If you’re comparing ProjectionLab against other DIY planners, you already know the important part: it’s a good tool. It doesn’t ask for your bank logins, it takes modeling seriously, and it has a real community behind it. This is an honest look at where Futurez is different, where it’s genuinely better for a certain kind of planner, and where ProjectionLab might still be the right call.
The short answer: Futurez is built around a deeper, more conservative market model and a plain-English AI workflow, and it costs less for the full toolkit. ProjectionLab has a free tier, a longer track record, and a couple of planning areas Futurez doesn’t cover yet. Which one wins depends on which of those you care about most.
Pick Futurez if you want the deepest market model (fat tails, clustered crises, deliberately cautious near-term returns), want to build charts and rules by just describing them, or want to connect your own AI, at $89/year. Pick ProjectionLab if you want a free plan to start, or you need estate or international planning today.
Price
Futurez is $89/year with everything included: no tiers, no add-ons. ProjectionLab’s comparable Premium plan is $129/year. Same privacy-first, no-bank-linking approach; Futurez costs about $40 less a year for the full toolkit.
The catch, stated plainly: ProjectionLab has a real free Basic tier ($0), and Futurez does not. Instead, Futurez gives you a 14-day free trial of the entire product (not a stripped-down preview), with a card collected at signup and nothing charged until the trial ends. So ProjectionLab wins “try it for free forever at a smaller scope”; Futurez wins “try everything for two weeks, then pay less for the whole thing.” If a permanent free tier is a hard requirement, that’s a real point for ProjectionLab.
Where Futurez goes deeper: the market model
Most of what separates these two lives in how each one builds a “possible future.” Futurez runs a fixed 1,000 market scenarios, but the point isn’t the count. It’s that each scenario is a full, internally-consistent economic history rather than a string of independent random returns:
- Stock returns have fat tails and lean to the downside, so real crashes happen and run deeper than melt-ups run high.
- Crises cluster across multiple years: sustained drawdowns like 2000–2002 and 2008–2009, not isolated one-year dips.
- Stocks, bonds, rates, and inflation move together, the way they actually do.
- The near term is deliberately cautious. For roughly the first decade, Futurez doesn’t assume history’s long-run average return. It marks expectations down to the forward-looking consensus the major asset managers publish, because today’s valuations compress what’s likely next. It’s a model that would rather under-promise.
That last point is the philosophical difference: Futurez is calibrated to lean to the safe side, and it publishes how it was tested. ProjectionLab offers Monte Carlo simulation and historical backtesting as well. This isn’t “they don’t do Monte Carlo.” It’s that Futurez’s whole design goal is a conservative, auditable model, and we show our work on a dedicated methodology page rather than asking you to take it on faith.
Where Futurez works differently: describe it, and the AI builds it
The second big difference is how you actually interact with the tool. In Futurez, a lot of the work is plain English:
- Build a chart by describing it (“show effective tax rate vs. total income each year”), and Futurez drafts it for you to review and save.
- Write a rule by describing it (“do a Roth ladder from age 55 up to the 12% bracket,” or “if the market’s been strong, retire a year early”), and the AI writes the logic; you approve it before it runs.
- Connect your own AI. Link Claude or ChatGPT through Futurez’s MCP server and ask your assistant to run what-ifs against your real plan: “what if we both retired two years early?” It edits, re-runs, and reports the new odds.
This connect-your-own-AI workflow is the piece ProjectionLab doesn’t offer. If “talk to my financial plan” sounds like how you’d want to work, it’s a Futurez-only capability today.
What both do well
There’s a lot of common ground, and it’s worth naming:
- Neither connects to your bank. Both are privacy-first: you enter your balances yourself, and nothing sensitive is pulled on your behalf. (Futurez’s Quick Balance Update makes the monthly refresh a fast, one-account-at-a-time flow.)
- Both are built for you, not an advisor. These are DIY tools for people who want to drive their own plan.
- Both take tax seriously. ProjectionLab’s Premium plan does tax optimization, Roth conversions, and capital-gains harvesting; Futurez models federal and 42-state income tax, RMDs, IRMAA, Social Security, and QBI automatically inside every projection.
