Name: 2026 Advisor Fee Benchmark (Clear Money Guide)
Creator: Clear Money Guide
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Updated on August 19, 2026

New for 2026: we published a measured advisor fee benchmark chart built from the SEC Form ADV fee disclosures of 176 registered firms — median measured cost $2,000–$2,500/year at $250,000 and $8,750–$10,000/year at $1,000,000. Use it to judge any quote in this comparison.

Quick answer (2026): To compare financial advisor rates, convert every proposal into annual dollars for the same written scope before judging the headline percentage, hourly rate, retainer, or flat fee. This financial advisor fee comparison starts with common quote anchors: about 0.50%-1.00%+ for AUM, $2,500-$10,000+/year for flat annual planning, $200-$900/month for a retainer, and $200-$400/hour for hourly or project work. On a $500,000 portfolio, 1.00% AUM is about $5,000/year and 0.75% AUM is about $3,750/year before fund, platform, overlay, trading, tax-prep, or implementation costs.

Use this financial advisor fees comparison chart before you book an intro call. For one-year math, run the financial advisor fee calculator; for cumulative fee drag, use the 10-year financial advisor fee comparison. Compare AUM, flat fee, retainer, hourly, and project quotes by total first-year cost, written scope, deliverables, meeting cadence, implementation help, response-time expectations, and what becomes out-of-scope.

What each fee model costs at your balance

Every model on this page is quoted in a different unit — a percentage, a yearly price, a monthly price, an hourly rate. They only become comparable in one place: the dollars that leave your account in a year. Enter your balance and this converts all of them at once, using the measured benchmark below and this page’s own quote ranges.

Portfolio balance

Without a balance, the comparison is the static table below: AUM 0.50%–1.00%+ of assets, flat annual planning $2,500–$10,000+ a year, a retainer $2,400–$10,800 a year, an hourly project $1,200–$4,000 once, and a robo advisor 0.15%–0.50% a year before fund costs.

Fast tools: Advisor Fee Calculator · Financial Advisor Cost Guide · Find a Financial Advisor · fee-only financial advisor near me · flat fee financial advisor near me · fee-based financial advisor near me · fiduciary financial advisor near me · Average Financial Advisor Fees · Advisor fees by portfolio size · $500k portfolio fees · $1M portfolio fees · $2M portfolio fees · $3M portfolio fees · AUM fees by balance · AUM fee examples · AUM fee breakpoints · Average wealth management fees · Average retainer fee for financial advisor · financial advisor hourly rate · Fixed fee project pricing · AUM Fee Calculator · 10-Year Fee Comparison · Flat Fee vs AUM Break-Even · Robo advisor fees · Which Fee Model Fits Me?

What that rate costs you, in your own dollars

Percentages are hard to feel. The same rate that sounds small as a number is a specific amount of money leaving a specific account every year, and it compounds against you because the dollars taken out stop earning. Enter your balance and the rate you pay or have been quoted, and this converts it into dollars.

Portfolio balance

Advisory fee (%)

Assumed gross return (%)

Find the right next step for your situation

Answer three quick questions to see the option that fits you best.

Compare financial advisor rates in annual dollars

Before an intro call, compare financial advisor rates by converting AUM, flat annual, retainer, hourly, and project quotes into first-year dollars for the same written scope, deliverables, meeting cadence, and implementation help.

Financial advisor fees comparison: quick benchmarks

Fee model	Common quote	Annual dollars	Best fit	What to confirm
AUM percentage	0.50%–1.00%+ of assets	$2,500–$5,000+/year on $500,000	Ongoing portfolio management bundled with planning	Breakpoints, fund costs, platform costs, overlay fees, and whether tiers are billed by slice
Flat annual planning	$2,500–$10,000+/year	$2,500–$10,000+/year	Predictable planning relationship with written scope	Service calendar, meetings, deliverables, implementation help, renewal terms, and response time
Monthly retainer	$200–$900/month	$2,400–$10,800/year	Subscription-style planning access throughout the year	Cancellation terms, access rules, meeting cadence, and what becomes hourly or out-of-scope
Hourly/project	$200–$400/hour or fixed project quote	$1,200–$4,000 for a 6–10 hour project	Second opinions, rollover reviews, RSU questions, Roth-conversion checks, or narrow planning sprints	Not-to-exceed cap, written deliverable, billing increment, and who does the work

The four models, as ranges rather than headline rates. Each bar is the annual-dollar range this page's own comparison table publishes, recomputed from the quote it lists: 0.50% and 1.00% of $500,000, $200 and $900 a month over twelve months, and $200 and $400 an hour over a six to ten hour project. An arrow means the published quote ends in a plus sign and has no stated ceiling, so the bar is drawn open rather than closed at a number nobody quoted. The shaded strip is the $2,500–$5,000 window all three annual models share. The hourly bar is a one-time project total, not an annual fee.

