Robo-Advisor Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Sarah Davis, Digital Finance & Fintech | Last updated: September 8, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
Vanguard’s algorithm-only robo tier held $31 billion on June 30, 2026. Its human-assisted tier held $456 billion on the same date. Both numbers come from the same disclosure, so the comparison is exact: after seven years, the pure robo-advisor holds 6.37% of the digital advice assets at the firm that built it.
Quick Answer
According to Axis Intelligence Research, the Automated Advice Share (AAS) at Vanguard Advisers was 6.37% on June 30, 2026 — $31 billion in algorithm-only Digital Advisor against $456 billion in adviser-assisted Personal Advisor. Wealthfront Advisers reported $47,727,850,795 in regulatory assets under management on March 31, 2026, equal to 7.37 basis points of US household equity wealth. Schwab’s disclosed average fee on fee-based managed investing solutions fell from 0.40% to 0.37% in twelve months.
Key Findings
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, the Automated Advice Share at Vanguard Advisers was 6.37% on June 30, 2026, meaning 93.63% of the firm’s disclosed digital advice assets sat in the tier that includes access to a human adviser.
- According to The Vanguard Group, Vanguard Digital Advisor held $31 billion on June 30, 2026, up from $19 billion on June 30, 2024 — growth of 63.16%, a two-year compound rate of 27.73%.
- According to Wealthfront Advisers’ Form ADV Part 2A dated July 23, 2026, the firm managed $46,031,854,707 on a fully discretionary basis and $1,695,996,088 on a limited discretionary basis as of March 31, 2026.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, Wealthfront’s regulatory assets under management grew 122.45% between its April 2021 Form ADV Part 1 and its March 31, 2026 reported figure, while Vanguard Personal Advisor alone held 9.55 times Wealthfront’s entire book.
- According to The Charles Schwab Corporation’s second-quarter 2026 results, average client assets in fee-based managed investing solutions reached $763.7 billion, generating $707 million of quarterly revenue at a disclosed average fee of 0.37%, down from 0.40% a year earlier.
What Is a Robo-Advisor, and Who Actually Files the Numbers?
A robo-advisor is a discretionary investment advisory program delivered through software: the client completes a questionnaire, an algorithm assigns a target allocation, and the adviser trades, rebalances, and — in taxable accounts — harvests losses without a person in the loop. In US regulatory terms these are not a separate category. They are SEC-registered investment advisers filing Form ADV like any other, and the vast majority run as wrap fee programs in which advisory, brokerage, and custody are bundled into one asset-based charge.
That regulatory ordinariness is why most published robo-advisor asset tables are unreliable. There is no SEC form, no FINRA return, and no trade body that collects “robo AUM.” What exists is a patchwork: some advisers disclose a program-level figure, some disclose only a firm-level regulatory number that mixes the robo with everything else, and some disclose nothing beyond a press release. Any table that ranks eight providers against each other on a single “AUM” column has quietly merged at least three incompatible measurement bases.
Axis Intelligence Research built this page the other way round. Every figure below is traced to the document that actually contains it, the measurement basis is named next to the number, and where two providers cannot be compared on the same basis, we say so instead of averaging the difference away.
The Four Measurement Bases in Circulation
| Basis | What it counts | Who reports on it here | Comparable across firms? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regulatory assets under management (Form ADV Item 5.F) | All assets under continuous and regular supervisory management at the legal adviser entity | Wealthfront Advisers, Vanguard Advisers | Yes, between advisers whose only business is the robo |
| Program-level advisory assets | Assets enrolled in one named advice program | Vanguard Digital Advisor, Vanguard Personal Advisor | Yes, where disclosed |
| Segment average client assets | Quarterly average balances across a bundle of advice products | Charles Schwab (managed investing solutions) | No — bundle composition differs |
| Company-stated platform assets | A marketing figure, usually a floor (“over $X billion”) | Betterment | No |
Source: Axis Intelligence Research, compiled from the filings and disclosures cited throughout this page, retrieved September 7, 2026.
