aren't), and the right tool depends on which job you're doing right now.

The three tiers map to three jobs:

1. Tier 1, Brokerage calculators (free, account-tied). You use these to project your existing balances against a default retirement date. They show your real accounts because they own your accounts. Tax handling is uniformly weak (flat effective rates), but the baseline number is grounded in your actual portfolio.
2. Tier 2, Full web planners (paid, mobile-accessible). These handle multi-account modeling, Roth conversion analysis, healthcare costs, and estate planning. Their mobile experience is the same web app shrunk to a phone screen — usable but not designed for it.
3. Tier 3, Native iOS apps (free or freemium, mobile-first). These are built for the phone form factor: focused tools you open for two minutes to answer one question. Coverage is narrower than Tier 2; the experience is faster.

A serious planner uses one tool from each tier. The brokerage app for the balance baseline. The web planner for the annual deep dive. The native iOS app for the daily what-if question that comes up at lunch.

Tier 1: Brokerage App Calculators

Brokerage app calculators are the right starting point for anyone with $50K+ at a single firm because they pull your real balances automatically and require zero setup. Fidelity's Planning & Guidance tool, Schwab's Retirement Income Planner, and Vanguard's Retirement Income Calculator all run inside their respective iPhone apps with no extra subscription. The output is a single Monte Carlo success probability against a default retirement age, indexed to your actual portfolio.

The limitation is uniform across all three: they use flat effective tax rates and model Social Security as a fixed benefit stream rather than running it through the provisional income formula in IRS Publication 915. For a 62-year-old planning a straightforward retirement at 67 with one IRA and one taxable account, this is fine. For anyone doing Roth conversions, capital gains harvesting, or any bracket-sensitive strategy, the answer can be wrong by 10-20% on either side.

Fidelity Planning & Guidance Center — Free for Fidelity customers. Includes basic parametric Monte Carlo simulation. Pulls in real Fidelity account balances. Models Social Security claiming ages but doesn't compute SS taxation against other income.

Schwab Retirement Income Planner — Free for Schwab customers. Goal-based modeling with detailed cash flow projection by year. Adequate for traditional retirement planning, weak on tax optimization. Their broader Schwab Intelligent Portfolios platform layers automated investing on top but charges separately.

Vanguard Retirement Nest Egg Calculator — Free, runs on the web and within the Vanguard iPhone app. Simple Monte Carlo against your portfolio with a single withdrawal rate. Useful as a sanity check, not a planning tool. Vanguard's Digital Advisor (0.15% AUM) adds a more detailed planning module if you're a managed-portfolio customer.

The shared honest take: brokerage calculators are good for a baseline number, useless for bracket-sensitive decisions. See why most retirement calculators get taxes wrong for the underlying math on flat-rate vs marginal-bracket modeling.

Tier 2: Full Web Planners with Mobile Access

Full web planners are the right tool for the annual deep-dive planning session because they model variables the brokerage tools and native apps do not: healthcare costs, estate planning, Roth conversion optimization across multiple years, and detailed Social Security claiming scenarios. The catch: their mobile experience is a desktop UI compressed onto a phone screen, which works for reading reports but not for setting up a new plan.

Boldin (formerly NewRetirement) charges $120/year for the Planner tier and covers the most variables of the three. It applies the actual federal marginal brackets per Rev. Proc. 2024-40 to each layer of income, models the provisional income formula for Social Security taxation, and supports detailed Roth conversion analysis across multiple years. Their app is web-only: Safari on iPhone works but the screens were not designed for a phone.

Empower (formerly Personal Capital) is the standout in the "free with account aggregation" lane. Its retirement planner is bundled with its net worth tracker, which uses Plaid to pull in balances from banks, brokerages, 401(k) custodians, and real estate value estimates. Tax handling is a flat effective rate, so the output is a baseline number, not an optimized strategy. The native iPhone app is well-designed for the tracking side; the planning side is functional but limited.

Monarch Money is the best mobile experience in this tier at $14.99/month. The retirement projection module is newer and less detailed than Empower's or Boldin's, but the budgeting and account-tracking UX is significantly better, and it doesn't sell user data the way certain free aggregators have historically. For households that want a single app for budgeting + tracking + a baseline retirement number, Monarch is the cleanest pick.

