Foundry Planning vs MoneyGuidePro: an honest 2026 comparison.
I run Foundry Planning, and this comparison lives on Foundry's marketing site. Same rules as the eMoney and RightCapital head-to-heads: every MoneyGuide claim below links to a primary source — most of the load-bearing ones to MoneyGuide's own published pricing page — every Foundry claim is verified against the shipping engine, and the "where MoneyGuide wins" section is genuine. This closes out the big three promised in the evaluation framework.
The honest frame first: MoneyGuidePro was the most-used planning software in the industry for seventeen straight years, and it is still #2. Tens of thousands of advisors run their practices on it today. The interesting question is not whether MoneyGuide is credible — it's whether its goals-based paradigm and à-la-carte structure still match your practice, and what the trend lines say about where it's headed.
The short version
MoneyGuide (Envestnet | MoneyGuide, still widely called MoneyGuidePro) built its lead on a simple insight: clients respond to goals and probabilities, not spreadsheets. Its Play Zone® and What-If Worksheet made it the tool advisors could safely drive in the meeting, and enterprise distribution through broker-dealers made it ubiquitous. In the 2026 T3/Inside Information survey it still holds 24.23% market share — second only to eMoney's 35.62%.
The trend is the story. That 24.23% is down from roughly 33% two years earlier, ending a 17-year run at #1, and its 7.62/10 satisfaction rating is the lowest of the big three (RightCapital 8.40, eMoney 8.14). Envestnet, MoneyGuide's parent, was taken private by Bain Capital in November 2024 in a $4.5 billion transaction, and advisors evaluating the platform today are weighing that ownership change alongside a 2023 upgrade that was recalled after widespread bugs (competitor content — Income Lab's switching guide, which links the original RIABiz reporting).
Foundry Planning's pitch against it is structural, not incremental: MoneyGuide's base product is goals-based planning, with detailed cash-flow planning sold as a separate $2,500 tier and aggregation, client education, and prospecting sold as annual add-ons on top. Foundry is cash-flow-first on one deterministic ledger — federal and 50-state taxes, Social Security, estate, and Monte Carlo computed together — at one price with nothing gated.
At a glance
| MoneyGuide | Foundry Planning | |
|---|---|---|
| Paradigm | Goals-based; detailed cash-flow requires the Wealth Studios tier | Cash-flow-first, single deterministic ledger |
| Federal tax engine | "Tax Planning" listed as a base feature; engine internals not publicly documented | Full per-year computation: brackets, LTCG stacking, AMT, NIIT, QBI, SS taxability, FICA/SE |
| Capital gains | Not documented per-lot in public materials we could find | Modeled per account and transaction with basis tracking |
| IRMAA | Health Care Cost Smart Goal models Medicare costs; lookback methodology not publicly documented | Part B + Part D surcharges on the true two-year MAGI lookback |
| Roth conversions | Bracket-targeting conversion tool | Bracket-fill that iterates against SS taxability, QBI, and deductions; Form 8606 pro-rata basis |
| Estate | Advanced estate strategies in Wealth Studios ($2,500 tier): trusts, gifting, entities | Estate/gift/GST on the same ledger; trusts incl. CRT/CLT; 13 estate-tax + 5 inheritance-tax states — included |
| In-meeting interactivity | Play Zone®, What-If Worksheet — the industry's best-known | Timeline-driven re-solve: drag a retirement date and the whole ledger recomputes |
| AI | None announced as of this writing | Forge: document intake, scenario drafting, approval-gated writes, full undo |
| Aggregation | Yodlee or MX client-portal add-on, $400/yr each | None advisor-side (client portal links via Plaid) |
| Pricing | $2,000 / $2,500 / $3,000 per advisor/yr + add-ons | $199/mo or $1,990/yr, no tiers, everything included |
| T3 2026 rating / share | 7.62 / 24.23% | Not yet surveyed — we're too new |
Pricing and survey figures accessed July 9, 2026.