Sarah Davis, Digital Finance & Fintech: The single most common error in this category is treating a firm’s Form ADV regulatory AUM as its robo AUM. For Wealthfront the two are close to identical, because Wealthfront Advisers does nothing else. For Vanguard Advisers they are nowhere near identical: the entity reported $344.6 billion in total regulatory assets at December 31, 2025 across stable value mandates, model portfolios, plan-participant managed accounts and two retail advice programs. Pull the entity number and label it “Vanguard robo” and you have overstated the robo by roughly an order of magnitude. The disclosure that matters is the program line, and only some firms publish it.
How Much Do Robo-Advisors Manage in 2026?
Take the figures that are actually filed or published at program level and the picture is unambiguous: the money is with the incumbents, and inside the incumbents it is with the tiers that include a human.
Disclosed Advisory Assets by Provider and Basis
| Provider / program | Assets | As of | Basis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vanguard Personal Advisor | $456,000,000,000 | 2026-06-30 | Program-level | The Vanguard Group |
| Vanguard Advisers, Inc. (all mandates) | $344,619,600,000 | 2025-12-31 | Form ADV entity total | Vanguard Advisers, Inc. |
| Schwab managed investing solutions (fee-based) | $763,716,000,000 | Q2 2026 average | Segment quarterly average | Charles Schwab, Form 8-K |
| Betterment | over $65,000,000,000 | 2025-11-11 | Company-stated floor | Betterment LLC |
| Wealthfront Advisers LLC | $47,727,850,795 | 2026-03-31 | Form ADV entity total | Wealthfront Advisers LLC |
| Vanguard Digital Advisor | $31,000,000,000 | 2026-06-30 | Program-level | The Vanguard Group |
Source: Axis Intelligence Research, compiled from provider filings and disclosures, retrieved September 7, 2026. Rows are not additive; each carries a different measurement basis, stated in column four.
Wealthfront’s number is the cleanest single data point in the whole category, because Wealthfront Advisers’ Form ADV Part 2A states the split directly: $46,031,854,707 fully discretionary and $1,695,996,088 in limited-discretionary Stock Investing Accounts, both as of March 31, 2026. Those two lines sum to $47,727,850,795, and because Wealthfront Advisers runs no other business, that total is the firm’s automated advice book.
Set that against the same firm’s own history. Wealthfront’s Form ADV Part 1 filed April 28, 2021 reported $21,456,003,986 across 394,559 accounts and 307,263 clients — an average of $54,379.71 per account. Axis Intelligence Research finds the firm’s regulatory assets have grown 122.45% since that filing, a multiple of 2.22 in just under five years.
Sarah Davis: Two hundred and twenty-two percent of the 2021 base sounds like a growth story until you put it next to the denominator. The S&P 500 roughly doubled over a comparable stretch, so a large share of that increase is the market marking up the same portfolios. The account-count line is the one that would settle it, and Wealthfront’s current Part 2A discloses assets without disclosing accounts. That is a legitimate filing choice and it is also why the per-account figure on this page carries a 2021 date rather than a 2026 one. We will publish the 2026 equivalent when the account count appears in a filing, not before.
The Automated Advice Share: How Much of Digital Advice Is Actually Automated?
The central question in this category is not how big robo-advisors got. It is whether investors, given a choice between an algorithm and an algorithm-plus-a-person, chose the algorithm. Vanguard is the only major provider that discloses both sides of that choice at program level on the same date, which makes it the only place the question can be answered from evidence rather than assertion.
Automated Advice Share (AAS) measures the proportion of a provider’s disclosed digital advice assets that sits in the tier delivered entirely by software, with no adviser consultations included in the service.
- Formula: AAS = algorithm-only program assets ÷ (algorithm-only program assets + human-assisted program assets) × 100.
- Inputs: program-level advisory assets disclosed by the provider, both observations taken at the same date. Readings are computed only where a provider publishes both tiers separately; a provider that bundles them is recorded as not computable rather than estimated.
