ProjectionLab Review 2026: Pricing, Pros, Cons, And Alternatives

ProjectionLab is a web-based financial planning tool that projects your net worth, taxes, and cash flow year by year for the rest of your life. It's built for people working toward financial independence and early retirement, and in 2026 it costs $0 for the Basic plan or $129 a year for Premium, according to ProjectionLab.

At The College Investor, we tell readers to avoid student loans, pay off debt, grow their income with side hustles, and invest steadily. Those are tactics. If you're aiming for a specific date to leave full-time work, you also need a plan you can stress-test, and ProjectionLab does that better than any spreadsheet we've built.

What Is ProjectionLab?

ProjectionLab is a financial planning calculator created by Kyle Nolan and run by a small bootstrapped team. The cool thing about this is that this company is incredibly responsive to user feedback, and the product shows!

It doesn't tell you when to retire, how many kids to have, or how much to spend in retirement. You bring the goals, and the tool shows how each one changes your finances over time.

The projections go well past a basic calculator. You can model a career change, a home purchase versus renting, children, a sabbatical, or part-time work, and every assumption (returns, inflation, tax rates, life expectancy) is editable.

It's our pick for total life planning on our list of the best retirement calculators.

What's New In ProjectionLab For 2026

The biggest change is price. Premium went from $109 to $129 a year, Pro went from $540 to $549, and the lifetime plan went from $799 to $1,199. Paid plans are now billed annually, so the old $14 monthly option appears to be gone. The annual cost still compares well with a robo-advisor fee on a large portfolio.

The feature set grew too. Premium added Roth conversion modeling, capital gains harvesting, withdrawal strategies, ACA subsidy planning, estate planning, a compare mode for side-by-side scenarios, and downloadable reports. ProjectionLab also added tax presets for Canada, the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, and Germany, which matters if you plan to retire abroad or move during your plan.

Account syncing arrived through the side door. ProjectionLab still won't connect to your bank, but plugins can now pull balances from Lunch Money, YNAB, and Monarch Money.

What Does It Offer?

ProjectionLab gives you control of every input. Based on your goals, timelines, and assumptions, it charts the likelihood that a plan works over your lifetime, the range of possible outcomes, and how alternatives compare.

Here's some great scenarios to plan:

• Rent vs. Buy A Home
• How Different Home Prices (or other large purchases) Could Impact Your Goals
• Starting A Family
• Spending vs. Saving Extra Cashflow

Create Your Current Financial Snapshot

ProjectionLab doesn't connect directly to your financial accounts. You build your current snapshot by hand: income, expenses, assets, and debts. You can combine finances for married couples or keep them separate.

Debts include student loans, and ProjectionLab lists student loan payoff among the scenarios it models. If you're on a federal plan, get your real monthly payment from our RAP calculator or student loan calculator first, then enter it. Otherwise the projection will use a payment that doesn't match your bill.

Fully Customize Your Plan

Every milestone is up to you. If you want to take a sabbatical at 40 to visit every National Park, add the expense and the income gap. If you or your spouse plan to leave work when you have children, build that in, and toggle scenarios on and off to see their impact. Most basic calculators assume your life stays the same until retirement, which is why rules of thumb for retirement savings by age only go so far.

Monte Carlo Simulations And Historical Backtesting

A typical retirement calculator assumes one average return, say 7%, every single year. Real markets don't work that way, and the order of returns matters: a crash in your first year of retirement does far more damage than the same crash 20 years in. Monte Carlo simulation runs your plan through thousands of randomized return sequences and reports the share of runs where your money lasts. That's a better test than comparing yourself to average net worth figures.

Historical backtesting runs your plan through actual past market periods instead, the same approach the free tool FI Calc uses. Both are on ProjectionLab's free Basic plan. Use them together: Monte Carlo shows a range, and backtesting shows whether your plan would have survived the worst stretches on record, which is useful context when deciding how to invest a large nest egg.

Visualize Cash Flow

ProjectionLab uses a Sankey chart to show money coming in and going out each year. It's most useful around a big one-time expense (like a remodel) or a recurring one that lasts several years (like daycare). Budgeting apps such as YNAB and Empower show where your money went last month, while ProjectionLab's chart shows where it's projected to go in year 12. Cash-flow projections are listed as a Premium feature.

Tax Planning Tools (Premium)

Taxes can be one of your largest expenses in both your earning years and your drawdown years. Premium models Roth conversions, so you can test a Roth conversion ladder or see how much room you have to fill your tax brackets with conversions each year. It also handles capital gains harvesting, withdrawal order across account types, and ACA subsidy thresholds for early retirees buying their own health insurance.

