This guide explains how a note on Mintcanopy gets its facts. It is for a reader who wants to know what was opened, what was not opened, and why there is no star rating.
Stock photograph of a person working at a desk. Source: Unsplash, photo file desk.jpg, used under the Unsplash License (unsplash.com/license). It is not a picture of a product screen.
A review starts from a public page on the vendor’s own site. The image at the top of a review is a screenshot of that page, taken in a browser. It is not a drawing of a product and not a chart built to illustrate a sentence. The Schwab Intelligent Portfolios screenshot includes the line “Pay no advisory fee and no commissions,” so the review is allowed to quote that line as visible. The Fidelity Go screenshot is the hero “Take the guesswork out of investing with Fidelity Go.” The fee table is not in that hero, so the fee sentences cite the Form ADV brochure dated March 30, 2026 instead of pretending the hero contained them. Vanguard’s screenshot is the Digital Advisor hero. The 0.20% and 0.25% gross fees, and the approximate 0.15% net fee, are cited from Vanguard’s advice pages and brochure. Koyfin’s screenshot is the pricing page, monthly toggle, with $0, $39, $79, and $209 visible. TradingView’s screenshot is the pricing page, annual billing, with $12.95, $29.95, $59.95, and $199.95. QuickBooks’ screenshot is the pricing page with both the list price and the three-month discount on each card. Pionex’s screenshot is the homepage promotion, and the fee sentences cite Pionex’s articles because the homepage has no fee table.
What was not done is part of the method. No brokerage account was opened. No bot was started. No QuickBooks file was created. No Koyfin or TradingView login was used to run a screen or an alert. A number that would have required that login is left out. Covered or cropped prices are left out. Koyfin’s Advisor Pro price is cropped, so it is not completed from memory. QuickBooks user counts are absent from the capture, so they are not supplied from another page unless that page is named, and in the review they are simply omitted.
There is no editorial score out of five. A score would be this site’s opinion dressed as a measurement. The published price is the measurement the vendor already made, in the unit the vendor chose. An affiliate link, if one is added later, does not create a score and does not change the unit. Calculators on the tools page apply a rate you type. They do not pull a live balance.
Mintcanopy is the name on the logo. The layout and the type are the template the generator copies. The sentences are written for this publication, about the products above, and they are replaced when a vendor page changes. The check is to open the cited URL and find the sentence. If it is gone, the note is stale.
A check a reader can repeat
1. Pick a review and name the URL in its button. That URL is the page the screenshot is supposed to be. If the image shows a different brand, the review is wrong.
2. Find one price in the text and find it in the image or in the document the text names. Schwab’s zero advisory fee is in the image. Fidelity’s 0.35% is in the March 30, 2026 brochure, which the text names because the hero does not show it.
3. Check that a worked dollar figure is labeled as multiplication. $80,000 times 0.35% is $280. That is not a Fidelity forecast. Six percent of $80,000 is $4,800 of cash at the low end of Schwab’s published range. That is not a Schwab projection.
4. Look for a cropped number that the text refuses. Advisor Pro on Koyfin is the example. Completing it would be a guess.
5. Look for a test the text claims and does not describe. There should not be one. No account, no fill, no backtest.
6. Confirm there is no star rating and no “4.6 out of 5.” The absence is deliberate.
7. Read the category the product sits in. A charting price in dollars and an advisory fee in percent should not be averaged.
8. Open the vendor page again on the day you pay. The screenshot is evidence of what the page looked like when it was captured. It is not a lock on the next invoice.
9. Use the contact form if a cited sentence cannot be found. The correction is to change the sentence or the link, not to add a score so the page looks finished.
10. Ignore the site name as a clue to the method. The method is the cited page, the screenshot, and the list of things that were not opened.
## What a correction looks like
A correction is a change to a sentence so that it matches the page it cites. If Schwab removes “Pay no advisory fee and no commissions” from the Intelligent Portfolios page, the review has to stop quoting it, even if the brochure still supports a related claim. The screenshot would then be evidence of an older page, and it should be described that way or replaced. If Fidelity publishes a brochure after March 30, 2026 with a different step than $25,000 or a different rate than 0.35%, the $280 illustration on an $80,000 balance is retired with the old table. The multiplication can be redone. The old product cannot be left in place because the paragraph is already long.
The same rule keeps invented products out. There is no review of a portfolio tool that does not exist, and there is no fee screen drawn to match a paragraph. If a vendor page cannot be captured, the review says so, as the Pionex fee schedule could not be read as a table and the homepage was captured instead. The articles fill the gap only where they are identified as articles. They do not become the fee schedule by being easier to quote.
