Key takeaways
- The entire Planomy planner works with no account: projections, taxes, Social Security, RMDs, Monte Carlo, scenarios and every calculator. It is not a trial and it does not expire.
- Your plan is saved in your browser's storage on the device you are using. Nothing is uploaded by default, so there is no server copy for us to lose, sell or hand over.
- The two real costs of staying signed out: no sync between devices, and no way to recover the plan if you clear the browser's storage or lose the device. Export a copy — it takes one click.
- A free account exists only for the things an account is genuinely needed for: syncing one plan, sharing a plan, and check-in reminders. Plus ($6/month or $60/year) raises those limits and adds bank sync.
- Sign-up walls exist to build a marketing list and to make the product stickier. Neither of those is a reason you should have to give an email address to find out when you can retire.
Why almost everything asks you to sign up first
It is worth being blunt about the incentives. A sign-up wall in front of a planning tool does four things for the company: it produces an email address that can be marketed to, it creates a switching cost that makes you less likely to leave, it makes usage measurable at the level of an individual person, and — for tools attached to a brokerage or an advisory business — it identifies you as a prospective client with a known balance.
None of those are things a user wants. They are things the business wants, and they are the reason the pattern is near-universal rather than the reason it is necessary. A retirement projection is arithmetic over numbers you supply. It does not technically require anyone to know who you are.
What "no account" means here, precisely
Vague privacy language is worth nothing, so here is the mechanical version. When you open the Planomy planner:
- The app loads and runs in your browser. The projection engine executes on your device, not on a server.
- Your plan is written to your browser's local storage on that device. It is not uploaded anywhere by default.
- There is no email address, no password, no card and no bank login involved at any point.
- You can download a full copy of your plan as a file and restore it later, on any device.
The consequence people usually care about is the one about subpoenas, breaches and acquisitions: there is no server-side copy of a plan you never synced. That is a structural property, not a policy promise.
What you get without signing up
Not a stripped demo — the same engine the paid tier uses:
- Year-by-year projections with separate ledgers for cash, taxable, traditional, Roth and HSA balances, over a horizon of up to 100 years.
- Federal tax from a dated, versioned dataset — 2026 ordinary and long-term capital-gains brackets, FICA and Medicare — rather than hard-coded numbers.
- State tax for all 50 states and DC: 29 with full progressive brackets, the rest at a flat effective rate, labelled as such.
- RMDs on the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table with SECURE 2.0 start ages.
- A Social Security claiming explorer across the full 62-to-70 range, with a benefit estimate built from your earnings history.
- Medicare Part B and Part D premiums with IRMAA surcharges keyed off the two-year MAGI lookback.
- Monte Carlo across 1,000 to 10,000 trials, plus a historical backtest over every rolling window of real US returns and CPI-U inflation from 1928 to 2024.
- Four named drawdown strategies side by side, FIFO / LIFO / HIFO / lowest-tax-first lot selection on taxable sales, and Roth conversions by amount or fill-to-bracket.
- Scenarios, life events and goals, plus plan-versus-actual cash-flow tracking with optional bank sync.
Plus the 35-plus standalone calculators, which are also free, also need no account, and each answer one question in about a minute.
Signed out, free account, or Plus
The honest version of the tiering, with nothing dressed up. Notice that the planning column does not change:
| What you want to do | No account | Free account | Plus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full projections, taxes, Social Security, RMDs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Monte Carlo, backtests, scenarios, goals | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Every calculator | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Download and restore your plan | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sync a plan across devices | No | 1 plan | Unlimited plans |
| Share a plan with a partner or advisor | No | Yes | Yes |
| Plan check-in reminders | No | Yes | Yes |
| AI plan assistant (1 credit = 1 message) | Small daily allowance to try it | 5 messages a week | At least 50 a month |
| Bank sync where available | No | No | Yes |
| Price | $0 | $0 | $6/month or $60/year |
If you do decide to sync, you can encrypt the plan before it leaves your device, so the copy on our servers is not readable by us. The full breakdown lives on the pricing page.
