Foundry Planning vs eMoney Advisor: an honest 2026 comparison.
I run Foundry Planning. This comparison sits on Foundry's marketing site, and you should read it with that fact in view. The deal I'll offer in exchange for your skepticism: every claim about eMoney below is linked to a primary source or labeled as an estimate, every claim about Foundry is verified against what our engine actually computes, and the section on what eMoney does better than us is real, not decorative.
This is one of the head-to-head spokes promised in the planning-software evaluation framework. If you haven't read that post, it explains the seven dimensions I use below — paradigm, tax fidelity, recompute speed, readability, workflow shape, switching cost, pricing.
The short version
eMoney Advisor is the market-share leader in planning software — 35.62% of advisors in the 2026 T3/Inside Information survey, up sharply from 28.2% the year before — and it earned that position with the deepest cash-flow engine of the incumbent generation, the industry's benchmark client portal, and an aggregation network of more than 12,000 data connections. It is owned by Fidelity, serves well over 100,000 financial professionals, and its share grows with firm size.
Foundry Planning is a newer, smaller tool that competes on one specific bet: that the computation itself — the tax engine, the cash-flow ledger, the Monte Carlo — should be more precise, more traceable, and dramatically cheaper than the incumbents, even if that means we don't ship an aggregation network. If your practice lives on aggregation and enterprise integrations, eMoney is the safer choice today. If your practice lives on tax-aware retirement-income decisions — Roth conversion sizing, withdrawal sequencing, IRMAA management — this post is the argument that the engine underneath matters more than the network around it, and that ours is the sharper engine at a fraction of the price.
At a glance
| eMoney Advisor | Foundry Planning | |
|---|---|---|
| Paradigm | Cash-flow engine (Advanced Planning) plus goals-based options | Cash-flow-first, single deterministic ledger |
| Federal tax engine | "1040 estimation" with manual override area (eMoney's own docs) | Computed per year: brackets, capital-gains stacking, AMT, NIIT, QBI, Social Security taxability, FICA/SE tax |
| IRMAA | Not described in public documentation we could find | Part B + Part D surcharges on the true two-year MAGI lookback |
| State tax | State-specific brackets, deductions, exemptions | Real per-state rules, every state + DC, incl. retirement-income subtractions and state capital-gains quirks |
| Monte Carlo | 1,000 trials in Decision Center | 1,000 correlated-return trials with the full tax engine inside every trial |
| AI | CoPlanner (GA March 2026), plan recommendations | Forge: agentic assistant with document intake, approval-gated writes, full undo |
| Aggregation | 12,000+ connections, T3 category leader | None advisor-side (client portal links accounts via Plaid) |
| Client portal | Benchmark portal + Vault; mobile app since April 2025 (Premier) | Client portal + native mobile app, included |
| Published pricing | No — estimates $2,600–$5,000+/advisor/yr | Yes — $199/mo or $1,990/yr per advisor, everything included |
| T3 2026 user rating | 8.14 (down from 8.22) | Not yet surveyed — we're too new |
Sources for the eMoney column are linked in the sections below; survey figures are from the 2026 T3/Inside Information Software Survey (2,906 respondents, published March 2026), accessed July 9, 2026.
What eMoney genuinely does well
Anyone selling against eMoney by pretending it's weak is wasting your time. Twenty-six years in, it is the deepest of the incumbent engines and the default choice of large firms — its market share rises to 49.23% at firms with more than $8M in revenue.
Aggregation is the moat. eMoney's 12,000+ connection network is the T3 2026 aggregation category leader at 20.89% share, roughly 90% of it via direct API or bulk file per the company, and it was the first aggregator on Fidelity's Akoya network. For practices whose planning surface is "the client's whole financial life, updated daily," this is the feature, and nothing in Foundry replaces it.
The portal is sticky. The client portal and Vault document storage have been the industry benchmark long enough that the T3 authors note advisors keep the portal even when they don't use eMoney's calculation engine. Screen sharing inside the portal is a genuinely useful meeting tool.
Scale and integrations. A new developer site and API investment in late 2025, an Asset-Map integration, a Zocks document-intelligence integration, and long support hours. Enterprise firms get enterprise treatment.
Decision Center remains a good interactive scenario surface, and eMoney shipped real tax features in recent years — a Tax Bracket Report and automated fill-up-bracket Roth conversions in 2023.
The tax engine, side by side
Here is where the comparison stops being about company size and starts being about computation. The most expensive questions a retirement-stage client asks — how much to convert, which account to draw first, what happens to Medicare premiums — are tax questions, and the answer is only as good as the tax engine underneath.
