Guides › Switching Financial Advisors
Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: you open the account at the receiving firm and initiate the transfer there; the new firm pulls the account through ACATS. Betterment Securities charges a flat $75 for each investing account transfer out to another company. There is no human advisor relationship to end and no advisory agreement to unwind: Betterment is a self-directed, algorithm-managed platform, so the entire process is the ACATS mechanics themselves, not a conversation with anyone at the firm. This page states only what the firm itself publishes.
The published numbers
The figure below comes directly from Betterment’s own help-center article, “How are account management fees assessed following my ACATS transfer out of Betterment?” (updated June 18, 2026), fetched directly from betterment.com.
| What it charges | Amount | How it is charged |
|---|---|---|
| Outbound investing-account transfer (ACATS) | $75 | Flat fee, per account transfer to another company |
The published fee is the whole story here: there is no separate IRA-closure figure or advisor-side paperwork to layer on top. Betterment’s own wording is unambiguous: “Betterment Securities charges a flat fee of $75 for each investing account transfer to another company (outbound transfer).” No IRA-specific closure fee distinct from that $75 figure appears on the fetched help-center pages, and no numeric waiver condition is published for it. If you are leaving a robo platform because you have decided you want a human advisor instead of an algorithm, that is a different decision than picking a cheaper robo competitor, and the two paths cost differently beyond this one exit fee.
The two Betterment help-center pages fetched distinguish a full-vs-partial rule only for Cash Reserve accounts, not a separate dollar fee for partial investing-account transfers.
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Source: WiserAdvisor’s service descriptionClosing the account vs transferring it: the $75 transfer-out fee
Closing an account and transferring it are different events. A transfer in kind moves your holdings to the new firm as they are. Closing by selling everything and withdrawing the cash is a liquidation. A liquidation is a taxable event; a transfer in kind is not, see IRS Publication 550 and Publication 590-B.
How do I close a Betterment account?
To leave without selling, open the account at the receiving firm and start the transfer there. To close by liquidating, sell the holdings and withdraw the cash. The charge for moving the account is covered in the next answer.
What is the Betterment transfer out fee?
The Betterment help-center article on account management fees following an ACATS transfer out lists “Outbound investing-account transfer (ACATS)” at $75, charged flat fee, per account transfer to another company.
What is the Betterment ACAT fee?
ACATS is the system the receiving firm uses to pull an account. The amount published for sending an account out is $75, from the Betterment help-center article on account management fees following an ACATS transfer out.
The sequence
1. Pull a current statement for every account, showing the exact registration, account numbers and complete holdings list. 2. Check the holdings for anything that will not move. Ask the receiving firm directly: “Can you hold every position on this statement?” Anything they cannot hold has to be sold, and in a taxable account that is a realised gain in the year you switch: the categories that commonly do not transfer. 3. Open the receiving account and sign the transfer form there. Under FINRA Rule 11870 the delivering firm then has one business day to validate and three business days after validation to complete. 4. Send a dated termination letter for the record, the generator writes it, and confirm in writing that billing has stopped.
Two things to get right
Cost basis. Under IRC §6045A the delivering broker must furnish a transfer statement carrying basis for covered securities within 15 days of the transfer. Keep your final statements anyway, and check the first statement at the new firm for positions showing a missing or zero basis. Retirement accounts move as a direct transfer, trustee to trustee, not as a distribution to you. Why that distinction matters. Budget $75 for the exit charge and leave the cash to cover it in the account rather than sweeping the balance to zero first. Whether the fee is worth paying at all is a question of what you are moving to: our benchmark of published adviser fee schedules puts the weighted median annual cost near $2,000 to $2,500 on $250,000: the benchmark. The general mechanics: switching financial advisors. To put the exit charge next to the fee you would stop paying, the switching advisors cost calculator returns the break-even in months.
Want to know what Betterment Premium charges before you decide whether to leave? See the dollar breakdown from Betterment Premium’s own fee disclosure.
Before you decide to leave Betterment Premium, check whether it owes you a fiduciary duty in the first place.
Three more exits from RIAs where your custodian, not the firm, sets the transfer cost: BMO Private Wealth, Beacon Pointe Advisors, and Cerity Partners.
What does leaving cost elsewhere? Compare the published exit fee at 115 advisory firms and brokerages, each taken from that firm’s own schedule or its custodian’s.
Leaving a different firm? See the exit guides for all 189 firms, with the four steps every exit shares.