When you should create an account anyway
- You plan on a laptop and check on a phone. Sync is the whole reason accounts exist here.
- Two of you are planning together. Sharing needs somewhere to share from.
- You want to be nudged. A plan you never revisit decays; check-in reminders are opt-in and free.
- You keep losing the plan. If clearing browser data is a habit, a synced copy is more robust than remembering to export.
What no sign-up costs you
Staying signed out is a real choice with real consequences, not just a way to dodge a form. If you are here because you do not want to hand over an email, you should know exactly what you are giving up in exchange — and in two of these cases the answer is that a free account, which still costs nothing, fixes it.
- Your plan lives or dies with this browser profile. This is the whole cost of signing up for nothing. Clear your site data, use a different browser, switch to a private window, get a new laptop, and the plan is not there. It is not lost on a server somewhere waiting for you to log in — there is no server copy, because you did not make an account. The fix is to click download and keep the plan file somewhere you keep things, and to do it the first time you have entered anything you would mind retyping.
- No sync, no sharing, no reminders — until you make a free account. Worth separating from the above, because the remedy is free rather than paid. A free account syncs one plan across devices, lets you share a plan with a partner or an adviser, and enables plan check-in reminders. None of that costs money; it costs an email address, which is precisely the thing you came here to avoid. That is a fair trade to decline — just decline it knowingly.
- The AI assistant is metered when signed out. Signed out you get a small daily allowance to try it. A free signed-in account gets 5 credits a week; Plus tops you up to 50 a month. Running out affects only the assistant — projections, scenarios, budgeting and every calculator keep working.
- Nothing updates itself, on any tier. There is no live market-price or holdings feed. Balances are what you type. Bank sync via Plaid exists on Plus and imports transactions, but it does not mark a portfolio to market. If you want a number that refreshes without you, this is the wrong category of tool, sign-up or no sign-up.
- And two limits that have nothing to do with accounts. Planomy sells no advice and has no advisers attached to it — if you want a person to review your situation, hire a fee-only CFP and bring the projection with you. And the tax engine is US-only: federal brackets, state income tax, Social Security, Medicare, IRMAA and RMDs.
Try it in about five minutes
Enter your age, your balances by account type, what you save, and what you expect to spend in retirement. That is enough for a first projection. Refine the Social Security claiming age and the withdrawal order afterwards — those are the two inputs that move the answer most, and both have guides: when to take Social Security and which accounts to draw down first.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a retirement planner that does not require an account?
Yes. Planomy's full planner opens and runs with no account, no email and no bank login, and saves your plan in your browser's storage on that device. Spreadsheets are the other no-account option. Most subscription planners and all aggregation dashboards require an account by design, because the account is where your plan or your linked institutions live.
Is the free version a trial?
No. The free planner does not expire, has no limit on entries, and is not a reduced version of the engine — it runs the same projections, tax modelling, Monte Carlo and scenarios. The paid tier is about syncing more than one plan across devices, bank sync where available, and a larger AI assistant allowance.
Where is my plan stored if I never sign in?
In your browser's local storage on the device you are using. Nothing is uploaded by default, so there is no copy on our servers. The trade-off is that clearing site data, using private browsing, or losing the device loses the plan, so download an export and keep it somewhere you back up.
Can I move my plan to another computer without an account?
Yes. Download a full copy of your plan as a file from the app, then restore it on the other device. That is a manual sync rather than an automatic one — if you want it to happen by itself, that is what a free account's single synced plan is for.
Do I have to connect my bank to use it?
No. Bank sync is optional, is a Plus feature, and exists to save typing and keep balances current for plan-versus-actual tracking. Every projection works from numbers you enter by hand, and plenty of people never connect anything.
No email. No card. Just the plan.
Open Planomy and you are in a working plan within a minute — full projection, taxes, Social Security and RMDs included, saved on this device. If you never want an account, you never need one.