ProjectionLab estimates future taxes for planning. It doesn't file returns or replace tax software, and its estimates are only as good as the income you enter. Use it to see how a choice plays out across decades, like whether to realize gains in a year your income sits in the 0% capital gains bracket.

Estate Planning, Multiple Plans, And Compare Mode

Premium adds estate and legacy modeling, multiple saved plans, and a compare mode that puts two scenarios side by side. Compare mode answers questions like "retire at 50 vs. 55" faster than flipping between plans. For the paperwork side of an estate plan, see our list of estate planning documents you need.

International Planning: Canada, The UK, And Australia

ProjectionLab is no longer US-only. It includes tax presets and account types for Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, and Germany, and international planning is part of Premium. Canadian users can build plans around their own account types instead of forcing a US traditional vs. Roth IRA structure onto them. Check that your province's specifics are covered before paying.

How Much Does ProjectionLab Cost?

ProjectionLab has a free Basic plan, a $129-a-year Premium plan, a $549-a-year Pro plan for financial advisors, and a $1,199 lifetime option for Premium. Most individuals who pay choose Premium, which is still cheaper than most financial advisor fees.

Basic runs forecasting, Monte Carlo simulations, and historical backtesting, but it can't save plans. Premium and Pro each come with a seven-day free trial, and if you cancel within those seven days your card isn't charged. Pro includes 10 client seats and adds clients for $2 a month each, which is aimed at advisors and fee-only planners.

Is The ProjectionLab Lifetime Plan Worth It?

ProjectionLab lifetime plan costs $1,199 once. At $129 a year, it breaks even after about 9.3 years. If you expect to use ProjectionLab for a decade or more, which is a realistic horizon for anyone planning early retirement, the lifetime plan saves money.

Two things argue for it. Premium has already gone up 18% since our original 2023 review ($109 to $129), and lifetime locks you in against future increases. 

The case against: you're betting $1,199 on a small, bootstrapped company still running in 2036. If you only want a one-time plan, a single year of Premium (or the free plan) is the cheaper path, and the difference could go into your retirement accounts instead.

How Does ProjectionLab Compare?

ProjectionLab is a planning tool for people who aren't financial planners. It's not a portfolio analysis tool like Vyzer or Snowball Analytics, and it doesn't come with a CFP like Facet Wealth or Wealthfront. Its closest competitors are other planning tools.

Boldin (formerly NewRetirement) is the most direct alternative. Its PlannerPlus plan costs $144 a year after a 14-day trial, links accounts through data aggregators, and includes Monte Carlo analysis, which Boldin's free plan does not. Boldin is more retirement-focused, and ProjectionLab is more flexible for mid-career life events.

Empower is free and links your accounts automatically, which makes it the better choice if you want a live net worth and retirement snapshot with no data entry. The tradeoff is depth: you can't build the kind of year-by-year life plan ProjectionLab handles, and Empower makes money by offering wealth management to higher-balance users.

FI Calc is free, supported by donations, and tests withdrawal strategies against historical market data. It's a good second opinion on your withdrawal rate, but it doesn't model income, kids, homes, or taxes. Use it as a second opinion alongside a full planner, the same way you'd pair a planner with one of our portfolio analysis tools.

Whichever tool you use, it can make sense to get a second opinion from a fiduciary before a major move. Boldin's advisor service charges a $3,200 flat fee for a full retirement plan checkup, and flat-fee planners like Domain Money offer similar one-time reviews.

Who Should Use ProjectionLab?

ProjectionLab fits best if your plan has moving parts. Someone targeting retirement at 45, a family planning a year of travel, or a household where one income is freelance or commission-based gets far more out of it than a W-2 earner with one 401(k). It also handles rental income and 72(t) early withdrawals, which matters if you're building multiple streams of income.

Dual-income households benefit from modeling each spouse's income, benefits, and retirement date separately. Couples with rental properties can model the income and the eventual sale. A plan with this many pieces is where a Fat FIRE target gets tested against real numbers.

If you want automatic tracking with no data entry, Empower or Monarch Money will serve you better. ProjectionLab also gives no financial advice, so readers who want someone to tell them what to do should look elsewhere. A robo-advisor or human planner is the better fit there.

Mistakes To Avoid When Setting Up Your First Plan

Mixing nominal and inflation-adjusted numbers is one of the easiest errors to make: if your return assumption is before inflation but your spending is in today's dollars, the plan will look far better than it is. Keep both on the same basis, and check whether your savings by age still look on track afterward.

