Pure Benchmarks · Comparison

401(k) Benchmarking Tools in 2026

Search for 401(k) benchmarking and almost everything you find is bought by your employer. The category was built for fiduciaries: it compares one company plan against other company plans on fees, menu design and participant averages, and it exists because plan sponsors have a legal duty to show the arrangement is reasonable. That is a real and useful industry, and it answers a question no employee asked. This page separates the tools that measure the plan from the very few that measure your account, and is explicit about which of them you can actually sign up for.

Plan benchmarking and account benchmarking are different products

Plan benchmarking asks whether the recordkeeping fee is competitive, whether the fund menu is defensible and how participation compares to similar employers. Account benchmarking asks whether the money you personally hold did well. The first is procurement and fiduciary documentation. The second is performance review. Vendors in the first group are not failing at the second; they were never pointed at it.

Why the employee-facing shelf is so empty

For a few years the participant side had a visible product in a 401(k) robo-adviser that read your plan, scored the allocation and managed it for a flat fee. It stopped servicing clients in November 2022 and sold its technology to a large bank. What remains for individuals is mostly fee analysis: useful, knowable in advance, and silent on whether your actual return was ordinary or poor.

Fees are the part everyone can already measure

A free retirement fee analyzer will read the expense ratios inside your accounts and project what they cost by the time you retire. That is worth running, because plan-level expenses range from close to nothing in very large plans to well over one percent in small ones and are rarely shown anywhere obvious. It also has a ceiling: knowing the drag does not tell you whether the remaining result was good.

What a target date fund hides

Most 401(k) money sits in a dated fund chosen by the year you plan to stop working. Comparing two of them without accounting for the glide path measures how much equity each one holds, not how well anything was run. A comparison that means something has to hold risk roughly constant first, then look at what is left. That is the difference between a ranking that moves with the market and one that reflects decisions.

What you can do without involving your employer

You can read the expense ratios on every fund you hold and project their lifetime cost. You can calculate your own time-weighted return rather than reading the balance. You can compare that return against other real investors holding a similar risk mix over the same months. None of that requires plan data, a fiduciary process or a conversation with HR, and the last one is the part the employer-facing industry does not produce.

How this comparison works

Who is 401(k) benchmarking actually built for, and is there anything that benchmarks my account rather than my employer’s plan?

The category splits cleanly on one question: who buys it. Most 401(k) benchmarking is sold to plan sponsors, fiduciaries and the advisors serving them, and it measures the plan. A much smaller group of tools measures the account.
For each product the audience was taken from the vendor’s own description of who it serves, not inferred from the marketing tone.
Where a vendor does not publish a price, that is recorded as not published rather than estimated.
Pure Benchmarks is our own product and is the only entry that starts from the participant side, which is also why its fee-benchmarking column is empty.

The comparison

Capabilities verified against each vendor's published pages on September 21, 2026.

Capability	Pure Benchmarks	Empower Personal Dashboard	Morningstar Investor	Judy Diamond 401(k) Benchmark Report	401k Comparator	Benchmark My Plan	Ok401k
Usable by you	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Your actual return	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Investor peers	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No
Risk-matched	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No
Fee analysis	No	Yes	Partly	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Published price	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Free real output	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Price	Free account	Free dashboard	Subscription, free trial	Not published	Not published	Free to fiduciaries	Free to employers

✓ yes · ~ partly · ✗ no

What each capability means

An individual employee can run it on their own account without going through their employer

Almost everything sold as 401(k) benchmarking is bought by the company, not by the person whose retirement it is. If you cannot sign up yourself, the tool is not available to you in any practical sense.

Measures the actual return of your own account rather than describing the plan around it

Plan-level benchmarking reports on the menu of funds, the recordkeeping fee and the average participant. None of that tells you how the money you personally chose has done.

Compares you against other real investors rather than against other employers’ plans

Knowing your plan charges less than the industry average is useful to your employer. Knowing whether people like you did better with the same market over the same months is the question you actually asked.