ProjectionLab (~$80/year) deserves a mention even though it's web-only with no dedicated iPhone app. It's the most flexible scenario modeler in the category — custom income/expense events on a timeline, sensitivity analysis, Roth ladder modeling — but you need a laptop to use it properly. On a phone it's unusable. If you're a numerate planner who wants maximum control and don't need mobile access, it competes directly with Boldin.

Tier 3: Native iOS Apps Built for Mobile-First Planning

Native iOS apps win the "I need to answer one question in two minutes" job because they're designed around the phone form factor — single-screen tools, sensible defaults, and inputs that fit on a thumb-typed screen. Coverage is narrower than the web planners; the tradeoff is speed.

CoastIQ is the only native iOS app that handles tax-bracket math correctly. The app includes 17 specialized tools that each answer one question: a Coast FIRE calculator, Roth conversion analyzer, capital gains stacking tool, 72(t) SEPP calculator, Social Security claiming analyzer, RMD planner, Monte Carlo retirement projector, and more. Each tool applies the actual federal marginal brackets, the provisional income formula for Social Security taxation, and the 0%/15%/20% long-term capital gains brackets stacked on top of ordinary income. Everything runs on-device, with no account, no cloud sync, and no data collection. The honest limitations: no account aggregation (manual entry only), no estate planning module, no insurance modeling, no collaborative planning, and iOS only (no Android, no web).

Retire? by Timothy is a long-standing iOS retirement planner focused on detailed cash-flow projections with manual account entry. It has historically been a favorite in the Bogleheads community for its transparent assumptions and detailed year-by-year output. Like the tax-aware app above, it uses manual input only and keeps data on the device.

A handful of "retirement calculator" apps in the App Store are wrappers around a single SWR multiplier (savings × growth rate − withdrawals) and aren't worth listing individually. If an app's primary input is a single "expected return" field, it's not modeling enough variables to be useful for any decision more complex than "am I roughly on track."

The Comparison Matrix

The table below scores each app on the dimensions that determine whether it fits your job. "Tax modeling" distinguishes flat effective rate from marginal brackets (per Rev. Proc. 2024-40). "Account aggregation" means automatic syncing via Plaid or equivalent vs. manual entry. "Privacy" reflects whether the app collects financial data on its servers or keeps it on-device.

App	Tier	Price	Tax Modeling	Monte Carlo	Account Aggregation	Privacy	Platform
Fidelity Planning & Guidance	1	Free (Fidelity customer)	Flat effective rate	Parametric, basic	Fidelity accounts only	Server-side	iOS, web
Schwab Retirement Income Planner	1	Free (Schwab customer)	Flat effective rate	Parametric, basic	Schwab accounts only	Server-side	iOS, web
Vanguard Retirement Nest Egg	1	Free	Flat effective rate	Parametric, basic	Vanguard accounts only	Server-side	iOS, web
Empower (Personal Capital)	2	Free	Flat effective rate	Parametric, basic	Plaid (multi-firm)	Server-side	iOS, web
Monarch Money	2	$14.99/mo	Basic	Parametric, basic	Plaid (multi-firm)	Server-side	iOS, web
Boldin (NewRetirement)	2	$120/yr (Planner)	Marginal brackets, multi-source	Parametric, variable spending	Plaid (multi-firm)	Server-side	Web (iPhone Safari)
ProjectionLab	2	~$80/yr	Marginal brackets	Parametric, sensitivity	Manual entry	Server-side	Web only
CoastIQ	3	Free	Marginal brackets + capital gains stacking + SS taxation	Parametric, variable spending	Manual entry	On-device	iOS only
Retire? by Timothy	3	Paid (App Store)	Marginal brackets	Parametric	Manual entry	On-device	iOS only

No app wins every row. The pattern is real: free + aggregation = weak tax modeling. Strong tax modeling = paid (Boldin, ProjectionLab) or narrow scope (the free iOS app). Automatic aggregation = server-side data storage. Privacy = manual entry.

A Worked Example: Phone vs Desktop for the Same Question

Consider a 58-year-old, married filing jointly, with $1.4M Traditional IRA, $200K Roth IRA, $250K taxable brokerage (cost basis $130K), and a planned retirement next year. They want to model Roth conversions between ages 59 and 70 to draw down the Traditional balance before RMDs hit at 73. The same question gets answered at two different depths depending on the device.

