As an anecdote, I've had some money in both Wealthfront and Betterment for the past 2 years. Both seem to be performing about the same, though betterment has be

As an anecdote, I've had some money in both Wealthfront and Betterment for the past 2 years. Both seem to be performing about the same, though betterment has better (but still very lacking) metrics on performance. They both show you what your money has done, but since I didn't deposit into both of them exactly the same amounts at exactly the same time every time, I can't compare them. Betterment at least shows some basic metrics about the time-weighted return over given periods in addition to your actual return, though you can't put in custom time windows. And of course, neither show you total fees you've paid in a time period. The time-weighted rate of return on my betterment allocation of 80% stocks/ 20% bonds is -0.9% in the past 12 months and 12.6% total since May 2013 when I opened it. By comparison the Vanguard 500 fund VFINX is up 3.8% in the past 12 months and 22.6% since May 2013 and looks like it has a 0.17% fee. So, it definitely does seem better than Betterment in every way. Meanwhile the S&P is up 4.6% in the past 12 months and up 23.8% since May 2013. Betterment and Wealthfront are very exposed to foreign markets, which somewhat ironically have been doing worse than the S&P for basically the whole time these services have existed yet they seem to be growing fast.