- Both model real households: two people, joint and individual accounts, dependents. Futurez additionally lets income and expense dates follow named life milestones, so “healthcare costs start at Medicare” or “this income stops when my partner retires” model themselves.
Where ProjectionLab might be the better fit
An honest comparison names the other tool’s strengths:
- You want a free plan. ProjectionLab’s Basic tier is $0 and includes Monte Carlo and historical backtesting. Futurez has no permanent free tier.
- You need estate or international planning now. ProjectionLab’s Premium plan covers both; Futurez doesn’t model these today.
- You value a longer track record. ProjectionLab has been around longer and has a larger, established community. Futurez is new.
- You’re an advisor. ProjectionLab has a dedicated Pro tier ($549/year) with client management. Futurez is built for individuals planning their own future, not for managing clients.
Side by side
| Futurez | ProjectionLab | |
|---|---|---|
| Price, full features | $89/year | $129/year (Premium) |
| Free tier | No | Yes, Basic ($0) |
| Free trial | 14 days, everything included (card at signup) | Yes, on Premium |
| Bank / account linking | No, you enter balances | No, you enter balances |
| Market model | Monte Carlo; deliberately cautious on near-term returns | Monte Carlo |
| Tax modeling | Federal + 42-state, RMDs, IRMAA, Social Security, QBI, Roth mechanics | Tax optimization, Roth conversions, capital-gains harvesting (Premium) |
| Households | Two careers, two retirement dates, milestone-anchored dates | Household planning |
| Work with AI | Describe-a-chart, describe-a-rule, and connect your own AI (Claude / ChatGPT) | Not an AI-native workflow |
| Estate / international planning | Not yet | Yes (Premium) |
| Built for advisors | No | Yes, Pro tier ($549/year) |
| Published accuracy benchmarks | Yes, see methodology | — |
Weighing more than one tool? See our Boldin comparison too.
See your own numbers, not ours
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Start your free 14-day trialFrequently asked questions
Is Futurez a cheaper alternative to ProjectionLab?
For the full toolkit, yes: Futurez is $89/year with everything included, versus ProjectionLab’s $129/year Premium plan. The trade-off is that ProjectionLab has a permanent free Basic tier and Futurez doesn’t. Futurez gives you a 14-day full free trial instead.
What can Futurez do that ProjectionLab can't?
The clearest differences are the market model and the AI workflow. Futurez runs a three-factor, fat-tailed model with clustered crises and deliberately cautious near-term returns, and it lets you build charts and rules by describing them in plain English, including connecting your own AI assistant (Claude or ChatGPT) to run what-ifs against your plan. ProjectionLab doesn’t offer connect-your-own-AI.
What does ProjectionLab do that Futurez doesn't?
ProjectionLab has a free tier, estate and international planning, an advisor (Pro) tier, and a longer track record. If any of those is essential for you, it may be the better fit.
Do either of them connect to my bank accounts?
No, and that’s by design for both. You enter your balances yourself, which keeps your credentials out of it. Futurez’s Quick Balance Update makes refreshing them a fast, one-account-at-a-time flow.
How accurate is Futurez's model?
We benchmarked the engine against the industry’s research (Morningstar, the Trinity Study, Vanguard, and Fidelity) and published where we match and where we don’t, including our biggest miss. It’s calibrated to come in more cautious than optimistic. See the methodology page for the full test.
Can I try Futurez before paying?
Yes. Every part of Futurez is free for 14 days. A card is collected at signup, you’re not charged during the trial, and cancelling is self-service. After 14 days your trial becomes the $89/year plan.
ProjectionLab plan names and prices (Basic $0, Premium $129/year, Pro $549/year), its free tier and free trial, and its no-account-aggregation approach are from ProjectionLab’s public pricing page, retrieved July 20, 2026 and re-verified July 27, 2026. Futurez capabilities and pricing are current as of the date above.
Futurez projections are calibrated model assumptions across 1,000 market scenarios: projections, not predictions or guarantees.