Readers who want a score will not find one, including in the page’s schema. The review markup can describe the software and the written note. It does not invent a rating value or a rating count. An affiliate click, should one exist later, is a commercial relationship disclosed on the affiliate page. It is not an input to a ranking, because there is no ranking. The order of the cards is the order of the catalog, not a prize list.
Mintcanopy will show its work by keeping the URL, the date of the document when a document has a date, and the refusal list: no account, no cropped number completed from memory, no star. A page that drops one of those three is no longer following this guide, regardless of how long it is.
How to read an accounting price after the discount ends
This guide is about reading an accounting-software price when a discount is printed next to a list price. The example is QuickBooks Online, because its pricing page was captured with the discount turned on.
Stock photograph of a calculator and papers on a desk. Source: Unsplash, photo file invoice.jpg, used under the Unsplash License (unsplash.com/license). It is not a picture of a product screen.
The screenshot of https://quickbooks.intuit.com/pricing/ shows the Small business tab and four cards. Simple Start lists $38 a month, struck through, and $19 a month for the offer “50% off for 3 months.” Essentials lists $85 and $42.50. Plus lists $140 and $70. Advanced lists $340 and $170. The toggle for the three-month discount is on. A 30-day free-trial control is also visible. Payroll is marked as an optional later step and has no price in the capture. The Mid-size business tab was not selected, so its prices are not used.
The lower number is three months long on the offer shown. The higher number is the list price on the same card. Half of each list price equals the sale price, which is a useful check that the two figures belong together: half of 38 is 19, half of 85 is 42.50, half of 140 is 70, and half of 340 is 170. A budget that keeps the lower number for a year is using the promotion as if it were the renewal.
A first-year sketch, if the list price holds and nothing else is added, is three discounted months plus nine list-price months. Simple Start is $57 plus $342, or $399. Essentials is $127.50 plus $765, or $892.50. Plus is $210 plus $1,260, or $1,470. Advanced is $510 plus $3,060, or $3,570. Payroll, payment fees, and a later price change are outside those totals. The sketch is arithmetic on the cards. It is not an Intuit invoice, and it is not a quote for the Mid-size tab.
The trial control is a separate switch. The hero does not say whether a trial delays the three discounted months. The checkout date is the fact that resolves it. User counts are not on these cards, so this guide does not invent seats. The labels “for starting small,” “track custom performance metrics,” and the lines on Plus and Advanced are Intuit’s descriptions of who the card is aimed at. They are not a test of a particular set of books.
QuickBooks is a monthly software bill in dollars. It is not Fidelity Go’s 0.35% advisory fee and not TradingView’s $12.95 charting plan. A business can pay more than one of those. They should not be added into a single “finance stack percent.” Mintcanopy did not create a company file, connect a bank, or start the trial. The eight dollar figures are here because they are on the cards, with the three-month limit attached to the smaller set.
A check a reader can repeat
1. Confirm the toggle. This capture has “50% off for 3 months” switched on and Small business selected. A different toggle position is a different page.
2. Write both numbers from the card you would buy. Simple Start is $38 and $19. Essentials is $85 and $42.50. Plus is $140 and $70. Advanced is $340 and $170.
3. Check that the sale price is half the list price. If a future card breaks that pair, do not force the old half. Read the new card.
4. Budget the list price for month four unless the checkout says the discount lasts longer. The words on the card are three months.
5. If you want a first-year total under today’s list prices, use three months at the low number and nine at the high number. Say that payroll is not in it.
6. Leave user counts out until a page you are looking at prints them. This capture does not.
7. Leave the Mid-size tab out until you select it. Do not borrow Simple Start for a business the other tab is built for.
8. Treat the free-trial control as unanswered until checkout shows the calendar. Do not assume the trial is the same three months as the discount.
9. Keep the bill in dollars per month. Do not convert it into a percent of revenue or a percent of an investment account in order to compare it with a robo-advisor.
10. Reopen the pricing URL on the day you pay. Intuit can change a promotion. The screenshot is the page as captured, not a renewal contract.