2026 advisor fee benchmark: what SEC-registered firms actually charge

Provisional benchmark (n=176): This analysis is pre-final. The research charter requires at least 200 completed firms and at least 10 completed firms per stratum before final release; the current 176-firm sample has not met that gate. Treat these results as provisional, not as a final market estimate.

The percentages above show the math. The table below shows measured reality. We drew a stratified random sample of SEC-registered investment advisers from the July 1, 2026 SEC adviser roster (9,234 firms that serve individual clients, split into 16 strata by firm size and US region), read each sampled firm’s Form ADV Part 2A fee disclosure, and computed the actual annual cost at five portfolio sizes with pre-registered formulas and decimal-only arithmetic. Results are weighted back to the full 9,234-firm frame. 176 sampled firms are complete (of 240 planned), with every stratum represented.

Portfolio size	Measured median annual cost	Median effective rate	Firms priced out by minimums
$250,000	$2,000 – $2,500/year	0.80% – 1.00%	18.9%
$500,000	$3,750 – $5,000/year	0.75% – 1.00%	13.8%
$1,000,000	$8,750 – $10,000/year	0.88% – 1.00%	7.4%
$2,000,000	$16,000 – $19,375/year	0.80% – 0.97%	6.2%
$3,000,000	$24,000 – $26,000/year	0.80% – 0.87%	5.6%

Where a firm discloses a fee range rather than one schedule, we carry the low and high ends through separately — the interval reports what the filings actually support, never an invented midpoint. Medians rest on 44 to 59 calculable firms depending on balance; the 95% bootstrap confidence interval on the $1,000,000 median is $7,500 to $10,000.

Measured median annual cost, by portfolio size. The solid line is the high end of the disclosed range and the dashed line is the low end — drawn straight from the benchmark table above, with no invented midpoint. Balances are spaced evenly, not to scale. Source: Form ADV Part 2A fee disclosures of 176 sampled SEC-registered advisers, weighted to the 9,234-firm July 1, 2026 SEC frame. CC BY 4.0, like the table it is drawn from.

More than four in ten fee disclosures will not give you a priceable number

At a $250,000 balance, only 28.4% of sampled firms with an assets-under-management program publish a fee schedule precise enough to compute an annual dollar cost (weighted share). Another 16.8% disclose only an “up to” ceiling with no floor, and 25.7% use fee language too vague or qualified to price at all — 42.5% combined. These are the legally required fee-disclosure documents. If you cannot compute your fee from the brochure, ask the advisor to put the annual dollar number in writing before an intro call.

Priceability of a $250,000 account, from the brochure alone. Weighted share of sampled firms that run an assets-under-management program. The first three bars are reported as disclosed and are shown separately rather than as shares of one whole; the combined bar is the two unpriceable categories added together (16.8% + 25.7%). Source: the 2026 Advisor Fee Benchmark above. CC BY 4.0, like the table it is drawn from.

Minimums quietly close the door on smaller accounts

18.9% of firms will not serve a $250,000 account at all under their stated account minimums, and the firms that do accept smaller accounts are disproportionately the cheaper ones. Among the 13 sampled firms with a program that is not eligible at $250,000 but becomes calculable as a point or range at $1,000,000, 11 disclose at least one point price. For that 11-firm point-price subset, the weighted median is 1.00% at $1,000,000. Both are small subgroups, so treat this as directional rather than precise.

License and citation: this benchmark table and its statistics are licensed Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) — republish or adapt them, including commercially, with attribution to Clear Money Guide and a link to this page. Cite as: Clear Money Guide Research Team, “2026 Advisor Fee Benchmark,” July 2026. Archived, citable copy: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21741167 — CC BY 4.0, free to reuse with attribution. Version 1.1 adds the per-firm file at 10.5281/zenodo.21762538. The full deposited library is indexed at the research library. Librarians, educators, and journalists: this table is CC BY 4.0 — reuse with attribution is welcome, and we answer methodology questions at contact@.

AUM vs flat fee vs hourly: $500k, $1M, and $2M examples

Example quote	At $500,000	At $1,000,000	At $2,000,000	Important note
1.00% AUM	$5,000/year	$10,000/year	$20,000/year	Before fund, platform, overlay, trading, and tax-prep costs
0.75% AUM	$3,750/year	$7,500/year	$15,000/year	Ask whether lower breakpoints apply by slice
$6,000 flat annual fee	$6,000/year	$6,000/year	$6,000/year	Only comparable if the written scope matches the AUM scope
$500/month retainer	$6,000/year	$6,000/year	$6,000/year	Confirm cancellation terms and what becomes out-of-scope
$300/hour × 6 hours	$1,800 total	$1,800 total	$1,800 total	Works best for narrow projects, not unlimited ongoing advice

The same five quotes, priced across the table's own three balances. The percentage lines are those rates applied continuously, with a marker at each balance the table above prices; the flat line is $6,000, which is what both the flat annual fee and the $500 monthly retainer cost at every balance, so they coincide exactly and are drawn once. The circled crossings are arithmetic on those same numbers: $6,000 is 1.00% of $600,000 and 0.75% of $800,000. The shaded band is the measured median annual cost from the 2026 advisor fee benchmark this page cites — the low and high ends of what sampled firms disclose, carried through separately with no invented midpoint. The hourly row is a one-time project total rather than an annual cost, so it is not drawn on this yearly axis; figure 1 shows it separately.