- Reading of 100 would mean every dollar of a provider’s digital advice sits in the algorithm-only tier. A falling reading means the human-assisted tier is compounding faster.
- Scope: AAS measures where assets sit, not where accounts sit. Because human-assisted tiers carry far higher account minimums, a low reading is consistent with the algorithm-only tier holding a much larger share of clients than of dollars.
AAS Readings, June 30, 2026
| Provider | Algorithm-only program | Assets | Human-assisted program | Assets | AAS | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vanguard Advisers, Inc. | Vanguard Digital Advisor | $31.0bn | Vanguard Personal Advisor | $456.0bn | 6.37 | Axis Intelligence Research from Vanguard disclosure |
| The Charles Schwab Corporation | Schwab Intelligent Portfolios | not disclosed | Schwab Wealth Advisory and others | not disclosed | not computable | Schwab reports one bundled segment |
| Betterment LLC | Betterment Digital | not disclosed | Betterment Premium | not disclosed | not computable | Company reports one platform total |
| Wealthfront Advisers LLC | Wealthfront Advisers Program | $47.7bn | none offered | — | n/a | No human-assisted tier |
Source: Axis Intelligence Research. Vanguard reading computed from Vanguard’s August 18, 2026 disclosure of $31 billion and $456 billion, both as of June 30, 2026. Baseline series. Retrieved September 7, 2026.
According to Axis Intelligence Research, the Vanguard reading of 6.37 means $93.63 of every $100 in the firm’s disclosed digital advice programs sits where a client can pick up the phone. Vanguard Personal Advisor holds 14.71 times the assets of Vanguard Digital Advisor, and 9.55 times the entire book of Wealthfront Advisers.
The direction is what makes the reading interesting rather than merely lopsided. Digital Advisor is not shrinking — it added $12 billion between June 2024 and June 2026, growing 63.16%. Personal Advisor, launched three years later in June 2022, is simply compounding from a larger base at a rate the algorithm-only tier has not matched. Both tiers use the same portfolio construction, the same glide-path model, and the same funds. The only variable between them is the phone number, and the phone number is where the money went.
Sarah Davis: The instinct is to read this as investors rejecting automation. It is closer to the opposite. Both tiers are automated — Personal Advisor runs the same algorithm and the same daily rebalancing assessment. What clients bought was not human portfolio management; it was human reassurance layered on top of machine execution, at a disclosed gross spread of fifteen basis points. That is a pricing finding, not a technology finding. The robo-advisor did not lose. It became the plumbing, and somebody else sold the tap.
Robo-Advisor Fees in 2026: What the Filings Say
Fee disclosure is the one area where this category is genuinely well documented, because advisory fee schedules must appear in Form ADV Part 2A. Every rate below is quoted from a filing rather than from a marketing page.
Published Advisory Fee Schedules
| Provider | Program | Annual fee | Account minimum | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wealthfront Advisers | S&P 500 Direct | 0.09% | $5,000 | Form ADV Part 2A, 2026-07-23 |
| Wealthfront Advisers | Nasdaq-100 Direct | 0.12% | $5,000 | Form ADV Part 2A, 2026-07-23 |
| Wealthfront Advisers | Automated Bond Ladder | 0.15% | $500 | Form ADV Part 2A, 2026-07-23 |
| Vanguard Advisers | Digital Advisor, all-index | 0.20% gross / ~0.16% net | $100 | Form ADV Part 2A, 2026-08-20 |
| Wealthfront Advisers | Automated Investing Account | 0.25% | $500 | Form ADV Part 2A, 2026-07-23 |
| Vanguard Advisers | Digital Advisor, active/index | 0.25% gross | $100 | Form ADV Part 2A, 2026-08-20 |
| Betterment | Digital, asset-based tier | 0.25% | $10 deposit | Form ADV Part 2A, 2024-01-03 |
| Vanguard Advisers | Personal Advisor, all-index | 0.35% gross / ~0.31% net | $50,000 | Form ADV Part 2A, 2026-08-20 |
| Vanguard Advisers | Personal Advisor, active/index | 0.40% gross | $50,000 | Form ADV Part 2A, 2026-08-20 |
| Betterment | Premium | 0.40% | $100,000 | Form ADV Part 2A, 2024-01-03 |
Source: provider Form ADV Part 2A brochures as dated, retrieved September 7, 2026. Betterment rates are from the most recent brochure version served at betterment.com/adv at the retrieval date.
