How Much Does a Financial Advisor Cost? 21 Firms' Fees, 2026

Calculator: your fee in dollars, today and over time

Type your own percentage, or pick a schedule exactly as a firm printed it. The starting values (an example $500,000, a 1.00% fee, 6% growth, 20 years) are examples, not forecasts and not anyone's quote.

What we read, and what "cost" means here

The number every article on this topic repeats, "about 1% a year," comes from surveys of advisers. That is a fine summary of the market, and our companion piece on what an advisor costs a real estate investor uses the Kitces survey medians for it. This page does something different: it reads the fee schedule each firm actually filed.

Every investment adviser registered with the SEC files a Form ADV. Part 2A is the plain-language brochure given to clients, and Item 5 is "Fees and Compensation." The SEC publishes the current brochures on its Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site, adviserinfo.sec.gov, and we pulled the brochure for each program below on October 9, 2026, saved the text, and copied the tier lines word for word. The brochure date in the tables is the date the firm submitted it to the SEC, as listed by the IAPD.

Three rules for the dollars. First, we apply the schedule exactly as the brochure describes it, marginal or whole-account, and say which. Second, we show the gross fee in the brochure. Some programs, Vanguard and Fidelity among them, credit back revenue the firm earns on the funds you hold, so the net fee can be lower. Third, a published schedule is not always what you pay: many are negotiable, and the fee for a fund, ETF or sub-adviser sits on top.

The schedules as filed

Twenty programs publish an actual rate. They are grouped here by the model they follow: robo platforms, hybrid programs where software does the portfolio and a person is on the phone, the bank and wirehouse hybrids, national independent firms, and flat-fee planners. A price is not a verdict. A $3,500 fee and a $13,875 fee on the same $1,000,000 buy different services, and a brochure will not tell you which suits you.

The same schedules in dollars

This is our arithmetic on the lines above, at four balances. "n/a" at $250,000 for Schwab Wealth Advisory means the brochure sets a $500,000 minimum, which it says it may waive. Mariner's $250,000 and $500,000 figures are its $1,875 quarterly minimum, $7,500 a year.

Read across a row and the shape of each price shows. Vanguard, Fidelity Go, Wealthfront, Betterment and SoFi charge a flat percentage, so the dollar fee rises in a straight line. Creative Planning, Edelman and Fisher start above 1% and step down; Edelman's effective rate on $1,000,000 is 1.39% and on $5,000,000 is 0.82% (our arithmetic). J.P. Morgan and Fidelity Go use a whole-account rate, which is simple but means a breakpoint changes the rate on every dollar. At the other extreme, Schwab Intelligent Portfolios shows $0 because it charges no advisory fee, and in its own brochure Schwab says the program is "not free of charge": the cash allocation, which the brochure says will generally range from 6% to 30% of the portfolio, and fund expenses are where the firm earns.

Firms that print a maximum, not a price

Bank, wirehouse and broker-dealer advisory programs mostly publish a ceiling and leave the rate to you and your adviser. The dollar figures below are what the cap would cost, so treat them as an upper bound, not a quote. Merrill is worth separating: its hybrid program with an advisor shows a flat 0.85% in the table above, while its main advisory program shows a 1.75% maximum.

Raymond James's brochure explains the mechanics that matter if you are near a breakpoint: it says it calculates maximum fees "on a retroactive basis instead of on an incremental basis," so reaching a higher asset tier lowers the rate back to the first dollar. Ameriprise's 2.0% is the negotiable advisory fee only; its brochure adds a platform fee of 0.02% to 0.05% for some programs and a manager fee of generally 0.10% to 0.80% for separately managed accounts. Edward Jones and Morgan Stanley add a platform fee on top of the program fee, which the table includes.

Firms that do not publish a schedule

Northwestern Mutual Investment Services' Part 2A says advisory fees "are negotiated on a case-by-case basis," so there is no schedule to calculate from. Two networks of independent planners that are often cited for hourly or flat work, Garrett Planning Network and XY Planning Network, show no prices on their home pages, which is consistent with each member setting their own; Garrett's page says that few advisers "offer hourly or project-based services without minimums," and XYPN describes its directory as fee-only fiduciary advice. Both are the firms' own claims, read October 9, 2026, and neither is an SEC filing. For the survey medians on hourly rates and retainers, see our real estate investor cost guide.

Flat fee and hourly: the number is not a percentage

Two filed examples show how a flat fee compares. Facet's Part 2A, dated October 2, 2026, says its financial planning "generally ranges from $2,600 - $10,000" a year on a subscription basis and that it does not charge a fee for investment management as an included service. Schwab's Financial Planning Services brochure lists standard fees of $300 for a one-time Schwab Plan Comprehensive and $2,000 for the Personal Financial Plan. On $1,000,000 that is between 0.26% and 1.00% of assets for Facet (our arithmetic), and it is the same dollar amount at $250,000, which is the main reason flat fees look better as balances rise and worse as they shrink.

