Nels vs. Range
These are not competing products, and a page that pretended otherwise would not be worth your time. Range is a wealth management service: a team of certified financial planners, tax professionals, and equity compensation specialists, sold at a flat annual fee with no percentage taken from your assets. Nels is a budgeting app that costs a few dollars a month. If you are comparing the two, it is almost certainly because you have not yet decided which kind of thing you need.
| Feature | Nels | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Price | From $3/month or $30/year | From $3,950/year |
| Log expenses by chatting | Yes | No |
| Writable budget, not just a dashboard | Yes | No |
| Envelope / zero-based budgeting | Yes | No |
| Household sharing | Yes | Yes |
| Audit log of changes | Yes | No |
| Automatic bank syncing | Partial | Yes |
| Passwordless sign-in | Yes | No |
| AI spending insights | Yes | Yes |
| Savings and debt goals | Yes | Yes |
| Human financial advisors | No | Yes |
| Retirement projections | No | Yes |
Yes · Partial · No
Compared using publicly available pricing as of 2026-07-28. Range
Who each one is for
Range says plainly who it is for: households earning over two hundred thousand a year, with the complications that tend to come with that — equity compensation, multiple income streams, estate documents, a tax situation that rewards planning. Nels is for a household that wants to know what is left in the grocery category before the weekend. Those are different jobs, and the second one does not require the first.
What Range does better
Almost everything in its own category, because Nels does not attempt any of it. Range gives you human fiduciary advisers you can actually talk to, portfolio management, tax planning and projections, tax filing at its top tier, estate document creation, and equity compensation strategy for stock options and RSUs. Nels has no advisers, no investment management, and no tax capability whatsoever. If you have a complex tax situation, a budgeting app is not the answer to it, and we are not going to suggest that it is.
The honest verdict
Complementary, and a different buyer. If your finances are complicated enough to need planning, hire the planners — Range's fee is flat and transparent, and the value is real at that level of complexity. If your problem is that the month keeps getting away from you, a wealth management retainer is an expensive way to solve it, and Nels costs a rounding error by comparison. Some people will sensibly want both: Range for the strategy, something like Nels for the day-to-day. What we will not tell you is that either one substitutes for the other.
Frequently asked questions
Does Range replace a budgeting app?
Not really, and it does not set out to. Range does include budgeting and cash flow tools as part of a much wider service, but its centre of gravity is investments, tax, and long-term planning. If day-to-day spending is the thing you want to fix, that is a small part of what you would be paying for.
Is Nels an alternative to a financial adviser?
No. Nels has no human advisers and gives no financial, tax, or investment advice at all. It helps a household plan and track its spending. If what you need is advice, you need an adviser, and Range is one way to get several of them without paying a percentage of your assets every year.
What does zero percent AUM mean, and why does Range mention it?
Assets under management fees are the traditional way advisers charge — a percentage of your portfolio every year, which grows as your wealth does. Range charges a flat annual fee instead, which is a meaningful difference on a larger portfolio and a fair point in its favour. It has no bearing on how Nels is priced, because Nels does not manage assets.