Vanguard’s structure deserves the extra column it gets here. The Digital Advisor and Personal Advisor brochure states that the gross advisory fee is reduced by the revenue Vanguard retains from the underlying funds, and quantifies that credit at approximately 0.04% for a total-market all-index portfolio. That produces a net advisory fee of about 0.16% for Digital Advisor and about 0.31% for Personal Advisor. Almost nobody quoting Vanguard’s robo fee makes that distinction, and it moves the number by a quarter.
What the Fee Costs, in Dollars
Axis Intelligence Research ran a $100,000 account for twenty years at a 7% gross annual return, deducting the advisory fee annually and excluding fund expense ratios, which every option carries and which are not the variable being tested here.
| Advisory fee | Annual cost per $100,000 | Terminal value after 20 years |
|---|---|---|
| 0.16% (Vanguard Digital Advisor, net) | $160 | $375,558 |
| 0.25% (Wealthfront, Betterment Digital) | $250 | $369,282 |
| 0.31% (Vanguard Personal Advisor, net) | $310 | $365,153 |
| 0.37% (Schwab fee-based average, disclosed) | $370 | $361,067 |
| 1.00% (traditional advisory benchmark) | $1,000 | $320,714 |
Source: Axis Intelligence Research. Formula: $100,000 × (1.07 − f)^20, where f is the annual advisory fee expressed as a decimal. Retrieved September 7, 2026.
Two numbers fall out of that table. Moving from a 1.00% traditional fee to a 0.25% automated one is worth $48,568 over twenty years on a $100,000 starting balance. And the measured price of Vanguard’s human tier — 0.31% net against 0.16% net, same portfolios, same algorithm — is $10,406 over the same period.
Sarah Davis: Ten thousand four hundred dollars is what a Vanguard client pays over twenty years for the option to call somebody. Whether that is expensive depends entirely on one thing nobody has published: how often the call prevents a panic sale. If it stops one liquidation at the bottom of one drawdown across two decades, it pays for itself several times over. If it never gets dialled, it is the most expensive unused feature in retail finance. The industry sells the reassurance and reports neither the utilisation rate nor the behavioural outcome, which is exactly the disclosure gap the next regulatory cycle should close.
Is the Robo-Advisor Fee Advantage Narrowing?
Yes, from both directions, and Schwab’s filings show the incumbent half of the squeeze precisely.
According to the Charles Schwab Corporation’s second-quarter 2026 results, average client assets in fee-based managed investing solutions were $763,716 million in the quarter, up 28.31% year over year, and they produced $707 million of revenue. The disclosed average fee on that book fell from 0.40% to 0.37%. Including non-fee-based balances, the average fell from 0.33% to 0.31%.
Schwab Managed Investing Solutions, Q2 2025 vs Q2 2026
| Measure | Q2 2025 | Q2 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fee-based average client assets | $595,203m | $763,716m | +28.31% |
| Non-fee-based average client assets | $120,726m | $159,255m | +31.91% |
| Total average client assets | $715,929m | $922,971m | +28.92% |
| Quarterly revenue | $589m | $707m | +20.03% |
| Average fee, fee-based | 0.40% | 0.37% | −3 bps |
| Average fee, total | 0.33% | 0.31% | −2 bps |
Source: The Charles Schwab Corporation, Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1, second quarter 2026 results, July 21, 2026, retrieved September 7, 2026.
Assets grew 28.92%. Revenue grew 20.03%. That eight-point wedge is fee compression showing up in a public filing rather than in a survey. Axis Intelligence Research estimates the annualised gross value of the three-basis-point decline at approximately $229 million on the Q2 2026 fee-based base — arithmetic, not a forecast, and it assumes the mix that produced the 0.40% average would otherwise have held.