Flat fee as an effective percentage

Portfolio size	$3,000 flat fee	$6,000 flat fee	$9,000 flat fee	$12,000 flat fee
$500,000	0.60%	1.20%	1.80%	2.40%
$1,000,000	0.30%	0.60%	0.90%	1.20%
$2,000,000	0.15%	0.30%	0.45%	0.60%
$3,000,000	0.10%	0.20%	0.30%	0.40%

A flat fee is not automatically better or worse. It only becomes comparable after you know whether the written scope includes retirement income, investment implementation, tax coordination, estate-adjacent coordination, employer equity, charitable planning, and follow-up support.

Full break-even grid: flat fee vs AUM

Flat annual quote	Compared with 1.00% AUM	Compared with 0.75% AUM	Compared with 0.50% AUM
$3,000/year	$300,000 break-even	$400,000 break-even	$600,000 break-even
$6,000/year	$600,000 break-even	$800,000 break-even	$1,200,000 break-even
$9,000/year	$900,000 break-even	$1,200,000 break-even	$1,800,000 break-even
$12,000/year	$1,200,000 break-even	$1,600,000 break-even	$2,400,000 break-even

Formula: flat annual quote divided by AUM percentage equals the break-even portfolio balance. Run exact inputs in the Flat Fee vs AUM Break-Even Calculator.

For a portfolio-size hub across $250k, $500k, $750k, $1M, $2M, and $3M, use Financial Advisor Fees by Portfolio Size. For a dedicated balance-specific walkthrough, use Financial Advisor Fees for a $500k Portfolio, Financial Advisor Fees for a $1 Million Portfolio, Financial Advisor Fees for a $2 Million Portfolio, or Financial Advisor Fees for a $3 Million Portfolio.

For a $2M or $3M portfolio, AUM can become materially more expensive in dollars, so flat annual, retainer, hourly, robo/platform, and dollar-cap alternatives are worth asking about.

Which fee model fits which planning job?

Planning need	Often worth comparing first	Why
Ongoing retirement-income planning	Flat annual, retainer, or AUM	You may need a service calendar, tax-aware withdrawals, Roth-conversion windows, Medicare/IRMAA, RMDs, and implementation help
Portfolio management plus planning	AUM vs flat annual	AUM bundles advice with managed assets, but the dollar cost rises as the portfolio grows
Second opinion on current advisor fees	Hourly or project fee	A capped review can answer whether the current AUM, flat, or retainer quote is reasonable
Rollover decision	Hourly, project, or flat planning	A written stay-vs-rollover memo may be enough if you do not need ongoing management
RSUs, stock options, or concentrated stock	Hourly/project for narrow questions; flat annual for ongoing complexity	Tax timing, withholding, sell-to-cover choices, AMT exposure, and staged diversification can expand scope quickly

Scope checklist for the same written quote

Scope item	Ask whether it is included	Why it changes the fee comparison
Retirement income	Social Security, pensions, withdrawal sequencing, RMDs, cash reserves	A cheap portfolio-only quote may exclude the planning work you actually need.
Tax coordination	Roth conversions, Medicare/IRMAA, taxable gains, CPA coordination	Tax-aware planning may justify a higher fee or a separate project scope.
Employer equity	RSUs, ESPP, stock options, private shares, concentrated stock	Equity compensation can require more planning than a standard portfolio review.
Implementation	Account opening, rollover support, trades, rebalancing, task tracking	Advice-only and done-with-you implementation are not the same service.
Specialist coordination	CPA, estate attorney, insurance specialist, mortgage or lending professional	Coordination can be included, hourly, referred out, or not offered.

