Conducting and analyzing market research takes time and expertise. That’s why we are always thankful to the Kitces team for their in-depth research on how advisors approach financial planning and the role of technology in their planning process.
The latest Kitces Report, “How Financial Planners Actually Do Financial Planning (2024)”, released in March of 2025, analyzes the survey answers from 621 practicing financial advisors. The 148-page report is full of insights, but if you haven’t gotten through it all yet, here are the key takeaways on the current state of the financial planning software market.
The future of financial planning
The financial planning landscape is evolving rapidly, with new trends shaping how advisors engage with clients, structure their services, and leverage technology. The Kitces Report highlights several key shifts, from the increasing emphasis on collaboration to the continued adoption of virtual meetings.
At the same time, advisors are simplifying financial plans, focusing on core services, and refining their pricing models to ensure long-term profitability. These changes reflect a broader industry movement toward efficiency, engagement, and value-driven planning.
Financial plans are becoming more focused
Advisors are scaling back on non-core services and leveraging comprehensive planning software to streamline their workflows. The report notes the decline in usage of most categories of specialized tools, while pointing out, “This shift is also likely attributable to improvements in the functionality of comprehensive planning tools, which now address areas that previously required specialized software.”
Collaborative planning is replacing traditional reports
More advisors are using real-time financial planning tools to engage clients interactively (used by half of teams), moving away from static, printed reports (used by just 1 in 5 teams). Real-time scenario modeling enables advisors to update plans live during client meetings, making financial planning more interactive and engaging. Reports becoming more customizable and the availability of personalized tools such as tax-planning help advisors clearly demonstrate their value, reinforcing the importance of their services.
Virtual & hybrid meetings are here to stay
While in-person meetings have rebounded post-pandemic, many advisors continue to embrace video calls as a permanent part of their practice. Cloud-based tools allow advisors to seamlessly conduct virtual meetings while sharing live financial insights.
Technology helps advisors stay ahead
As financial planning continues to evolve, technology continues to play an important role in helping advisors adapt. With so many options, it can be difficult to know where to begin—here's a summary of the current market for financial planning software:
The highest satisfaction rating goes to…RightCapital! 🎉
After leading the pack with an 8.6/10 satisfaction rating in the January 2023 edition of this report, RightCapital topped this year's list once again. Both RightCapital and IncomeLab, “a retirement distribution tool," earned a rating of 8.7/10 while other market leaders eMoney received an 8.5 (up from 8.1 in 2023) and MoneyGuidePro received a 7.9 (down from 8.0 in the previous survey).
Why advisors choose RightCapital
As the following chart demonstrates, there are many areas of focus that explain why advisors are selecting RightCapital as a planning software:
When choosing a software, there may be some categories that are more important to your firm than others. The Kitces Report clearly states:
The standout is RightCapital, ranked as a market leader in eleven categories and ranked as weak in none. Further, two of the three categories in which RightCapital did not excel are those where no program stands out above the rest.
Here’s a little more insight into some of the key areas where RightCapital outranked other options:
Tax Planning
In just the six months before this survey was released, RightCapital introduced two new tax-planning tools in addition to their previously existing capabilities: Tax Strategies, solving for the top five asset location, withdrawal, and Roth conversion strategies, and Tax Analyzer, allowing for uploads of tax returns right into RightCapital for further analysis (the latter available with Premium and Platinum subscriptions).
Customer Support
RightCapital has led the market in Customer Support ratings in the last four Kitces Reports. This most recent reinforcement of the Support Team comes at a time when it seems other software companies may be experimenting with AI instead of human product experts, which, according to this March 2025 discourse on LinkedIn, doesn’t seem to be satisfying users:
Depth/Comprehensiveness
In 2023’s version of this survey, RightCapital tied highest with eMoney for Comprehensiveness and rated 7.8/10 compared to eMoney’s 8.4 for Depth of Analysis, but it’s clear that RightCapital’s continuous updates are changing the game. This year’s report notes, “RightCapital shares the top rank with eMoney in terms of advisor satisfaction with depth and comprehensiveness, but it is the sole leader when it comes to advisor satisfaction with the software’s simplicity and ease of use” (More on that next).
Ease/Simplicity
The Kitces report notes that “the depth of eMoney eventually becomes cumbersome for advisors” and that it can take 20 hours to complete a plan with eMoney while also stating that:
The median time spent using RightCapital to build and implement a financial plan was 18 hours, identical to advisors using other comprehensive planning software. This result holds, despite the tendencies of RightCapital users to provide more extensive plans and use more applications to do so, suggesting that RightCapital actually offers notable efficiencies relative to other vendors.
RightCapital continues on the growth path
Compared to the previous report in January 2023, both eMoney and MoneyGuide have lost a small portion of their market share while RightCapital’s has grown from 23% to 26%. More notably, Kitces goes beyond the last two years to explain the trend with more history:
While eMoney’s market share has fluctuated – increasing from 35% of comprehensive tool users in 2018 to 39% in 2022, followed by a 2-point decline in 2024 – MoneyGuide and RightCapital show clearer trends. MoneyGuide’s market share has steadily declined from 35% in 2018 to 31% in 2024, whereas RightCapital’s share has more than doubled as the fastest-growing solution, rising from 10% to 26% over the same period.
RightCapital’s growth can be attributed to it being both comprehensive yet easy-to-use, as summarized by Kitces:
Since 2020, RightCapital has expanded market share far more rapidly than any other comprehensive software provider. This appears to be a result of a combination of its low price point and high overall satisfaction ratings, ratings that in turn are a product of RightCapital offering advisors depth and comprehensiveness without sacrificing ease-of-use and simplicity to get there (as most of competitors do).
If you’re curious why advisors are happier with RightCapital, try it free for 14 days
Schedule a 20-min demo to get a 14-day free trial of RightCapital. As a trial user, you’ll also get to experience first-hand RightCapital’s awesome training and support team (also rated #1).
To read the full report, download the complimentary copy from the Kitces website: “How Financial Planners Actually Do Financial Planning (2024)”.