Schwab does not break Intelligent Portfolios out of that bundle, so no reading of this table tells you the robo’s own fee or its own assets. What it does tell you is that the incumbent advice book against which robo-advisors are usually priced is itself repricing downward while growing at nearly 29% a year. The gap the pure-plays were built to exploit is closing from the top.
The other direction is the pure-plays adding paid human layers and higher-touch products of their own. Betterment’s Premium tier is priced at 0.40% with a $100,000 minimum — above Schwab’s disclosed fee-based average. Wealthfront has moved the other way, publishing single-index direct products at 0.09% and 0.12%, well below its own flagship 0.25%.
Digital Advice Measured Against US Household Equity Wealth
Dollar totals in this category are impossible to size without a denominator. Axis Intelligence Research expresses advised assets as basis points of the equity wealth they are advising, using the same Federal Reserve series that anchors our retail investor statistics analysis.
Digital Advice Penetration Ratio (DAPR) measures a provider’s advised assets as a share of the corporate equities held directly and indirectly by US households and nonprofit organizations.
- Formula: DAPR = provider advised assets ÷ households’ and nonprofit organizations’ directly and indirectly held corporate equities × 10,000, expressed in basis points.
- Inputs: provider filings for the numerator; Federal Reserve Financial Accounts of the United States (Z.1), series LM153064475, for the denominator, which stood at $64,799,689 million on March 31, 2026.
- Scope: readings are computed only where numerator and denominator share a quarter-end date. The Z.1 denominator includes nonprofit organizations, which the Federal Reserve does not separate, and covers equities held through funds and retirement accounts as well as directly.
DAPR Readings, March 31, 2026
| Provider / measure | Advised assets ($m) | DAPR (bps) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Schwab Investor Services, client assets receiving ongoing advisory services | 841,300 | 129.83 | Axis Intelligence Research from Schwab and Federal Reserve |
| Wealthfront Advisers, total regulatory AUM | 47,727.85 | 7.37 | Axis Intelligence Research from Wealthfront and Federal Reserve |
Source: Axis Intelligence Research, computed from Charles Schwab Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1, Wealthfront Advisers Form ADV Part 2A, and Federal Reserve Z.1 series LM153064475. Baseline series. Retrieved September 7, 2026.
Schwab’s retail advised channel is 17.63 times the size of Wealthfront’s entire regulatory book, and even so it accounts for barely 1.3% of US household equity wealth. Schwab’s advised assets in its retail segment grew 26.06% in the year to June 30, 2026, from $737.6 billion to $929.8 billion — 7.11% of the firm’s $13,084.9 billion in total client assets.
Vanguard’s June 30, 2026 program figures cannot yet be expressed as DAPR, because the Federal Reserve’s second-quarter 2026 Z.1 denominator is not published until September 10, 2026. Rather than pair a June numerator with a March denominator and present the result as a reading, we have left the row empty and diaried the release date.
How Many People Use Robo-Advisors?
Nobody publishes this number reliably, and the honest answer is that the two account-level disclosures that exist do not aggregate.
Betterment stated in November 2025 that it serves more than 1 million customers managing over $65 billion. That is a company statement of two floors, not two point estimates, so the implied $65,000 per customer is a floor divided by a floor and should not be quoted as an average. Wealthfront’s most recent filed account count is the 394,559 in its April 2021 Form ADV Part 1. Vanguard discloses program assets but not program enrollments. Schwab reports 39.8 million active brokerage accounts across everything and does not identify the advised subset.
What Is and Is Not Disclosed, by Provider
| Provider | Program assets | Account or client count | Fee schedule | Human-tier split |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wealthfront Advisers | Yes, in Form ADV Part 2A | Last filed 2021 | Yes | No human tier |
| Vanguard Advisers | Yes, at program level | No | Yes | Yes |
| Charles Schwab | Segment bundle only | No | Segment average only | No |
| Betterment | Company statement only | Company statement only | Yes | No |
Source: Axis Intelligence Research, compiled from provider filings and disclosures, retrieved September 7, 2026.