Holds risk roughly constant before ranking, so the comparison is not just a bet on stocks

A target date fund set for 2055 and one set for 2030 will always diverge in a rising market. Comparing them without accounting for that measures the glide path rather than the choices.

Surfaces the fees dragging on the account

Fees are the one part of retirement outcomes that is knowable in advance, and expense ratios inside a plan menu are rarely presented anywhere you would naturally look.

Publishes what it costs instead of routing you to a sales call

Enterprise pricing on request is a fair business model and a clear signal about who the product is for.

Produces a complete result without a payment or a sales conversation first

A report you can read on your own numbers before paying anything is the only way to judge whether the comparison is worth having.

Every tool in detail

Pure Benchmarks

Benchmarks the retirement account itself against real investors in the same risk category, rather than benchmarking the plan against other employers’ plans.

Best for: Employees who want to know whether their own 401(k) result was ordinary or poor for someone holding what they hold.

Pricing: A free account produces the full benchmark report on a linked retirement account. No employer involvement and no trial countdown.

Strengths

Runs on the employee’s own linked account, with no employer approval, plan data or fiduciary process involved
Sorts the account into one of nine standardized risk categories and ranks it inside that category
Scores changes made inside the account, including changes made by a plan default or a managed account service

Limitations

Does not benchmark plan-level recordkeeping or administrative fees, which is the core of every other tool on this page
Cannot see funds on the plan menu that you do not hold, so it does not evaluate the menu itself
Requires that the retirement account can be linked read-only; plans that cannot be connected cannot be measured

Empower Personal Dashboard

A free aggregator whose Retirement Fee Analyzer is the most accessible fee check an individual can run on their own accounts.

Best for: Employees who want to see the expense ratios inside their retirement accounts and what those fees cost over a working life.

Pricing: The dashboard, Investment Checkup and Retirement Fee Analyzer are free, with no holdings cap.

Strengths

The Retirement Fee Analyzer reads expense ratios across selected retirement accounts and projects their drag to retirement age
Aggregates workplace plans alongside brokerages, cash and debt in one free view
Investment Checkup assesses risk and proposes an alternative allocation

Limitations

Compares you to indexes and to a target allocation, never to other real investors
Fee analysis is fund-level; it does not benchmark plan administrative costs against other plans
The free dashboard is also the acquisition funnel for the advisory service

Morningstar Investor

Fund-level analysis of what sits inside the account, from the firm that rates the funds.

Best for: Employees who want to understand overlap, style and cost across the funds their plan offered them.

Pricing: Sold as a subscription with a free trial. A price is not published on the product page, so none is stated here.

Strengths

Portfolio X-Ray shows allocation, sector weighting, style and fund fees across everything held together
Benchmarks can be selected across a range from aggressive to conservative
The fund research behind it is the reference point most plan menus are described against

Limitations

Analyzes the funds held rather than whether the account’s result was good for someone in that position
No comparison against other real investors
A trial rather than a free tier, and no published subscription price on the product page

Judy Diamond 401(k) Benchmark Report

The reference dataset for plan-level benchmarking, sold to advisors and plan sponsors.

Best for: Advisors and employers comparing a plan against others in the same industry and size band.

Pricing: No price is listed on the product page; the vendor directs buyers to an order page or a sales line.

Strengths

Covers over 680,000 401(k) plans across 27 industry verticals, one of the largest plan datasets available
Scores plans on eight performance metrics and organizes the comparison by company size
Built for the fiduciary review process, where plan-versus-plan comparison is the actual requirement

Limitations

Audience is advisors and plan sponsors; an employee cannot buy it to review their own account
Measures plans, not the returns of any individual participant
No published price

401k Comparator

Fee benchmarking software for providers and advisors, priced on request.

Best for: Advisors and providers producing cost comparisons across a book of plans.