What MoneyGuide genuinely does well
The client conversation, historically. Play Zone® and the What-If Worksheet let an advisor move sliders live — retire two years earlier, spend $10k more, take more risk — and watch the probability of success move. That interaction pattern is why MoneyGuide won seventeen straight years of market leadership, and it's still the reference point every planning tool (including ours) gets measured against in meetings.
Goals-based framing that clients understand. For accumulator households, "you're on track for 87% of your goals" is a sentence that lands. MoneyGuide's plan structure, Auto Goals, and Plan Summary are built around that sentence. If your practice's deliverable is that conversation, MoneyGuide's base product does it well at a fair price.
Breadth of base-tier features. The $2,000 base tier includes Social Security optimization, secure-income (annuity) modeling, a healthcare-cost goal, risk tolerance, stress testing, and a client portal — a genuinely wide feature list before any add-ons.
Enterprise distribution and track record. Two decades, the largest broker-dealer footprint in planning, and integration into the Envestnet platform stack. If your firm already runs on Envestnet, MoneyGuide is the path of least resistance, and MyBlocks ($600/yr) is a real client-education tool with no Foundry equivalent.
Where the structure costs you
Cash-flow planning is an upsell. This is the clearest paradigm difference on the market: MoneyGuide's own pricing page labels the base product "Comprehensive Goal-Based Planning" and sells "Detailed Cash-Flow Planning" inside Wealth Studios at $2,500 — $500 more per advisor per year. RightCapital's comparison (competitor content, labeled) makes the same point: in MoneyGuide, advisors must use the goals-based approach unless they buy up. Foundry doesn't have a goals-based mode to fall back to — the deterministic year-by-year ledger is the product, because the numbers an advisor discusses with a client are the plan.
The à-la-carte menu. Aggregation is $400/yr per user (Yodlee) or $400/yr (MX). MyBlocks is $600. Dash prospecting is $500. The Morningstar Risk Profiler is $739. None of these are unreasonable individually; the point is that the sticker price and the working price are different numbers, and you should do the math for your practice before comparing. Foundry's price is the working price — the only add-on we sell is AI Import at $99/month per firm for bulk document-driven onboarding, and day-to-day Forge document intake is included.
Tax internals aren't documented. MoneyGuide lists "Tax Planning" as a base feature, but we could not find public documentation of how its engine computes capital-gains lots, AMT, NIIT, QBI, or the IRMAA lookback — the specifics that determine whether a Roth conversion recommendation survives contact with a CPA. (This is the same finding as in the eMoney head-to-head; RightCapital, to its credit, documents its simplifications.) Foundry publishes its methodology: per-year computation of brackets, LTCG stacking, AMT with the ISO bargain element, NIIT, QBI, Social Security taxability, and IRMAA Part B and Part D on the actual two-year MAGI lookback, for federal plus every state and DC.
Monte Carlo internals. MoneyGuide's probability-of-success number drives its whole client experience; what computes inside each trial isn't publicly documented. Foundry runs 1,000 correlated-return trials with the entire tax engine inside every trial — each trial produces its own withdrawals, tax bills, and IRMAA tiers — and the Solver goal-seeks against it.
Trajectory. The T3 numbers (share down ~9 points in two years, lowest big-three satisfaction at 7.62), the recalled 2023 upgrade, G2 ratings of 4.0 vs RightCapital's 4.6 as of January 2026 (competitor-labeled), and the Bain take-private are all pointing the same direction. Foundry is far too new to throw stones about track record — see the caveat below — but a platform decision is a decade decision, and slope matters as much as position.