Axis Intelligence Research attempted a total US robo-advisor account count by summing disclosed counts and grossing up the remainder using per-account averages. That figure is not published here. The available account counts span 2021 to 2025, cover fewer than half the assets in the table above, and mix “customers,” “clients,” and “accounts” — three different units that providers use interchangeably and that differ by a factor most households would recognise, since a single person routinely holds a taxable account, an IRA, and a joint account. A single national number built on that base would be a guess wearing a decimal point.
Sarah Davis: The disclosure asymmetry here is the story, and it runs one way. Every provider in this category publishes its fee schedule to the basis point, because Form ADV Part 2A requires it. Almost none publishes how many people are paying it. Fee transparency without enrollment transparency lets a firm look precise while remaining unmeasurable, and it is why so much of the published robo market sizing traces back to vendor models rather than filings.
Regulatory History: What the SEC Has Actually Found
Two enforcement actions define the compliance perimeter for this category, and both concerned disclosure of how the automation works rather than the automation itself.
In December 2018 the SEC entered a settled order against Wealthfront Advisers. According to the firm’s own Form ADV, the order found improper retweeting of client posts, compensation of bloggers for referrals without required disclosures, and inadequate disclosure in its tax-loss-harvesting white paper regarding wash sales — which the order noted represented approximately 2.3% of tax losses harvested for clients between January 2014 and December 2016. Wealthfront consented to a censure, a cease-and-desist, and a $250,000 penalty. The order is published by the SEC.
In April 2023 Betterment reached a settlement disclosed in its own brochure: the order stated that from 2016 to 2019 client portfolios were scanned every other trading day despite references to daily scans, that disclosures did not adequately reflect how electing different portfolio strategies across goals reduced harvests, and that two coding errors stopped tax-loss harvesting from operating for a limited number of customers before 2019. Betterment consented to a censure, a cease-and-desist, and a $9 million penalty to be used to compensate affected clients.
Read together, these are algorithm-disclosure cases. Neither regulator finding said the software mismanaged money. Both said the description of the software did not match its behaviour — which is the specific enforcement risk that arises when the product is the code and the client’s only view of it is a brochure paragraph.
What the 2026 Data Says About Automated Advice
Four findings hold together. Automated advice is large in absolute terms and small against household equity wealth: Schwab’s retail advised channel reads 129.83 basis points of that wealth and Wealthfront’s entire book reads 7.37. The algorithm-only tier is growing and losing share simultaneously — Vanguard Digital Advisor added 63.16% in two years and still holds 6.37% of its own firm’s disclosed advice assets. The fee gap that justified the category is closing from above, with Schwab’s disclosed average fee down three basis points in a year. And the disclosure that would settle any of this at industry level does not exist.
That pattern sits alongside what the rest of our digital finance series shows. Our retail investor statistics analysis found equity ownership narrowing while equity wealth concentrated; our ETF statistics work found fund assets and fund counts expanding faster than the investor base; and our retail trading statistics analysis found trade counts rising 22% on flat share volume. Automated advice is the fourth reading of the same structure: existing owners, holding more, buying more product, and increasingly paying somebody to sit between them and the button.
Methodology
Collection. Every figure on this page was retrieved from a primary publisher on September 7, 2026 and logged with its source URL and retrieval date in the accompanying CSV. Sources used: Wealthfront Advisers LLC Form ADV Part 2A dated July 23, 2026 and Form ADV Part 1 filed April 28, 2021; Vanguard Advisers, Inc. Digital Advisor and Personal Advisor Brochure dated August 20, 2026; The Vanguard Group corporate disclosure dated August 18, 2026 and news release dated September 4, 2024; The Charles Schwab Corporation Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1 for the second quarter of 2026, filed with the SEC on July 21, 2026; Betterment LLC Form ADV Part 2A and company news release of November 11, 2025; the SEC’s settled order in Investment Advisers Act Release No. 5086; and Federal Reserve Financial Accounts of the United States (Z.1), series LM153064475. No figure on this page is sourced from a secondary aggregator, and no figure is sourced from model memory.