## Why the second year is the list price
The three-month discount is a promotion with an end. Month thirteen, if nothing on the card has changed, is the list price, not another $19. A two-year sketch for Simple Start at the captured numbers is the first-year $399 plus twelve months at $38, or $456, which is $855 over two years. Essentials is $892.50 in year one and $1,020 in year two, or $1,912.50. Plus is $1,470 then $1,680, or $3,150. Advanced is $3,570 then $4,080, or $7,650. These are still illustrations on today’s cards, with payroll and payment fees left out, and with the assumption that Intuit does not change the list price at renewal. Intuit’s own pricing notes have said list prices can change for renewals. The illustration is a way to see the discount shrink as a share of the total. It is not a promise that the second-year invoice will match.
The free-trial control does not extend those sketches, because the capture does not say the trial is free of the three-month clock. A person who starts a trial on Monday and subscribes on the following Monday may be inside the discount, past it, or beside it. Only the checkout calendar says which. Writing “thirty days free and then three months at half” would be a story this screenshot does not tell.
Seat counts are the other missing row. A plan that looks cheap at $19 and then requires a second full-price user is a different product from the card alone. Because the capture does not print seats, the honest note is the omission. Look for the seat line on the live page before you multiply the card by headcount in your own spreadsheet. Mintcanopy will not supply the missing headcount from a different Intuit page without naming that page, and this guide is staying with the pricing capture.
A crypto bot can have no subscription and still charge every fill
This guide is about the difference between a bot subscription and a fee on each fill. It is for someone reading Pionex’s homepage, which calls itself a trading-bot platform, and about to treat “no subscription” as “no cost.”
Stock photograph of a laptop on a wooden table. Source: Unsplash, photo file laptop.jpg, used under the Unsplash License (unsplash.com/license). It is not a picture of a product screen.
The screenshot of https://www.pionex.com/en shows the heading “Leading Trading Bot Platform in the World,” a Google sign-up button, and a promotion that says sign up and claim up to 10,000 USDT in rewards. It also shows marketing counts for volume, years, and users, and a phone illustration with a sample balance and a “win up to” graphic. None of that is a fee table. The phone balance is artwork. The reward is Pionex’s promotion, with the words “up to,” and it was not claimed for this guide.
Pionex’s own articles, updated in August and September 2026, say the built-in bots have no separate subscription or activation fee. They also say every filled order still pays the trading fee for that market, and that perpetual futures can have a funding payment that is not the trading fee. One article discusses a 0.05% spot fee in answer to readers and tells them to confirm the live schedule. The fees page itself did not return a readable table when this was written, so 0.05% is cited from that article, not from a row copied off a schedule. The homepage neither confirms nor replaces it.
A grid that buys and later sells has two fills. Two fills mean two trading fees if the schedule charges per fill. The dollar amount depends on the size of each fill and the rate in force. This guide does not pick a sample coin and call the result typical. It only keeps the count of fees equal to the count of fills.
TradingView’s charting plans are the contrasting shape. With annual billing selected, Essential is $12.95 a month, and the higher rows are $29.95, $59.95, and $199.95, plus a free plan at $0. You can pay that software bill and never send an order. You can run a Pionex bot with no software subscription, according to Pionex’s articles, and still pay when the bot trades. Adding the costs is fine. Dropping either sentence is not.
Mintcanopy did not open an account, start a bot, or measure a return. The homepage’s user and volume figures are quoted as marketing. Crypto prices can fall. Fees make a loss larger and a gain smaller. The check is the live fee schedule and the order preview for the market you mean to trade, not the reward line in the hero.
A check a reader can repeat
1. Look at the Pionex homepage capture and separate advertisement from price. The reward line and the phone illustration are advertisements. There is no maker or taker row in that image.
2. Read Pionex’s bot-fee articles for the subscription claim. The claim used here is: no separate subscription for built-in bots. Confirm you are looking at a built-in bot and not a different product.
3. Read the same articles for the fill claim. Each filled order pays the trading fee. A funding payment on a perpetual is extra and can go either way. It is not the trading fee.
4. If you use the 0.05% figure, label it as the rate discussed in Pionex’s article and check the live schedule before you trade. The fees URL did not give this guide a table to transcribe.
5. Count the fills in one round trip. A buy and a sell are two fees if both fill. Do not describe the cycle as a single fee unless the schedule says the second fill is free, which these articles do not say.
6. Ignore the illustrated balance on the phone. It is not an account this site observed. Ignore the “up to 10,000 USDT” line as a measured payout. It is a cap on a promotion that was not joined.
7. Do not call the homepage’s volume or user counts a backtest. They do not name a rule, a period, or a cost.
8. Put TradingView in a different sentence. Its Essential plan is $12.95 a month when billed annually. That is a software subscription for charts. It does not fill a crypto order, and Pionex’s missing subscription does not buy those charts.
