Note: This is an archive of Investopedia's 2019 Best Robo-Advisors Awards, you can find the 2022 Best Robo-Advisors here.
At Investopedia, our mission is to simplify complex financial information and decisions for our readers, giving them the confidence to manage every aspect of their financial life. Helping investors find the right tools and platforms to invest with is key to that mission. With so many options available, our team evaluated more than 30 robo-advisor platforms using our robust methodology.
Once a year we hand out awards to showcase the robo-advisors that have demonstrated excellence across five different categories that cover the different needs that investors have.
Here are our winners for 2019.
Best Robo-Advisors
Our list of the top robo-advisors represents the best-in-industry platforms that offer solutions for investors at all levels.
- Wealthfront Read review
- M1 Finance Read review
- Betterment Read review
- Personal Capital Read review
- Interactive Advisors Read review
See our full list of the Best Robo-Advisors.
Best for Beginners
Winners in this category offered the most guidance and education to users throughout the process of opening an account to funding and managing it. We favored those platforms with lower minimum deposits to create an easy starting point for new investors with fewer assets.
- Betterment Read review
- Fidelity Go Read review
- Wealthfront Read review
- Merrill Edge Guided Investing Read review
- E*TRADE Core Portfolios Read review
See our full list of the Best Robo-Advisors For Beginners.
Best for Sophisticated Investors
While robo-advisors are generally geared towards those who are looking for more of a hands-off investing experience, there are several that provide the ability to have more command and control over your investments. In this category, we favored those that offered customizable portfolios, the ability to invest in individual stocks, deeper insights into portfolios prior to funding, and tax-advantaged features. We also looked at each robo-advisor’s research tools, as well as more advanced account services such as the ability to take out a loan backed by the investor’s portfolio balance.
- M1 Finance Read review
- Motif Investing Read review (Closed on May 20, 2020.)
- Interactive Advisors Read review
- Personal Capital Read review
- Vanguard Read review
See our full list of the Best Robo-Advisors For Sophisticated Investors.
Best for Goal Setting
When considering robo-advisors that are best for goal setting, we awarded the platforms that provide easy-to-use tools that help you create savings and investment goals, and monitor your progress against them.
- Wealthfront Read review
- Betterment Read review
- Personal Capital Read review
- Vanguard Personal Advisor Services Read review
- SoFi Invest Read review
See our full list of the Best Robo-Advisors For Goal Setting.
Best for Socially Responsible Investing
Socially responsible investing (SRI) is the practice of investing in companies or sectors that considers environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) criteria to generate long-term competitive financial returns and positive societal impact. These types of investments include companies that are engaged in social justice, environmental sustainability, alternative energy, and clean technology efforts. For this category, we awarded platforms that provided users with a range of SRI investment choices and the ability to customize their own portfolios.
- M1 Finance Read review
- Motif Investing Read review (Closed on May 20, 2020)
- Interactive Advisors Read review
- Personal Capital Read review
See our full list of the Best Robo-Advisors For Socially Responsible Investing.
Why We Do It
Finding the right robo-advisor to achieve your financial goals is more challenging than ever given the abundance of products available today. To make it easier, we user-tested over 30 online brokers to identify which robo-advisors offer the best solutions for investors in 2019. What we've created is a comprehensive set of reviews and rankings that will allow any investor to find the right robo-advisor for them.
To find out more about how we picked our top robo-advisors, read our full methodology.