Updated August 7, 2026. Quick answer: the figure is real, and the same report puts the median at $44,115. Vanguard’s 2025 average across its own recordkept plans is $167,970; its median is less than a third of that. And neither is a national number — both describe roughly 5 million people whose employer happens to use Vanguard.
The claim: “The average 401(k) balance is about $167,970”
Verdict: MUTATED — Right figure, wrong meaning.
Evidence tier: primary. Verdict class chosen from the taxonomy fixed before the evidence.
Where the number comes from
Two figures circulate, from two recordkeepers. Both are accurately reported by their publishers. Vanguard, in How America Saves 2026:
“In 2025, the average account balance for Vanguard participants was $167,970, while the median balance was $44,115 (Figure 50)—increases of 13% and 16%, respectively, from 2024.”
Read from Vanguard — How America Saves 2026 on 7 August 2026.
And Fidelity, whose quarterly analysis reports an average 401(k) balance of $141,000:
“Fidelity Investments Q1 2026 401(k) data based on 26,800 corporate defined contribution plans and 25.6 million participants as of March 31, 2026. These figures include the advisor sold market but exclude the tax exempt market.”
Read from Fidelity — Q1 2026 retirement analysis on 7 August 2026.
Neither company is doing anything wrong. Each states its universe. The mutation happens downstream, when the number is repeated as though it described the country.
What that source actually measured
What the universe actually is. Vanguard states it in its own methodology:
“This universe consists of more than 1,300 qualified plans and nearly 5 million participants for which Vanguard directly provides recordkeeping services.”
So the figure describes people who (a) have a workplace retirement plan at all, and (b) work somewhere that hired Vanguard. Anyone with no plan is not in the denominator. Fidelity’s figure has the same shape on its own book of 25.6 million participants, and counts participants — so one person with plans at two Fidelity-recordkept employers appears twice.
The average and the median describe different people. Vanguard says why plainly, in the sentence immediately after the one usually quoted: the divergence is due to a small number of very large balances. An average of $167,970 against a median of $44,115 means most participants have far less than the headline.
The nationally representative figure is lower and includes people with nothing. The Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances reports that 54.3% of all US families hold any retirement account. Among families that do, the median holding is $87,000 and the mean $333,940.
Read from federalreserve.gov — 2022 SCF, Table 6 on 7 August 2026.
That leaves 45.7% of families with no retirement account of any kind — our subtraction from the Fed’s figure — a group that cannot appear in any recordkeeper’s average, because a recordkeeper only sees its own customers.
The honest current figure
The honest way to use these numbers. The recordkeeper averages are good for what they are: a picture of funded workplace accounts at one large provider. They are not a measure of national retirement readiness, and the gap between the average and the median is the most informative thing in either report.
Three different denominators, three different questions: per-participant (Vanguard, Fidelity), per-family conditional on holding an account (SCF median $87,000), and per-family including those with nothing (where the median household holds no retirement account at the 45.7% margin). Quoting one to answer another is the whole error.
Fidelity publishes averages by generation and industry but no median in this release; we looked and did not find one, so no Fidelity median is quoted here.
What to cite instead
“Vanguard’s 2025 average account balance was $167,970 and its median $44,115, across roughly 5 million participants in Vanguard-recordkept plans – not a national figure. The Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances puts the median retirement-account holding at $87,000 among the 54.3% of US families that hold one at all.”
Source: Clear Money Guide, The Provenance File, 2026. Free to reuse with attribution under CC BY 4.0.
What this audit does not establish
The three sources are not the same vintage. Vanguard reports balances as of 31 December 2025, Fidelity as of 31 March 2026, and the SCF wave is 2022 in 2022 dollars. They are not directly comparable across time and we are not comparing them that way.
The Fed attaches its own caution to the means in the table used here: “Because estimates in this table have not been reviewed for robustness, they may be sensitive to outliers.”
“Retirement accounts” in the SCF is broader than 401(k)s, including IRAs and other account types, so the SCF figure is not a like-for-like replacement for a 401(k)-only average. It answers a wider question, which is why it is presented as the national context rather than as the corrected version of the same number.
We did not audit either recordkeeper’s methodology beyond its stated universe. Both figures are taken as accurately reported by their publishers.
Related
Related on this site: the 80% retirement income rule, audited separately · the retirement savings percentile calculator.
This is an audit in the Provenance File. Our method, the six verdict classes and the desk laws are published at how we check money claims. If you think this is wrong, tell us — with a source. No advertising appears on this page and we earn nothing from it.