What eMoney documents about its own engine. eMoney's knowledgebase describes the default federal calculation as a "1040 estimation" — their word — that handles the standard deduction, exemptions, charitable and capital-loss carryforwards, additional Medicare tax, deduction phase-outs, and AMT. Two details in that document are worth reading twice. First, there is a flat-tax option, a reminder that some of the engine's lineage predates the current tax code's complexity. Second, there is a Tax Adjustments area that lets the advisor manually override results when, in eMoney's phrasing, "the system 1040 estimation is not close enough." An override facility is honest engineering — but it also tells you the vendor's own expectation of when the estimate needs help. State taxes are modeled with state-specific brackets, deductions, and exemptions per eMoney's training materials.
What we could not find. eMoney does not appear in the T3 2026 survey's standalone tax-planning category at all — that category is owned by Holistiplan at 38.92% share — and it is common for eMoney shops to pair it with a dedicated tax tool. We searched for primary documentation of IRMAA surcharge modeling and found none. That is not proof of absence; it is a demo question. Ask to see a 2027 Roth conversion move the client's 2029 Part B premium. Here's why the two-year lookback matters.
What Foundry computes, specifically. Every projection year, on one ledger: federal brackets; long- and short-term capital gains with the 0/15/20% preferential stacking computed the way the Qualified Dividends and Capital Gain Tax Worksheet computes it; AMT with the exemption phase-out and preferential-rate handling, including the ISO bargain element for equity-comp clients; NIIT; the QBI deduction with its income phase-outs; Social Security taxability via provisional income; FICA and self-employment tax with the wage-base coordination; the SALT cap and the 2025 OBBBA-law parameters (the $40k cap, the senior deduction, the charitable floor); charitable deductions with AGI ceilings and carryforwards; and trust taxation for plans that include one. IRMAA is computed for Part B and Part D from the MAGI the engine itself projected two years earlier — not a side calculation fed by a separate income figure. State income tax runs on real per-state rules for every state and DC: actual bracket tables, state-specific Social Security and retirement-income subtractions, state capital-gains carve-outs, 529 deductions. Tax-year parameters for 2022–2026 come from IRS and SSA primary sources; later years inflate forward from 2026 at a rate you control.
I want to be precise about what I'm claiming. I am not claiming eMoney's engine can't produce a good plan — tens of thousands of advisors produce good plans on it daily. I am claiming that when the question is "convert $87,000 or $94,000 this year," the difference between a documented computation and an estimation-plus-manual-override is the difference between an answer and an approximation. Our position on why this matters is the cash-flow vs portfolio modeling argument; our standing offer is: bring a real client case to a demo and check our numbers against your CPA's.
Monte Carlo: what runs inside the trials
Both tools run 1,000-trial Monte Carlo simulations — eMoney in Decision Center, Foundry on every plan.
The question to ask any vendor — us included — is not the trial count. It's what computes inside each trial. Foundry's Monte Carlo draws correlated returns per asset class (a multivariate lognormal model with a full covariance matrix) and then runs the entire projection — the same tax engine, RMDs, withdrawal sequencing, IRMAA, Social Security taxability described above — inside every one of the 1,000 trials. A trial where the market drops in the client's third retirement year produces different withdrawals, a different tax bill, and different Medicare premiums in that trial. Success probability comes out of a thousand full plans, not a thousand portfolio paths with taxes approximated once.
Foundry's deterministic ledger also recomputes locally in your browser when you change an input, which is what makes the shoulder-to-shoulder meeting work: change the retirement year and read the new ledger with the client watching. The full Monte Carlo run happens server-side and is cached per plan — I won't pretend a thousand full tax computations are instantaneous, because they aren't.
On top of the simulation sits the Solver: pick a lever — retirement age, sustainable spending, savings rate, Social Security claim age, Roth conversion size, life-insurance need — set a target probability of success, and it searches the Monte Carlo for the number. That is the "what's the most we can spend" question answered as a number in the meeting.
AI: CoPlanner vs the Forge
eMoney shipped CoPlanner to general availability in March 2026 after a year of beta with 2,000+ firms. It generates plan recommendations in seconds and eMoney reports up to 48% faster plan builds, with the advisor keeping approval control. It's included in all packages, and pairing it with the Zocks document-intelligence integration gets client documents into eMoney Facts.
The Forge is Foundry's version of the same conviction — that data entry and scenario drafting are the hours worth automating — with a different architecture. It's an agentic assistant wired directly into the engine: it reads brokerage statements, 1099s, tax returns, wills, and fact-finders and fills the client profile; it runs projections and drafts scenarios; it prepares deck pages. Three design rules matter more than the feature list. Every number it states must trace to an engine calculation — it is blocked from asserting figures it didn't compute. Every write to a plan requires your explicit approval. And every change it makes can be undone. If you're evaluating any planning AI, ask those three questions: can it invent numbers, can it change data without sign-off, and can you roll it back.