On the phone (native iOS app, 3 minutes): Open the Roth Conversion tool. Enter current age 58, target retirement age 59, expected non-conversion income $0 in early retirement, filing status MFJ. The tool applies the 2025 standard deduction ($30,000 MFJ per Rev. Proc. 2024-40) and shows that converting up to $124,300 keeps all income in the 10% and 12% federal brackets. Converting $1 more pushes that dollar into the 22% bracket. The answer: convert approximately $124K/year for 11 years to drain ~$1.36M from Traditional at an 8.7% effective rate. Decision made in under 5 minutes on a phone. See the Roth conversion calculator for the underlying math.

On the desktop (Boldin, 45-60 minutes): Set up the full plan with both spouses' Social Security earnings records, real estate equity, HSA balances, projected healthcare costs through Medicare eligibility, and ACA premium subsidy modeling for the gap years. Run the full conversion analysis across multiple scenarios: convert $124K/year, convert $96K/year (stay under the IRMAA tier 1 threshold), convert $0 (let RMDs drive distributions). Compare lifetime taxes, terminal estate value, and Social Security taxation under each path. Decision integrated with the broader plan.

Both answers are correct for their job. The phone answer is "what's the right conversion amount this year." The desktop answer is "what's the right multi-year strategy across everything in our financial life." Trying to do the desktop job on the phone is painful. Trying to do the phone job on the desktop is overkill. Most planners need both.

How to Choose

Pick the app that matches the job you'll actually do, not the one with the most features. The job determines the device, and the device narrows the app.

If you want a free baseline and your accounts are at one brokerage: Use the brokerage's built-in tool (Fidelity, Schwab, or Vanguard). Two minutes to set up, zero subscriptions, your real balances. Accept the flat tax rate limitation.

If you want automated net worth tracking and a basic retirement projection: Empower's free tier. It's the strongest aggregator in the category, and the retirement planner is adequate for "am I on track." Don't rely on it for Roth conversion decisions.

If you want detailed multi-account planning with tax-bracket math: Boldin via desktop, then access reports on iPhone Safari. $120/year is justified if it surfaces one good Roth conversion or IRMAA bracket decision. ProjectionLab is the alternative if you prefer event-based scenario modeling.

If you want tax-aware quick scenario checks on your phone: The free native iOS app in Tier 3. Its 17-tool set covers most bracket-sensitive questions FIRE planners run into (Coast FIRE, Roth conversions, capital gains stacking, 72(t), Social Security taxation). Free, on-device, no account. Pair it with a Tier 2 tool for the full annual plan.

If you want the cleanest mobile UX for budgeting and basic retirement tracking: Monarch Money. $14.99/month is a real cost but the UX is the best in the category and the budgeting tools are genuinely useful.

For more detail on the underlying tools, see our broader comparison of the best retirement calculators and the deeper analysis of Monte Carlo methodology across the major platforms.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best retirement planning app for iPhone? For tax-aware scenario analysis, the native iOS app in Tier 3 is the only iPhone app that handles marginal brackets, capital gains stacking, and Social Security taxation correctly. For automated net worth tracking, Empower's free tier is the strongest aggregator. For multi-account planning with healthcare and estate modeling, Boldin's web app via Safari beats every native option but isn't optimized for the phone screen. Match the app to the job.

Is there a free retirement calculator app? The free iOS app in Tier 3 includes all 17 tools and requires no account. Empower's retirement planner is free alongside its tracker. Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard offer free planning tools inside their iPhone apps for their customers. FIRECalc and cFIREsim are free web tools that work in mobile Safari.

What is the best app for FIRE planning? No single app covers every FIRE planning need. The on-device iOS tool handles tax-aware analysis natively (Coast FIRE, Roth conversion ladders, 72(t) SEPP, ACA optimization). ProjectionLab and Boldin handle full scenario planning but require a laptop. Most FIRE planners use 2-3 tools across tiers.

Should I use a retirement app or a web calculator? Use a native app for 2-5 minute scenario checks. Use a web calculator for 30-60 minute planning sessions where input complexity matters. The phone is bad at entering 15 account balances; the laptop is overkill for "should I convert $120K this year?" Most serious planners use both.

What is the best net worth tracker app? Empower (free, Plaid aggregation) for the strongest free aggregator. Monarch Money ($14.99/month) for the best mobile UX. The Tier 3 iOS apps and Retire? by Timothy for privacy-conscious users who prefer manual entry over giving a third party credentials.