Pricing: Pricing is described as customized and available by contacting the vendor.

Strengths

Benchmarks plan costs using average account balance, asset allocation and participant count
Produces charted fee comparisons suited to a client-facing review
Built around the industry fee dataset the category is generally measured against

Limitations

Fees only; investment performance is not part of the comparison
Sold business to business, with customized pricing rather than a published one
Nothing in it is addressed to an individual participant

Benchmark My Plan

Free independent plan benchmarking offered to fiduciaries.

Best for: Employers and plan committees documenting that plan fees and design are reasonable.

Pricing: The service is offered at no cost to the fiduciary requesting it.

Strengths

No cost to the employer requesting the review
Covers fees and costs against industry averages alongside participant savings, investment and diversification metrics
Aimed squarely at the fiduciary documentation a plan committee needs

Limitations

The requester must be a plan fiduciary, so an employee cannot run it
Participant metrics are plan-wide aggregates, not any one person’s result
Free to the employer rather than free to you

Ok401k

A free vendor-comparison service for employers weighing their current plan provider against alternatives.

Best for: Employers testing whether their current recordkeeper is competitively priced.

Pricing: The vendor states there is no cost or obligation for the comparison.

Strengths

Compares a plan against up to four other vendors at no cost
Uses an established fiduciary analysis toolset for the comparison
Turnaround is described in business days rather than weeks

Limitations

Employer-facing throughout; there is no path for an individual participant
Vendor and fee comparison rather than investment performance
The output is a procurement document, not a performance review

Your current platform won't show you how your portfolio ranks against real investors in the same risk category. Create your secure Pure Benchmarks account and see exactly where you stand.

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Frequently asked questions

Is there a 401(k) benchmarking tool for employees rather than employers?

Very few. Most of the category, including Judy Diamond's 401(k) Benchmark Report, 401k Comparator, Benchmark My Plan and Ok401k, is sold or offered to plan sponsors, fiduciaries and advisors and measures the plan. On the employee side, Empower's free Retirement Fee Analyzer covers fees, and Pure Benchmarks, our own product, benchmarks the account's return against real investors in the same risk category.

How do I know if my 401(k) is performing well?

Balance growth is not performance, because contributions inflate it. Calculate the return on the money rather than the change in the total, then compare it to investors holding a similar risk mix over the same period. Comparing a 2055 target date fund to the S&P 500 mostly measures how much of it is in bonds.

What does 401(k) plan benchmarking actually measure?

Plan-level tools compare fees and costs against industry averages, evaluate the investment menu, and report participant metrics such as savings rates, allocation and diversification across the whole plan. One of the largest datasets covers more than 680,000 plans across 27 industry verticals. None of that describes any individual's return.

Can I compare my 401(k) to other people's 401(k)s?

Not through the employer-facing tools, which compare plans rather than people. Pure Benchmarks compares your connected retirement account against other verified real investors sorted into the same standardized risk category, which is the closest equivalent to comparing yourself to other savers.

What happened to Blooom?

Blooom, a 401(k) robo-adviser managing more than five billion dollars across roughly 29,000 clients, stopped servicing clients in November 2022 and sold its technology to Morgan Stanley. Its clients were directed back to their retirement plan providers. It was the most visible participant-side 401(k) analysis product, and nothing has directly replaced it.

Is 401(k) benchmarking free?

Several plan-level services are free to the employer requesting them, including Benchmark My Plan and Ok401k, because the vendor is selling something downstream. For an individual, Empower's Retirement Fee Analyzer is free with no holdings cap, and Pure Benchmarks produces its full report on a free account.

Keep exploring

See how retirement portfolios at a specific firm rank against real peers:

New here? Read the portfolio benchmarking FAQ or the Pure Benchmarks blog.

This page is an information baseline for comparison only. It is not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy, sell, replace, or transfer any specific asset, account, or firm. Past performance does not guarantee future results. All figures shown are illustrative.