9. Write the market you intend to trade, then open the fee shown for that market in the order preview. A general article about 0.05% is not the preview.
10. Assume you can lose money. The absence of a subscription does not cap the loss. It only removes one kind of bill, the monthly software bill, while the trading bill remains.
## Two bills that get confused on purpose
A software subscription is a bill you can owe while the market is closed. TradingView’s Essential plan, at $12.95 a month when the annual toggle is selected, is that kind of bill. The implied year is about $155.40 if you multiply the monthly equivalent by twelve, and the page says the plan is billed annually, so the cash leaves in a yearly charge rather than as twelve separate retail months. Nothing about that charge fills a crypto order.
A fill fee is the other bill. It appears when an order executes. Pionex’s articles say the built-in bot does not add a subscription and that the fill still costs the trading fee. If a grid buys once and sells once, and both orders fill, there are two fees. If only one side fills, there is one fee, and there is also an open position, which is a different risk from the fee. Funding on a perpetual can be owed or received at the settlement time even when no new order filled in that hour. A reader who adds the subscription they do not owe, and forgets the funding they might owe, has the sign of the cost wrong.
The homepage capture does not help with this arithmetic. It is a sign-up page. The reward line is capped with “up to.” The phone is a drawing with a number on it. Using that number as a starting balance for a fee example would launder an advertisement into a worksheet. Use a round number you choose and label it as chosen. A $1,000 fill at a rate you still have to confirm is a worksheet. A $1,000 fill at 0.05%, the rate one Pionex article discusses, is $0.50. A second fill of the same size is another $0.50. The dollar is small next to a price move and large next to a grid that turns over many times a day. The articles’ point is the repetition, not the fifty cents.
Mintcanopy stops at that distinction. The live schedule can show a different rate for the market, the VIP tier, or the product line, including the higher tokenized-stock spot rate discussed in a separate Pionex article. Confirm the row that matches the order you will actually send. The homepage will still be advertising when you do.
A price alert is not a test of a trading idea
This guide separates a price alert from a test of a trading idea. It is for someone looking at a charting subscription, especially TradingView’s published plans, and about to treat an alert as if it were evidence that a rule made money.
Stock photograph of a candlestick chart on a screen. Source: Unsplash, photo file charts.jpg, used under the Unsplash License (unsplash.com/license). It is not a picture of a product screen.
An alert fires when a price, or an indicator computed from price, crosses a level you set. That is a notification. A test of an idea asks a different question: if this rule had been followed over a named period, on a named list of symbols, with named costs, what would the results have been? The alert does not answer that. It does not know your fill, your fee, or the days you would have ignored it.
What TradingView’s pricing page does show
The captured TradingView pricing page, with annual billing selected, shows Essential at $12.95 a month, Plus at $29.95, Premium at $59.95, and Ultimate at $199.95, each billed annually, plus a free plan at $0. The page is selling access to the platform. It is not displaying a backtest. The hero invites a person to look at markets. Looking is not a completed trade. The “Save up to 17%” line is about the billing choice, not about a strategy’s edge.
Alert counts and the number of indicators allowed on a chart are plan limits, and they are part of why the rows cost different amounts. They were below the fold of the capture, so this guide does not state a number for them. A plan that allows more alerts lets you ask to be told about more prices. It does not make the prices more informative. Twenty alerts can fire on twenty unrelated moves. One alert can mark the only level you wrote down for a reason. The count is a capacity. The reason is yours.
A small arithmetic example that is not a backtest
Suppose you set an alert at $50 on a stock and it fires. You learn that the price touched $50. You do not learn whether buying there and selling at a later alert would have worked after the spread and after any commission. If the charting plan costs $155.40 for a year of Essential at the annual rate implied by $12.95 a month, that $155.40 is the software bill whether or not the alert ever fires. It is not deducted from a hypothetical trade in this example, and it should not be described as the cost of the trade. A broker’s commission, if any, is a third number this pricing page does not show.
Pionex, on a different page of this site, raises the opposite confusion. Its articles say built-in bots have no subscription, while each fill pays a trading fee. An alert on TradingView can be free of a per-fill charge because it does not trade. A bot on Pionex can be free of a subscription and still charge the fill. Neither fact is a test of a strategy. A strategy test names the rule, the period, the symbols, and the costs, and then shows the results with those choices visible. A vendor’s marketing line about users or volume is not that test. Pionex’s homepage counts of volume and users are advertisements. They are not a backtest of a grid.