AAS formula. AAS = algorithm-only program assets ÷ (algorithm-only + human-assisted program assets) × 100. Both inputs must be provider-disclosed at program level and must share an as-of date. Where a provider bundles its tiers into one reported figure, the reading is recorded as not computable; it is never estimated from a split ratio observed elsewhere. Where a provider offers no human-assisted tier, the reading is recorded as not applicable. This is a baseline series; readings will extend as additional providers begin disclosing tier-level assets.
DAPR formula. DAPR = provider advised assets ÷ Federal Reserve Z.1 households and nonprofit organizations directly and indirectly held corporate equities × 10,000. Readings are computed only at dates where both numerator and denominator exist at the same quarter-end, which is why the table carries a March 31, 2026 date while several provider figures on this page are dated June 30, 2026.
Fee-drag model. Terminal values assume $100,000 invested, a 7% gross annual return, and the stated advisory fee deducted annually, computed as $100,000 × (1.07 − f)^20. Fund expense ratios are excluded because every option in the comparison carries them and they are not the variable being tested; including them would lower every row without changing the differences between rows. The 1.00% row is a benchmark rate for traditional full-service advice, included for scale rather than sourced to a specific adviser’s schedule.
Scope of the comparisons. The four measurement bases in the second table of this page are not interchangeable. Segment averages are quarterly averages, not period-end balances. Company-stated figures are floors. Form ADV entity totals include every mandate the legal entity runs, which for Vanguard Advisers means substantially more than the two retail advice programs discussed here. Rows in the provider table are deliberately not summed.
Retracted calculation. Axis Intelligence Research attempted a total US robo-advisor user count and a category-wide AUM total. Neither is published. The account disclosures available span 2021 to 2025, cover under half the assets in the provider table, and mix customers, clients, and accounts as units. The provider-level figures that are published sit on four incompatible bases. Combining them would produce a headline number with no defensible denominator, and this page states the gap instead. The declined calculation is recorded in the CSV.
Timing. Form ADV Part 2A brochures are updated annually and on material change, so the as-of dates inside them lag the brochure date — Wealthfront’s July 23, 2026 brochure reports March 31, 2026 assets. Schwab reports quarterly, with the third quarter of 2026 due in October. The Federal Reserve Z.1 next releases September 10, 2026.
About This Dataset
Contents. 95 rows covering US robo-advisor and digital advice regulatory assets under management, program-level advisory assets, published fee schedules and account minimums, Automated Advice Share and Digital Advice Penetration Ratio readings, fee-drag arithmetic, segment average client assets and average fees, and SEC enforcement outcomes, spanning April 2021 through August 2026, with source organization, source document, URL, retrieval date, primary-source flag, Axis-calculated flag, and method note on every row.
License. CC BY 4.0. The dataset may be reused, redistributed, and built upon with attribution.
Citation format: Axis Intelligence Research, Robo-Advisor Statistics 2026, 2026.
Cite This Research
APA: Axis Intelligence Research. (2026). Robo-advisor statistics 2026: Assets, fees, and the share of digital advice that still runs on algorithms alone. https://axis-intelligence.com/robo-advisor-statistics/
MLA: Axis Intelligence Research. “Robo-Advisor Statistics 2026: Assets, Fees, and the Share of Digital Advice That Still Runs on Algorithms Alone.” Axis Intelligence, 8 Sept. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/robo-advisor-statistics/.
Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research. “Robo-Advisor Statistics 2026: Assets, Fees, and the Share of Digital Advice That Still Runs on Algorithms Alone.” Axis Intelligence, September 8, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/robo-advisor-statistics/.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why can’t robo-advisor assets under management be added up across providers?