Where eMoney wins, plainly
- You need aggregation. Foundry has no advisor-side aggregation network. Clients can link accounts via Plaid in the Foundry client portal, and we sync with Orion for firms on it, but nobody should pretend that answers eMoney's 12,000 connections.
- You're a large firm. eMoney's share at big firms is dominant for a reason: enterprise APIs, SSO expectations, dedicated support tiers, and a vendor that has survived 26 years of due-diligence questionnaires. Foundry sells to advisors and small RIAs today.
- You need breadth we haven't built. Foundry does not model ACA premium subsidies, doesn't have a dedicated student-loan module, and models pensions as configurable income streams rather than a first-class pension object. If those are load-bearing in your practice, weigh them.
- You want the industry-default portal. eMoney's portal + Vault is the one clients may already know from a prior advisor.
Pricing: estimates vs a price tag
eMoney does not publish pricing — "available upon request". The most current third-party estimates, from XY Planning Network's comparison, updated March 2026: Plus around $2,600/advisor/year, Pro at $4,100+, Premier at $5,000+, on 12-month contracts, with enterprise discounts that solo RIAs generally don't get. Reviewers on Capterra note the 12-month lock-in.
Foundry's pricing is public: $199 per advisor per month, or $1,990 per year billed annually. Unlimited clients, every feature included — the tax engine, the Solver, the Forge, the portal, the CRM, the decks. No tiers, no per-plan fees, no gated modules. The one add-on is AI Import at $99/month per firm for bulk document-driven onboarding, and the first three client onboardings are free. 14-day trial, cancel anytime.
At list-price estimates, an advisor on eMoney Pro pays roughly twice what Foundry costs; on Premier, roughly two and a half times. If eMoney's aggregation and scale earn that for your practice, that's a rational trade. Just price the engine you're actually using.
Switching costs, honestly
Switching planning software is real work — plan for degraded throughput while the team learns, and for the first dozen clients to take longer. Foundry's transition path is document-driven: export the client's statements, tax return, and current plan PDFs, drop them into the Forge, and review what it extracted into the profile. That is genuinely faster than retyping — and it is not a native eMoney file importer, so don't let anyone (including us) imply your eMoney scenarios port over intact. Assumptions and scenario structures get rebuilt. Most firms run their first client review in Foundry within ten business days of kickoff.
Who should choose which
Choose eMoney if: aggregation is your planning surface; you're an enterprise or growing past 20 advisors; your clients expect the portal they already know; you need integration breadth today; or your practice leans on modules Foundry lacks (ACA subsidies, student loans, first-class pensions).
Choose Foundry Planning if: your practice is retirement-income and tax-decision heavy — Roth conversions sized to brackets and IRMAA tiers, withdrawal sequencing, equity comp, estate interactions; you want the plan to recompute in front of the client instead of after the meeting; you're paying Pro/Premier prices for an engine you supplement with a separate tax tool; or you're a solo or small RIA for whom $2,000+ of annual savings per advisor is real money.
A fair third option: if you're comparing eMoney against the rest of the mid-market, read our RightCapital comparison — and note that RightCapital's user rating (8.40) now tops eMoney's (8.14) in T3 2026 even as eMoney's share leads. If you're coming from the goals-based side of the market, the MoneyGuidePro head-to-head covers that corner.
Frequently asked questions
Is Foundry Planning a good eMoney alternative? For aggregation-centered practices, no — stay on eMoney. For tax- and cash-flow-decision-centered practices, yes: a documented federal + 50-state tax engine, IRMAA on the real two-year lookback, full-tax-engine Monte Carlo, and one all-inclusive price at half of eMoney Pro's estimated cost.
How much does eMoney cost vs Foundry? eMoney doesn't publish pricing; March 2026 estimates run ~$2,600 (Plus) to $5,000+ (Premier) per advisor/year on annual contracts. Foundry is $199/month or $1,990/year, published, everything included.
Does eMoney model IRMAA? Its public documentation doesn't describe IRMAA modeling, and eMoney is absent from T3 2026's tax-software category; verify in a demo. Foundry computes Part B and Part D IRMAA from projected MAGI two years back, inside the plan engine.
What does eMoney clearly do better? Aggregation (12,000+ connections), enterprise integrations and APIs, institutional scale, and portal ubiquity. It's also the T3 2026 market-share leader at 35.62%.
Sources and methodology
eMoney claims cite eMoney's own site, knowledgebase PDFs, and press releases; market data cites the 2026 T3/Inside Information Software Survey (2,906 respondents, March 2026); pricing estimates cite XYPN and review-site reports, since eMoney's list prices aren't public. All sources accessed July 9, 2026. Foundry claims are verified against the shipping product — the capability tour is here, and if you find a claim on this page our engine can't back in a live demo, email support@foundryplanning.com and we'll correct the post publicly.