What Mintcanopy will not add
No alert was created for this guide. No paper trade was run. No claim is made that a particular indicator works. The guide’s job is to keep the software price in its own sentence and the trading idea in another. If you need the alert limit, scroll the TradingView pricing page. If you need a test, demand the rule and the costs in writing before you trust a curve. A curve without those inputs is a picture. The pricing screenshot is a picture of prices, and that is all it is supposed to be.
A check a reader can repeat
1. Write down, in one sentence, the rule you think you are testing. Include the symbol, the level, and what you will do when the alert fires. An alert without that sentence is only a notification.
2. Open TradingView’s pricing page with annual billing selected, as in the capture. Essential is $12.95 a month billed annually, Plus $29.95, Premium $59.95, Ultimate $199.95, and the free plan is $0. Those are software prices. They are not the result of the rule.
3. Multiply the Essential equivalent by twelve if you want the implied annual software bill: about $155.40. That bill is owed whether or not an alert fires. It is not a commission.
4. Scroll for the alert limit if capacity is your question. Do not insert a number this capture does not show. More alerts mean more notifications, not a better rule.
5. List the costs a real test would include and that an alert leaves out: the spread, any broker commission, and the trades you would have skipped. If you cannot list them, you do not have a test yet.
6. Refuse a curve that does not name the period, the symbols, and the costs. A vendor’s user count, including the marketing counts on other sites, is not a substitute for that curve.
7. If the tool is Pionex rather than an alert, switch questions. Pionex’s articles say built-in bots have no subscription and that each fill pays a trading fee. Two fills in a round trip mean two fees. That is still not a backtest of a grid.
8. Do not add TradingView’s subscription to Pionex’s fill fee and call the sum the strategy’s edge. One is a software bill for charts. The other is a cost of trading. A test would subtract both from results. This guide does not run that test.
9. Ignore the hero line about how many traders use the platform. It does not change the price cards and it does not validate an indicator.
10. Come back to the pricing page on the day you subscribe and match the toggle to the way you will be billed. The screenshot is the annual view only. A strategy, if you still want one, belongs in a document that shows its inputs, not in the plan name.
What a research terminal’s free plan leaves out
This guide is about the gap between a free plan and a paid plan on a research or charting site. It uses two pricing pages that were captured: Koyfin’s and TradingView’s. It is for someone who is about to assume the free column includes the history, the alerts, or the exports they need.
Stock photograph of analytics charts on a laptop. Source: Unsplash, photo file analytics.jpg, used under the Unsplash License (unsplash.com/license). It is not a picture of a product screen.
Koyfin’s pricing page, on the monthly setting, shows $0, $39, $79, and $209. Premium at $79 is described for investors analyzing markets and portfolios. Advisor Core at $209 is described for advisors who need reporting and a basic custodian integration. A cookie notice covers the names and the feature rows of the $0 and $39 columns in the capture. This guide therefore does not list what the free plan includes feature by feature. The visible fact is that a $0 column exists next to paid columns. The paid columns cost more because Koyfin is selling a difference. The difference itself has to be read on the live page once the cookie notice is dismissed, not invented here to make the free plan sound either empty or complete.
TradingView’s pricing page, with annual billing selected, shows a free plan at $0 with no credit card requested in the hero, and paid plans at $12.95, $29.95, $59.95, and $199.95 a month, each labeled billed annually. The limits that usually separate those rows — charts per tab, indicators, alerts — sit below the prices in a full pricing table. They are not in the capture used for the review, so this guide does not assign “five indicators” or “twenty alerts” to Essential. What it will say is that the free plan and the $12.95 plan are different rows, and that $12.95 is a monthly equivalent under annual billing, which implies about $155.40 a year, not twelve separate $12.95 charges unless the page says so.
How a free plan misleads a buyer
A free plan is a good place to learn the screen. It is a bad place to assume the export, the history, or the alert count you will rely on in a month. The honest sequence is to name the one record you need — a decade of financials, an alert that fires overnight, a custodian file — and find that record’s row in the pricing table. If the row is blank or locked on the free column, the price of the plan that unlocks it is the real price. Koyfin’s $0 card cannot be described, from this capture, as including or excluding a ten-year history. The cookie panel is in the way. Saying otherwise would be filling a covered cell.
The same discipline applies to the $39 column, whose name is also covered. Calling it Plus, or describing its feature set from an older memory of the site, would not match the image. The prices that are safe are the ones you can see: $0, $39, $79, $209 on the monthly view. Advisor Pro is cut off and its price is omitted on purpose.