Helpful next reads for model comparison: Financial Advisor Fee Schedule · Financial advisor fee structure · Fee-only vs commission vs robo advisor models · Robo advisor fees and costs · Average Flat Fee · Average Retainer Fee · Hourly Advisor Rates · average RIA and investment-advisor fees · AUM Fee Breakpoints

How to compare financial advisor fees across two quotes

Convert both quotes into first-year dollars. Include AUM, flat annual, retainer, hourly, project, onboarding, fund, platform, overlay, and implementation costs.
Write down one shared scope. Compare the same deliverables, meetings, portfolio help, tax coordination, implementation help, and response-time expectations.
Ask who does the work. Confirm whether you work with the lead planner, associate planner, investment team, CPA, attorney, or outside specialist.
Separate recurring advice from one-time work. A $1,800 hourly project may be cheap for a second opinion but incomplete for year-round planning.
Get the deliverable in writing. A plan, memo, action list, withdrawal map, investment policy, or fee-comparison summary makes the quote easier to judge.
Ask what becomes extra. Confirm what becomes hourly, project-based, referred out, or excluded.
Confirm duty and compensation. Get fiduciary status and compensation in writing before hiring.

Common fee-comparison mistakes

Comparing a narrow hourly project against a full-service AUM relationship.
Ignoring fund expense ratios, platform fees, overlay fees, trading costs, and tax-prep costs.
Assuming every AUM tier schedule is applied to the whole balance instead of billed by slice.
Accepting an hourly estimate without a not-to-exceed cap.
Choosing the lowest fee without checking whether retirement-income planning, tax coordination, equity compensation, estate-adjacent work, or implementation help is included.

Copy/paste: ask for an apples-to-apples fee comparison

Subject: Advisor fee comparison — total first-year cost and scope

Hi — I’m comparing advisor fee models and want to make sure I understand the total cost in dollars.

Could you send a short written summary covering:

1) My total first-year advisory fee in dollars for the proposed scope.
2) Your pricing model: AUM, flat annual, monthly retainer, hourly, project fee, or blended.
3) If AUM: the tier schedule, whether tiers are billed by slice, and any fund/platform/overlay costs.
4) If flat or retainer: the annual dollar amount, service calendar, meetings, deliverables, and renewal terms.
5) If hourly/project: the hourly rate, estimated hours, not-to-exceed cap, and written deliverable.
6) What is included, what is excluded, and what becomes hourly or out-of-scope.
7) Who does the work — lead planner, associate planner, investment team, CPA, attorney, or outside specialist.
8) Whether you act as a fiduciary at all times.

My goal is to compare AUM, flat-fee, retainer, hourly, and project-fee options apples-to-apples for the same scope.

Thanks!

Popular local fee guides

All city guides · Seattle · Bellevue · Redmond · Portola Valley · Redwood Shores · San Mateo · San Jose · Dallas · Buffalo

Balance-specific AUM checks: Compare AUM fees at $500k, AUM fees at $1M, and AUM fees at $2M before you accept a percentage quote.

Comparing advisors but not states?

Two advisor quotes usually differ by a fraction of a percent a year. State retirement tax treatment differs by whole percentage points of every withdrawal, and then again at death through estate tax, inheritance tax, and what probate costs the heirs. If a move is anywhere in the plan, that comparison is worth more than the fee comparison on this page. Run any two states side by side with the two-state comparison tool, or read the corridor guides at retirement tax relocation.

Methodology

Dollar-first comparison. This page converts AUM, flat annual, retainer, hourly, and project quotes into annual dollars so readers can compare advisor proposals quickly.
Portfolio examples. AUM examples multiply the listed portfolio value by the stated advisory percentage. They exclude fund expense ratios, platform fees, overlay fees, trading costs, taxes, tax-prep costs, and implementation charges unless stated.
Scope-first review. A fee is only meaningful when paired with written scope, deliverables, meeting cadence, implementation help, response-time expectations, and exclusions.
Benchmark ranges. Fee ranges are planning anchors for comparison, not guaranteed advisor quotes or billing schedules.
Data freshness. This page was last reviewed on July 3, 2026. Fee schedules, fund costs, platform costs, and planning assumptions can change over time.
Educational only. This is not tax, legal, or investment advice. For personal recommendations, talk to a qualified fiduciary advisor.

Editorial standards: Editorial Policy · Corrections · Disclaimer

Advisor cost route: choose the right fee page

Use the cost guide, fee calculator, rate comparison, and fee-structure pages together so every advisor quote is checked in annual dollars, by written scope, and by what work becomes out-of-scope.

How much does a financial advisor cost? - first-year dollar ranges for AUM, flat annual, retainer, hourly, project, and robo quotes.
Financial advisor fee calculator - convert a quote into annual dollars before an intro call.
Financial advisor fee structures - translate AUM, flat, retainer, hourly, commission, and blended pricing into the same decision frame.
Compare financial advisor rates - check whether the quote is high, low, or missing scope details.

Download or cite the advisor-fee benchmark

Return to the provisional benchmark and charts, or use the archived DOI record and research library for citation and reuse details. The current release is provisional (n=176); the research charter requires at least 200 completed firms and at least 10 per stratum before final release.

Financial Advisor Fee Comparison 2026: Compare Rates

Guide and interactive utility