What a fee costs over 20 and 30 years

A fee is charged every year on a balance that has grown, so the cost is not 20 or 30 times the first year. The SEC's investor bulletin "How Fees and Expenses Affect Your Investment Portfolio" says it plainly: because an ongoing fee reduces your balance, "you also lose any return you would have earned on that fee." The bulletin illustrates this with $100,000 at a 4% annual return over 20 years at ongoing fees of 0.25%, 0.50% and 1%. We did not find an SEC calculator for advisory fees; the bulletin points to FINRA's Fund Analyzer, which compares fund costs, not adviser fees. So we built one above.

The grid below uses an assumed 6% annual growth before fees, a fee taken each year after growth, no deposits, withdrawals or taxes, and no fund expenses (our arithmetic, assumption labelled, not a forecast). "Gap" is the ending value without the fee minus the ending value with it; it is bigger than the fees paid because it includes the growth those dollars would have earned.

At the lower 4% growth rate the SEC bulletin uses, the same 1.00% fee on $1,000,000 for 30 years costs $844,255 against $234,639 at 0.25% (our arithmetic). Change the growth or the fee in the calculator and the shape stays the same: the gap widens faster than the years do.

So is a financial advisor worth it?

The filings answer the cost half of that question and not the value half. What the brochures show is that "an advisor" is at least four different products with different prices: software with a phone line at 0.25% to 0.35%, a hybrid human program at 0.50% to 0.85%, a full-service independent planner at 1.20% to 1.75% on the first dollars, and a flat-fee planner that bills for time. Whether the extra cost buys something you will use is a question about you: how complex your taxes, estate and debts are, and whether you would otherwise make the mistakes an adviser prevents. We cover how to tell the fee models apart in our guide to the fee-only financial advisor, and what the fiduciary standard does and does not require in our guide to the fiduciary financial advisor.

One caution cuts both ways. A low posted fee does not make a program a good fit, and a high one does not make it a bad one. A fee-only fiduciary adviser is required by law to put your interest first and disclose conflicts, but that does not guarantee better returns or a lower price, and it does not guarantee competence. Check any adviser you are considering in the SEC's IAPD yourself and read Items 5 and 11 of their Part 2A.

What you can do with this

1. Ask for the Part 2A brochure before the meeting and read Item 5. Search the firm name at adviserinfo.sec.gov; the brochure and its date are listed there.
2. Turn the percentage into dollars at your balance. Use the calculator above with the schedule that applies to you, and ask whether it is marginal or whole-account.
3. Ask what is negotiable and what is on top. The fund expenses, platform fee, manager fee and any minimum are separate lines in most brochures.
4. Ask what you get for the extra dollars. If the spread between a 0.35% and a 1.25% program is about $9,000 a year on $1,000,000 (our arithmetic), ask which planning, tax and estate work that buys.
5. Compare a flat-fee quote if your question is a one-time decision, such as a 1031 exchange or a retirement plan, rather than ongoing management.

Methodology and sources

Tier lines and minimums are quoted from each firm's Form ADV Part 2A brochure or wrap fee program brochure on the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site (adviserinfo.sec.gov), retrieved October 9, 2026: Vanguard Advisers (CRD 106715), Charles Schwab and Schwab Wealth Advisory (5393), Strategic Advisers for Fidelity Go and Wealth Services (104555), Wealthfront Advisers (148456), Betterment (149117), SoFi Wealth (167958), Ally Invest Advisors (170301), Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith (7691), J.P. Morgan Securities (79), Empower Advisory Group (112058), Edelman Financial Engines (104510), Creative Planning (105348), Mariner (140195), Fisher Investments (107342), Facet (285961), Raymond James Financial Services Advisors (149018), Wells Fargo Clearing Services (19616), Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (149777), Ameriprise Financial Services (6363), Edward Jones (250), LPL Financial (6413) and Northwestern Mutual Investment Services (2881). Brochure dates are the IAPD submission dates. We chose well-known firms across models, not a random sample, so the ranges describe these firms and not the whole market, and programs with minimums above your balance may not be open to you. Dollar figures are our arithmetic on the gross schedules; credits, negotiated discounts, fund expenses and sub-adviser fees are not included. The fee-drag grid is our arithmetic on an assumed 6% annual growth before fees. The investor bulletin is the SEC Office of Investor Education and Advocacy's "How Fees and Expenses Affect Your Investment Portfolio." Garrett Planning Network and XY Planning Network are quoted from their own websites as the firms' claims. This is analysis of public records, not investment, legal, lending or tax advice, and it recommends no firm. Corrections: if a brochure has changed since October 9, 2026, the IAPD version is the one that governs.

Last updated: October 9, 2026.