Paid plans are not advice fees
None of these prices is a percent of an investment account. Fidelity Go’s 0.35% above $25,000, Vanguard’s approximate 0.15% net advisory fee, and Schwab’s $0 advisory fee are managed-account prices. TradingView’s $12.95 and Koyfin’s $79 can sit on the same household budget and still be different purchases. A person can have a Schwab Intelligent Portfolios account, pay no advisory fee, and still pay TradingView for charts. The free TradingView row may be enough. The way to know is the limit table, not the fact that the advisory fee was zero.
Mintcanopy does not rank the free plans. A $0 cell next to a $209 cell is not a judgment that the free product is a toy or that the expensive product is thorough. It is a pricing page. The next click is to clear the cookie notice on Koyfin, read the feature row you care about, and flip TradingView’s billing toggle if you do not intend to pay annually. The screenshots remain pictures of the pages as captured, including the parts they hide.
A check a reader can repeat
1. Open Koyfin’s pricing page and set the same toggle the screenshot uses, which is monthly. Read the prices you can see without guessing at a covered column. The capture shows $0, $39, $79, and $209.
2. Dismiss the cookie notice before you copy a feature row. In the capture, that notice covers the names of the $0 and $39 plans. A feature you cannot see is not a feature this guide will assign.
3. Read Premium’s card at $79 and Advisor Core’s card at $209 as they are written: analysis for investors on one, reporting and basic custodian integration for advisors on the other. The $130 gap is the price gap between those two visible cards, not a quality score.
4. Leave Advisor Pro’s price unstated if the column is cut off, which it is in the capture. Scroll the live page if you need that plan. Do not finish a half-visible number.
5. Open TradingView’s pricing page and note which billing toggle is selected. The review capture is annual. Essential reads $12.95 a month, billed annually. The implied year is about $155.40. Confirm the yearly total on the page if it prints one.
6. Do not copy indicator or alert counts from memory. They sit lower on TradingView’s page than the capture goes. Scroll if the limit is the reason you would pay.
7. Keep these software prices away from advisory fees. Fidelity Go’s 0.35%, Vanguard’s approximate 0.15% net, and Schwab’s $0 advisory fee are percents of an account or an explicit zero. Koyfin and TradingView bill in dollars for the software.
8. Name the one record you need, such as a long history, an overnight alert, or a custodian file, and find that row. The free column is only sufficient when that row is included. The price of the first plan that includes it is the price that matters.
9. Flip Koyfin’s annual toggle and TradingView’s monthly toggle before you pay if you will not be billed the way the screenshot is billed. A monthly equivalent under annual billing is not the month-to-month price.
10. Treat the screenshot as a dated picture. If a card moves, the live pricing URL is the contract. Mintcanopy is not ranking the free plans against the paid ones beyond the dollars the pages print.
How cash sits inside an automated portfolio
This guide is about the cash that an automated portfolio can hold on purpose. It is for someone reading Schwab Intelligent Portfolios’ line “Pay no advisory fee and no commissions” and needing the other published fact that sits beside it: a cash allocation.
Stock photograph of coins and a small plant. Source: Unsplash, photo file coins.jpg, used under the Unsplash License (unsplash.com/license). It is not a picture of a product screen.
Schwab’s program brochure says the cash allocation will generally range from 6% to 30% of account value. The public page captured for the review shows the start of that idea in plainer language. Under “What else you should know,” the page says Schwab believes cash is a key component of an investment portfolio and that, based on the risk profile, a portion of the portfolio is placed in an FDIC-insured deposit at Charles Schwab Bank. The screenshot is that page. The 6% and 30% bounds are the brochure’s, not numbers read off a chart we drew.
What the range does to an $80,000 example
Use $80,000 only as multiplication. It is not a Schwab forecast and it is not the family in the marketing photo. Six percent of $80,000 is $4,800. Thirty percent of $80,000 is $24,000. The brochure says a given account’s cash share depends on the risk profile and generally lands somewhere in that span. This guide does not assign a profile, so it does not call $4,800 or $24,000 the typical amount. Both ends are what the published range allows.
That cash is swept to bank deposits. FDIC insurance applies up to the usual limits and does not cover a decline in the ETFs held alongside the cash. Schwab earns revenue on the deposits. The brochure describes the conflict in plain terms: when the other investments outperform cash, the cash allocation reduces the account’s performance compared with a portfolio that did not hold that cash. The “no advisory fee” sentence remains true and incomplete. The missing piece is this sleeve.