Pricing: the menu vs one number
From MoneyGuide's published pricing, accessed July 9, 2026 — and credit to them for publishing it:
| MoneyGuide | Wealth Studios | Platform | Foundry Planning | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Annual cost per advisor | $2,000 | $2,500 | $3,000 | $1,990 (or $199/mo) |
| Detailed cash-flow planning | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Advanced estate / trusts | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Client-portal aggregation | +$400/yr | +$400/yr | +$400/yr | Plaid linking included |
| MyBlocks client education | +$600/yr | +$600/yr | ✓ | — (no equivalent) |
| Dash prospecting | +$500/yr | +$500/yr | ✓ | — (no equivalent) |
| Commitment | Annual or monthly | Annual or monthly | Annual or monthly | Monthly or annual; cancel anytime |
The comparison that matters: to get cash-flow planning plus aggregation from MoneyGuide you're at $2,900/year per advisor; the full Platform bundle is $3,000 before the risk-profiler add-on. Foundry is $1,990/year with the engine, estate modeling, Forge, the Solver, and the client portal all in the one number. If goals-based-only at $2,000 covers your practice, MoneyGuide's base tier is priced fairly — that's a real segment, and it's not the segment we built for.
Where MoneyGuide wins, plainly
- The in-meeting experience for goals-based practices. Play Zone is battle-tested with two decades of advisor muscle memory behind it.
- Client education. MyBlocks is a real, purpose-built module. Foundry has nothing comparable.
- Aggregation exists. A $400 add-on beats Foundry's advisor-side nothing (our client portal links accounts via Plaid; there is no advisor-side aggregation network).
- Enterprise and broker-dealer fit. If your firm's stack is Envestnet, MoneyGuide is native to it. Foundry's integration list is short (Orion; Plaid in the portal) and its CRM is native rather than Redtail/Wealthbox-connected.
- Prospecting. Dash gives home offices a guided prospect journey; Foundry has no equivalent.
- Track record. Twenty years and the largest install base in planning history. Foundry is new and not yet in T3's tables; that asymmetry is real and you should weigh it.
Who should choose which
Choose MoneyGuide if: your practice runs on goals-based conversations and probability-of-success framing; your clients are accumulators for whom year-by-year tax detail is noise; your broker-dealer or home office already standardizes on Envestnet; or client education and prospecting modules matter more to you than engine depth.
Choose Foundry Planning if: your book is retirement-income and tax-decision heavy — Roth conversion sizing, withdrawal sequencing, IRMAA management, equity comp, trusts; you want the cash-flow detail MoneyGuide gates behind Wealth Studios as the default, not the upgrade; or you're adding up the menu — base plus aggregation plus education — and noticing it exceeds one flat price that includes everything.
The seven-dimension framework is the longer version of this decision. The eMoney and RightCapital head-to-heads cover the other two corners of the big three.
Frequently asked questions
Is Foundry a good MoneyGuidePro alternative? For practices that want cash-flow-level detail as the default — with the tax engine documented and included — yes, that's the case Foundry was built for. For goals-based practices, MoneyGuide's base product remains a fair-priced fit.
How do the prices compare? MoneyGuide: $2,000 (goal-based) / $2,500 (Wealth Studios, adds cash-flow and advanced estate) / $3,000 (Platform) per advisor per year, with aggregation, MyBlocks, and Dash as add-ons. Foundry: $199/month or $1,990/year, everything included, cancel anytime.
Why did MoneyGuidePro lose the #1 spot? Share fell from ~33% (2024) to 24.23% (2026 T3 survey) while satisfaction dropped to 7.62 — the big-three low — amid a recalled 2023 upgrade and an ownership change. It is still #2 by a wide margin.
What does MoneyGuide clearly do better? In-meeting goals-based interactivity, client education (MyBlocks), prospecting (Dash), enterprise/broker-dealer distribution, aggregation availability, and twenty years of track record.
Sources and methodology
MoneyGuide claims cite MoneyGuide's published pricing page and product materials; market data cites the 2026 T3/Inside Information Software Survey and T3 Technology Hub's survey coverage; the Envestnet transaction cites Envestnet's own newsroom. Competitor-published comparisons (RightCapital, Income Lab) are labeled as such where used. All sources accessed July 9, 2026. Foundry claims are verified against the shipping product — capability tour — and if a live demo can't back a claim on this page, email support@foundryplanning.com and we'll correct it publicly.