Wealthfront and Betterment are both on The Ascent's list of best robo-advisors. Both platforms offer low-cost automated investing, with no commissions or trading fees.
Betterment requires its customers to pay a management fee of $4 per month (or 0.25% per year), and serves as an automatic financial advisor that helps manage your money. Betterment makes it easy for you to invest your money in diversified, low-cost portfolios of exchange traded funds (ETFs) that are built by investment experts.
This investment approach makes Betterment a great choice for hands-off investors who don't want to pick stocks. Betterment also provides automatic rebalancing of your ETF portfolios based on your investment goals and time horizon. As a Betterment customer, you can "set it and forget it" with your investments -- let Betterment's platform and the power of the global economy do the work for you.
Wealthfront's automated investing account charges a 0.25% annual management fee, similar to Betterment, and gives you automatic investing with personalized portfolios based on your risk tolerance, time horizon, and investing goals. And if you use Wealthfront's stock investing account to choose your own stocks and build your own portfolio, you won't pay any commissions or trading fees.
If you prefer to be more "hands on" in building your portfolio, choosing investments, and making trades, Wealthfront could be a better choice than Betterment. But both of these robo-advisors offer advanced features for automatic, personalized, low-cost investing, with just a 0.25% annual fee (or $4 per month for some Betterment customers).
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