Where the other programs put the cost instead
Fidelity Go’s March 30, 2026 brochure does not use a 6% to 30% cash range as its headline price. It uses an advisory fee: none under $25,000 of average daily assets, and 0.35% a year on the entire balance at $25,000 and above. On an $80,000 Fidelity Go balance the advisory fee is $280 a year before fund expenses. That $280 is a different object from Schwab’s $0 advisory fee. It is also a different object from $24,000 sitting in deposits. A person comparing them has to say which one is an annual charge and which one is a slice of the account.
Vanguard Digital Advisor publishes a gross advisory fee of 0.20% for all-index brokerage portfolios and 0.25% for an active/index mix, then a net fee after a revenue credit, described as approximately 0.15% in a typical all-index case. Vanguard also says money-market or settlement-fund cash is excluded from the gross-fee calculation. That is a billing detail about which dollars are in the fee base. It is not the same disclosure as Schwab’s decision to allocate 6% to 30% to cash as part of the portfolio design.
What this guide will not turn the cash into
The cash yield is not stated here, because the captured Schwab page does not print a current APY in the lines quoted above, and a rate changes. FDIC insurance is not a return. A zero advisory fee is not a zero expense ratio on the ETFs. Schwab Intelligent Portfolios Premium, with a separate planning fee and a monthly fee, is not this program. Mintcanopy is not scoring the cash allocation. Some investors want a buffer in deposits. Some do not want a third of the account out of the market. The brochure gives them the range. The page gives them the sentence that the deposits exist and that a bank at Schwab holds them.
A reader who wants the current range should open the brochure and the Intelligent Portfolios page together. If the homepage drops the cash sentence and the brochure keeps the 6% to 30% language, the brochure is the fuller disclosure. If both change, this guide’s arithmetic on $80,000 stops applying and has to be redone with the new bounds. The method does not change: read the percent, multiply by the balance you actually have, and keep the advisory fee, which is $0 on this program, in a separate sentence from the cash.
A check a reader can repeat
1. Open the Schwab Intelligent Portfolios page and find the sentence “Pay no advisory fee and no commissions.” Write it down as the advisory-fee fact. Do not add the word free.
2. On the same page, find the paragraph that says a portion of the portfolio is placed in an FDIC-insured deposit at Charles Schwab Bank. That sentence is the cash fact in the screenshot. The photograph of the family is not part of the calculation.
3. Open the program brochure and copy the range the cash allocation generally takes. The figure used in this guide is 6% to 30% of account value. If the brochure now prints a different range, use the brochure and drop these percents.
4. Multiply the low end by the balance you actually have. For an $80,000 illustration, 6% is $4,800. That illustration is not your account and not a Schwab projection.
5. Multiply the high end the same way. Thirty percent of $80,000 is $24,000. Do not pick the midpoint and call it typical. The brochure ties the point inside the range to the risk profile, which this guide does not know.
6. Keep fund expense ratios in a third sentence. They apply to the ETFs, including Schwab ETFs, and they are not cancelled by the zero advisory fee. Do not invent a blended ratio if you have not opened the fact sheets.
7. If someone quotes a $300 planning fee and $30 a month, stop and check whether they are describing Schwab Intelligent Portfolios Premium. That is a different offer from the program in the screenshot.
8. Compare Fidelity Go only after you have said Fidelity’s unit: $0 under $25,000 and 0.35% of the whole balance above that, from the March 30, 2026 brochure. An $80,000 Fidelity Go advisory fee of $280 is not a cash balance. It is an annual charge before fund expenses.
9. Compare Vanguard Digital Advisor with its own unit: a gross fee of 0.20% or 0.25%, then a net fee near 0.15% after a revenue credit, plus a statement that settlement-fund cash is outside the fee base. That is not a 6% to 30% portfolio sleeve.
10. Re-read the brochure before you enroll. A homepage can be edited. The range, the bank sweep, and the sentence about performance when other assets beat cash are the parts that keep the zero advisory fee from being misread.
An advisory fee and a fund expense ratio are different charges
This guide separates an advisory fee from a fund expense ratio. It uses three published schedules: Fidelity Go, Vanguard Digital Advisor, and Schwab Intelligent Portfolios. It is for someone who is about to treat those costs as if they were the same kind of number.