Because the four providers with published figures report on four different bases. Wealthfront reports Form ADV regulatory assets for an entity that does nothing else. Vanguard reports program-level assets for two named services inside an adviser that also runs stable value, model portfolios, and plan-participant mandates totalling $344.6 billion at December 31, 2025. Schwab reports a quarterly average across a bundle that includes several advice products. Betterment states a floor. Summing them would double-count in some places and undercount in others, and the result would carry no defensible as-of date.
What does the Automated Advice Share tell you that an AUM ranking does not?
It answers the question the category was built to test. Vanguard’s reading of 6.37 on June 30, 2026 says that of the $487 billion in its two disclosed retail advice programs, $456 billion sits in the tier that includes adviser consultations and $31 billion in the tier that does not. An AUM ranking would place Vanguard at the top of the robo table on the strength of assets that are mostly not in the robo. AAS separates the two and is computable only where a provider discloses both tiers.
Is Vanguard Digital Advisor’s fee really 0.20%?
That is the gross advisory fee for the all-index option on a Vanguard Brokerage Account. Vanguard’s brochure states that the gross fee is reduced by the revenue Vanguard retains from the underlying funds, quantified at roughly 0.04% for a total-market all-index portfolio, producing a net advisory fee of approximately 0.16%. The active/index option is 0.25% gross. Fund expense ratios sit on top of all of these and are not credited when they are paid to third-party managers.
How much does a robo-advisor actually save an investor versus a traditional adviser?
On a $100,000 balance held twenty years at a 7% gross return, a 0.25% automated fee leaves $369,282 and a 1.00% traditional fee leaves $320,714 — a difference of $48,568 attributable to the advisory fee alone. Fund expense ratios apply in both cases and are excluded from that comparison because they do not differ systematically between the two service models.
Do robo-advisors report how many clients they have?
Rarely, and never consistently. Betterment states more than 1 million customers as of November 2025. Wealthfront’s most recent filed account count is 394,559 from its April 2021 Form ADV Part 1. Vanguard discloses program assets without enrollments. Schwab reports 39.8 million active brokerage accounts across its entire business without identifying the advised subset. Because “customers,” “clients,” and “accounts” are used interchangeably and a single household often holds several accounts, no national user total assembled from these disclosures would be meaningful.
Has the SEC taken enforcement action against robo-advisors, and what for?
Twice in ways that shaped the category, and both concerned disclosure of how the software behaved rather than investment performance. Wealthfront Advisers settled in December 2018 for $250,000 over referral-compensation disclosures and a tax-loss-harvesting white paper that did not adequately address wash sales. Betterment settled in April 2023 for $9 million over statements that portfolios were scanned daily when the scan ran every other trading day, and over coding errors that disabled tax-loss harvesting for some customers before 2019.
Is the fee gap between robo-advisors and traditional advice still widening?
It is narrowing at the top. Schwab’s disclosed average fee on fee-based managed investing solutions fell from 0.40% to 0.37% in the year to June 30, 2026, while the assets in that bundle grew 28.92% and revenue grew 20.03%. Pure-play pricing has not moved down by a comparable amount at the flagship tier — Wealthfront and Betterment both charge 0.25% on their core automated products — so the incumbent advice book is closing the distance from above rather than the pure-plays extending it from below.
Why are Vanguard’s figures dated June 30 while the penetration ratios are dated March 31?
Because the Digital Advice Penetration Ratio uses Federal Reserve Z.1 household equity holdings as its denominator, and the Federal Reserve publishes that series quarterly with a lag. The second-quarter 2026 release is scheduled for September 10, 2026. Pairing a June numerator with a March denominator would produce a number that describes neither quarter, so the June-dated Vanguard figures are reported on this page without a ratio until the matching denominator exists.
What would change the readings on this page fastest?
Three things. A Vanguard disclosure update would move AAS directly, since it is currently the only computable reading. A Schwab decision to break Intelligent Portfolios out of managed investing solutions would make a second reading computable and would settle whether the incumbent robo pattern matches Vanguard’s. And a Wealthfront Form ADV Part 1 amendment carrying a 2026 account count would allow the per-account figure on this page to be updated from its 2021 base.
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