Leaving taxes out of withdrawals is the second. A dollar in a traditional 401(k) isn't a dollar you can spend, and a plan that treats it as one will overstate your safe spending. Account for an HSA used as a retirement account, Roth balances, and taxable accounts separately.

Treat a Monte Carlo success rate as a range, not a promise. An 85% success rate means 15% of simulated paths ran out of money, so build in a spending cut you'd make if markets went against you. That kind of flexibility is the same idea behind tax-loss harvesting in a down year: plan your response before you need it.

Update the plan at least once a year and after any big change: a new job, a marriage, a child, a home purchase, or an inheritance. If entering balances by hand is the reason you won't update, connect a balance-sync plugin from a budgeting app like Lunch Money.

How Do I Open A ProjectionLab Account?

You can start on the free Basic plan from the ProjectionLab site. Upgrading to Premium or Pro requires an email address and starts a seven-day free trial. To keep the account after the trial, you enter payment details, which are handled by Paddle, ProjectionLab's payment processor. See our best budgeting apps if you need a tool to feed it numbers.

Is It Safe And Secure?

ProjectionLab stores your plan data in your account on Google Cloud and Firebase, encrypted in transit and at rest with AES-256. You can add multi-factor authentication with an authenticator app or text message, and Paddle processes payments, so your card number never touches ProjectionLab's systems. Because it doesn't link to your bank, a breach wouldn't expose account logins the way it could with an aggregator like Empower.

ProjectionLab says it never sells your data and doesn't run ads. You can export your data to JSON at any time and delete your account and plans from inside the app. Its security program is "designed to align with core SOC 2 control areas," but ProjectionLab itself isn't SOC 2 certified, a distinction worth knowing if you track net worth tools like Kubera on security too.

How Do I Contact ProjectionLab?

ProjectionLab says its Discord community is the best place to get support and is staffed seven days a week. You can also email [email protected] from the address tied to your account, post in the r/projectionlab subreddit, watch walkthroughs on its YouTube channel, or book a paid 1:1 session. Its written help center answers most setup questions, including how to turn on the balance-sync plugins for apps on our best budgeting apps list.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is ProjectionLab Free?

Yes. The Basic plan is free and includes forecasting, Monte Carlo simulations, and historical backtesting, but it doesn't save your plans. Premium, at $129 a year, adds saved plans, cash-flow projections, and the tax tools covered in our retirement calculator rankings.

How Much Does ProjectionLab Cost In 2026?

Premium costs $129 a year and Pro costs $549 a year, both billed annually with a seven-day free trial. A lifetime Premium license costs $1,199. For comparison, a 1% advisory fee on a $150,000 portfolio costs $1,500 a year, and our robo-advisor rankings show what lower-cost managed options charge.

Does ProjectionLab Have A Lifetime Plan?

Yes. The lifetime plan costs $1,199 once and covers Premium, according to two 2026 reviews. It breaks even against the annual plan after about 9.3 years, so it fits people who plan to use it through early retirement.

Does ProjectionLab Work In Canada?

Yes. ProjectionLab includes tax presets and account types for Canada, the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, and Germany. International planning is a Premium feature, so test the free plan first, and compare it with the US-centric tools on our retirement calculator list.

Can ProjectionLab Link To My Bank Accounts?

Not directly. ProjectionLab requires manual entry, but plugins sync balances from Lunch Money, YNAB, and Monarch Money, and direct linking is on its public roadmap. If you want automatic linking today, Empower or Boldin's PlannerPlus does it.

Is ProjectionLab Better Than Boldin?

It depends on what you're planning. ProjectionLab is more flexible for mid-career life events and costs $129 a year. Boldin costs $144 a year, links accounts, and is more focused on retirement income.

If you have an hour or two to learn it, ProjectionLab's free plan is one of the best ways to test whether "current you" and "future you" agree on the tradeoffs. Most people won't update a plan monthly, and for a one-time look, Basic is enough. Pair it with a reality check on your retirement savings.

Premium is worth $129 a year if you're pursuing early retirement, planning a life-interrupting event like extended travel, or doing Roth conversions. You'll tinker with the plan, and the tax tools alone justify the cost for anyone modeling conversions. If you expect to use it for 10 years or more, the $1,199 lifetime plan pays for itself.

Financial advisors and coaches may get the most out of ProjectionLab. Pro costs $549 a year with 10 client seats, and it shows clients scenarios in a format most people understand. Advisors who also want clients tracking spending can pair it with one of the Quicken alternatives we've tested.

Check out ProjectionLab here >>

ProjectionLab Features