Stock photograph of a candlestick chart on a screen. Source: Unsplash, photo file charts.jpg, used under the Unsplash License (unsplash.com/license). It is not a picture of a product screen.
An advisory fee is charged by the firm that manages the account. A fund expense ratio is charged inside the ETF or mutual fund the account holds. You can pay one, the other, or both. A program that advertises no advisory fee can still hold funds that have expense ratios. A program that states a 0.35% advisory fee still has those fund expenses on top.
Three schedules, three units
Fidelity Go’s Form ADV brochure dated March 30, 2026 lists no advisory fee when average daily assets are under $25,000, and 0.35% a year when they are $25,000 or more. The 0.35% applies to the whole balance, not only the portion above $25,000. The fee is computed from month-end average daily assets, summed across the quarter, and deducted after the quarter. The product page says trading, transaction, and rebalancing fees are not charged. Fund expense ratios are not waived by that sentence.
Vanguard Digital Advisor publishes a gross advisory fee of 0.20% a year for all-index brokerage portfolios and 0.25% for an active/index mix. Vanguard credits certain revenue it retains from the portfolio and describes the resulting net advisory fee as approximately 0.15% for a typical all-index portfolio, about $15 a year per $10,000. The brochure notes a band near 0.15% to 0.16% and says the actual net fee depends on the holdings. Expense ratios are extra. Third-party manager fees inside a fund are not credited, because they are not Vanguard’s revenue. There is no advisory fee for about the first 90 days. Enrollment of a brokerage account requires at least $100.
Schwab Intelligent Portfolios’ public page says “Pay no advisory fee and no commissions.” The program brochure says the cash allocation generally ranges from 6% to 30% of the account and is swept to FDIC-insured deposits at Charles Schwab Bank. Schwab earns on that cash, and the brochure describes the drag when other holdings outperform cash. ETF expense ratios, including those of Schwab ETFs, still apply. Schwab Intelligent Portfolios Premium is a separate offer with its own planning fee and monthly fee. It is not the program in that “no advisory fee” line.
One balance, three advisory answers
Use $80,000 only as arithmetic, so the units are visible. It is not a projected balance from any of the three firms.
At Fidelity Go, $80,000 is above $25,000, so the brochure rate is 0.35% of the whole balance. That is $280 a year before fund expenses. The account is not partly on the $0 tier.
At Vanguard, the all-index gross fee of 0.20% is $160. The active/index gross fee of 0.25% is $200. The approximate net fee of 0.15% is $120. The net figure is the one Vanguard describes as typical after the revenue credit, and it still excludes fund expenses. During the first 90 days the advisory fee is waived, so a full-year multiplication overstates the first calendar year.
At Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, the advisory fee on $80,000 is $0. That matches the sentence on Schwab’s page. It does not mean the account is empty of cost. If the cash allocation were at the bottom of the published range, 6% of $80,000 is $4,800 in bank deposits. At the top of the range, 30% is $24,000. The brochure says the share depends on the risk profile. This guide does not assign a profile. The expense ratios of the ETFs sit on top of that cash sleeve and are not in the $0.
How an expense ratio comes out of the same account
Suppose, only as an illustration, that the funds in an account had a blended expense ratio of 0.05%. On $80,000 that is $40 a year, taken inside the funds. Add it to Fidelity’s $280 advisory fee and the combined figure is $320, of which $280 was the advisory fee and $40 was the funds. Add it to Vanguard’s approximate $120 net advisory fee and the combined figure is $160, with the same warning that 0.05% was not read off a particular Vanguard portfolio. Add it to Schwab’s $0 advisory fee and the fund layer is the $40, while the cash allocation is still a separate economic effect that this $40 does not measure.
The 0.05% was chosen because it is easy to multiply. It is not a claim about the funds those programs hold today. A reader who wants the real blended ratio has to open the fact sheets for the actual holdings. The point of the illustration is the addition, not the 0.05.
What not to do with the three numbers
Do not average $280, $120, and $0 and call the result a typical robo fee. The inputs are different products with different published conditions. Do not drop the $25,000 step and describe Fidelity Go as “0.35%” for every balance. Do not describe Schwab as free. Do not describe Vanguard’s cost as 0.20% if the sentence is about the net fee, or as 0.15% if the sentence is about the gross fee. Do not treat a 90-day waiver as a permanent price.
Mintcanopy links each of these schedules to its own review. The guide stops at the distinction: advisory fee, fund expense ratio, and, at Schwab, a disclosed cash allocation. A later page that quotes only one of those will be leaving out a cost the firm itself prints.
