Advisor Firm Fee Calculator 2026: What 39 Named Firms Charge

Updated September 18, 2026. Quick answer: across the 39 firms whose own fee documents we have read and archived, the published annual price of a $500,000 advisory relationship runs from $1,250 at SoFi Invest to $15,000 at Lincoln Financial Advisors and Mercer Advisors, with a median of $10,000, which is 2.0 to 2.7 times the $3,750 to $5,000 that our own benchmark of 176 randomly sampled SEC-registered advisers measures at the same balance. Held for thirty years at 6% gross growth, a fee at that $10,000 median costs about $1,097,501 more than the same money in a portfolio charging 0.25%. 18 of the 39 publish a ceiling rather than a schedule, so for those the number is the most the firm may charge, not what everybody pays, and this page says so every time it prints one.

What the thirty-year number is, and what it is not

The projection makes exactly four assumptions, and they are all on this page rather than in a footnote:

• 6% a year gross growth, the same for the firm and for the benchmark. Nothing here predicts a return. If you think 6% is wrong, the gap between the two columns moves but the direction does not.
• The fee is recomputed every year from the firm’s own schedule, on that year’s balance, and taken at the start of the year. It is not held at the entry-year rate. That matters: 19 of these 39 schedules are tiered, and their effective rate falls as the balance grows, so freezing the entry rate would overstate their cost.
• The benchmark is 0.25% a year, charged the same way. That is a stand-in for a low-cost index portfolio, not a product recommendation, and it is not free.
• No taxes, no contributions, no withdrawals, and nominal dollars. A real account has all four, and every one of them changes the total.

What the number does show is the part people underestimate: the fee is charged on the balance, so it compounds against you exactly as the growth compounds for you. At SoFi Invest’s own 0.25% the thirty-year difference is $0. Lincoln Financial Advisors and Mercer Advisors both charge 3% of a $500,000 account, and yet over thirty years the difference is $1,512,403 against $1,051,476, because Mercer Advisors’ figure is a minimum annual fee that stops growing while Lincoln Financial Advisors’ is a flat percentage that never stops.

Eighteen of these documents publish a ceiling, not a price

This is the single most important thing to understand before using any of these numbers. A Form ADV brochure often discloses only the maximum annual rate a firm may charge, with the actual rate left to a negotiated client agreement that is not filed publicly. 18 of the 39 firms here do exactly that: Ameriprise, Buckingham Strategic Wealth, Cambridge Investment Research, Carson Wealth, Equitable Advisors, J.P. Morgan Advisors, Kestra (Kestra Private Wealth Services / Kestra Advisory Services), Lincoln Financial Advisors, LPL Financial, Mariner Wealth Advisors, MassMutual, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Northwestern Mutual, Osaic, Savant Wealth Management, UBS, Wells Fargo Advisors.

For those firms the calculator applies the disclosed ceiling, labels it a maximum on every result, and links to the document so you can read the sentence yourself. The median ceiling at $500,000 is $10,800. The median among the 21 firms that publish an actual schedule is $7,500. Treating a ceiling as a price would overstate what a negotiating client pays; treating it as irrelevant would understate what a client who never negotiates pays. It is the most the firm may charge, and that is exactly how it is labelled.

Why the shape of the schedule matters more than the headline rate

Two firms quoting the same headline number can cost very different amounts, because the shape of the schedule decides what happens as the balance grows.

• Flat rates (20 firms) do not improve with size. The effective rate you pay at $250,000 is the effective rate you pay at $2,000,000. Every ceiling in the list behaves this way by construction, because a maximum has no tiers.
• Tiered and breakpoint schedules (19 firms) get cheaper as a percentage. A marginal ladder charges each slice of the balance at its own rate; a whole-balance breakpoint reprices the entire balance the moment you cross a threshold, which means crossing a breakpoint can cut the bill sharply.
• Minimum fees invert the picture at the bottom. Charles Schwab and Mercer Advisors set a floor, so a smaller account pays a much higher effective rate. Mercer Advisors’ minimum of $15,000 a year is 6% of a $250,000 account and 1.05% of a $2,000,000 one. The calculator says so on the result whenever the minimum, rather than the schedule, is what sets the fee.
• Two firms price small accounts on a separate rule entirely. Fidelity Wealth Management and Fisher Investments apply a different, capped rate below a stated balance, which is why their curve has a step in it rather than a smooth slope.

How these firms compare with the wider market

These 39 are large, well-known firms, and they are not a random sample of what advice costs. Our own benchmark, which draws a stratified random sample of SEC-registered advisers from the July 2026 adviser roster and reads each sampled firm’s Form ADV fee disclosure, measures a median annual cost of $3,750 to $5,000 at $500,000, an effective rate of 0.75% to 1.00%. The median on this page is $10,000. The brand names in this list publish materially higher rates than the market median, and roughly half of them publish only a ceiling, which pushes the figure higher still.

That benchmark is provisional at 176 completed firms and its own charter requires 200 before final release, which is stated on its page and repeated here rather than quietly dropped. The measured benchmark and its method is the right comparison to make before you read any single firm’s number as high or low.

Every firm, side by side

The calculator run once for each firm on the same input: a $500,000 balance. Each row links to that firm’s own page, which quotes the sentence in the document rather than summarising it.

What this calculator does not do

• It does not quote you. Every rate here is negotiable at most of these firms, and at 18 of them the published figure is explicitly a maximum.
• It does not add the fees underneath the advisory fee. Fund expense ratios, platform and program fees, custody, trading and manager fees sit on top at many of these firms and are disclosed separately or not at all. Where a firm’s own brochure quantifies them, the note under the result says so.
• It does not price tax drag, held-away assets, insurance or planning-only work. Several of these firms sell all four, on different terms.
• It does not rank the firms. A higher published rate is not evidence of a worse service, and a lower one is not evidence of a better one. Price is one input.
• It cannot see your agreement. The contract you signed governs, and it may differ from the public brochure in either direction.
• One of the schedules stop. Primerica (to $3,000,000) publishes rates only up to a stated top balance. Above it their own document statees no rate, so this page prints Not published for the fee and for every projection that would have crossed it, rather than extending the top bracket upward.
• It does not model account minimums. Several of these firms will not open an account below a stated size. Where an unusually high effective rate appears at a small balance it is a minimum annual fee doing the work, not a rate, and the result panel says so.

Where this fits

The measured fee benchmark, the market-wide comparison this page is read against · the general fee calculator, for a rate you have been quoted rather than a named firm · what a percentage of assets costs in dollars · what flat-fee and hourly pricing looks like instead · the mechanics of moving.

Scope, method and sources

Every rate on this page was read in the named firm’s own Form ADV Part 2A, wrap-fee brochure, or equivalent client disclosure, archived with a checksum and a retrieval date at the time that firm’s fee page was published. This calculator adds no firm, no rate and no citation of its own: it re-reads those 39 records, recomputes every figure, and refuses to build if any dollar disagrees with the figure already published on the firm’s own page. The result panel names the exact document and links to it. Rates change and brochures are amended; each firm page carries the retrieval date for its own document. General information about published fee schedules, not investment, tax or legal advice, and not a recommendation of any firm named here.