Comparison

Dividend Pulse vs Retirement Projector

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Dividend Pulse

Manually track your dividend income and portfolio value without linking brokerage accounts. Monitor monthly and annual income, cost basis, and progress toward your dividend goals. Offers a free plan for basic tracking and a Pro subscription for unlimited holdings.

Highlights
  • Manual portfolio tracking
  • Estimated dividend income (monthly/annual)
  • Portfolio value estimation
  • Cost basis and gain/loss tracking
  • Monthly dividend goal progress
  • Holdings across multiple accounts
  • Privacy-focused, no brokerage login
Features
Read full description

Build a calmer way to track your dividend income. Dividend Pulse is a manual-first portfolio tracker for investors who want a simple view of holdings, estimated dividend income, portfolio value, and progress toward a monthly dividend goal without brokerage login. Add stocks or ETFs manually, organize them by account, and see clear estimates based on the values you enter. What you can track: - Estimated monthly dividend income - Estimated annual dividend income - Portfolio value estimate - Cost basis and unrealized gain/loss - Monthly dividend goal progress - Holdings across accounts - Top holdings by value - Saved stock prices when available Manual-first and private by design: - No brokerage username or password required - No Plaid, Robinhood, Webull, or account-linking setup - Your holdings stay on device - Price refresh sends only ticker symbols to retrieve market data when used - Delete your local app data anytime in Settings Dividend Pulse is built for simple tracking, not trading. It does not place trades, move money, provide investment recommendations, or offer financial advice. Values are estimates and may be delayed, incomplete, or inaccurate. Free plan: Track up to 5 holdings and use the basic dividend and wealth dashboard. Dividend Pulse Pro: Upgrade to track unlimited holdings with a monthly or yearly auto-renewable subscription. Subscription pricing is shown in the app before purchase and can be managed or cancelled in your Apple ID account settings. Good for: - Dividend investors - ETF investors - Long-term portfolio tracking - Manual income tracking - Organizing the same ticker across multiple accounts Start with one stock or ETF and build your dividend dashboard over time. Privacy Policy: https://dividendpulse.blogspot.com/2026/05/privacy-policy.html EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Retirement Projector

Features
Read full description

Retirement Projector models an early-retirement plan year by year, from the age you stop working to age 90. It is a projector, not a portfolio tracker. You enter what you have and what you plan to spend, and it shows what happens to the balances, the tax bill and the health-insurance cost in every year in between. WHAT IT MODELS • Four buckets — taxable brokerage, Roth IRA, traditional IRA and crypto — grown at your assumed nominal return. • An optional run-up from today: current balances and recurring deposits compounded forward to the year you retire, which then become the starting balances everything else runs on. Deposits are entered in today's money and inflated forward, and the result can be read in today's dollars or in the dollars of the year you retire. • A withdrawal plan split into age phases anchored to the ages that actually matter: 59 1/2, 65 for Medicare, your Social Security start age, and 73 for RMDs. • Roth conversion ladders, with the five-year seasoning rule and the 59 1/2 gates enforced in the correct order — contributions first, then seasoned conversions, then earnings. • 2026 federal brackets and standard deduction, long-term capital gains stacked on top of ordinary income, a flat state rate, and the 10% early-withdrawal penalty. • Social Security, including the "tax torpedo": the $25k/$32k taxability thresholds are not indexed to inflation and never have been, so more of the benefit becomes taxable as the years pass. • ACA premium subsidies before 65, under either the 2026 cliff regime or the enhanced regime — because a Roth conversion that pushes MAGI past 400% of the federal poverty level can cost more in lost subsidy than it costs in tax. • Inflation, applied to expenses, benefits, brackets and the standard deduction, with a toggle to read every figure in today's dollars or in nominal dollars. WHAT YOU SEE • Six headline figures: starting total, peak portfolio and the age it peaks, balance at 90, the age the money runs out (or how long it lasts), lifetime tax paid, and the traditional IRA balance still exposed to RMDs at 90. • Three charts — balances by account, annual cashflow against your expense target, and annual taxes paid — each with a drag-to-read scrubber. • Plain warnings when a plan breaks: an income shortfall, an early-withdrawal penalty, or a missed RMD. • A strategy optimizer: six named conversion strategies — no conversions, fill the standard deduction, fill the 12% bracket, fill the 22% bracket, fill to the ACA cliff, and hold MAGI down for the subsidy — each run through the same simulator on your own numbers and ranked by lifetime tax, final net worth or after-tax spendable. A strategy that would break the five-year seasoning rule before 59 1/2 is flagged rather than quietly recommended, and one that fails to fund the plan never outranks one that does. Apply the one you like and it loads into your own phase plan, where you can edit it. • Saved scenarios, and CSV export with one row per year. PRIVATE BY CONSTRUCTION No account, no sign-in, no analytics, no advertising, no third-party services. The app makes no network requests at all. Everything you type stays on your phone. The same tool runs in a browser at projector.noobingear.com, and saved scenarios use the same format in both, so a plan built on one can be opened on the other. NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE This is an estimation tool, not financial, tax or legal advice. The modeling is deliberately simplified — a single ACA premium as a proxy for a real benchmark plan, a flat state tax on ordinary income only, cost-of-living adjustments equal to inflation — and every simplification is written out inside the app under "How taxes, inflation & ACA are modeled". Check anything that matters with a qualified professional.

Screenshots

Dividend Pulse4 screens
Retirement Projector4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Retirement Projector at none against Dividend Pulse's 2. Retirement Projector also leads on update cadence (every 4 days vs every 2 weeks) and iOS requirement (15.1 vs 18.6). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Dividend Pulse sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Retirement Projector asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Dividend Pulse ships an update every 2 weeks, Retirement Projector every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 11, 2026 and October 4, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 6 level
Dividend Pulse versus Retirement Projector: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterDividend PulseRetirement Projector
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (1 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings1 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeksEvery 4 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFreemium—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPod
Requires iOS18.615.1 — better
Further details — not scored
Size7 MB23 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperRahul KumarVictor Acosta

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Dividend Pulse

Subscriptions2
  • Dividend Pulse Monthly$2.991 Month
  • Dividend Pulse Yearly$19.991 Year
None

Retirement Projector

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Dividend Pulse free?
Dividend Pulse is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Retirement Projector free?
Retirement Projector is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Dividend Pulse or Retirement Projector have ads?
Neither Dividend Pulse nor Retirement Projector shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Dividend Pulse or Retirement Projector?
Dividend Pulse ships an update every 2 weeks, and Retirement Projector every 4 days. Most recently, Dividend Pulse was updated on October 11, 2026 and Retirement Projector on October 4, 2026.

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