Comparison of portfolio analysis tools: Capitally, Getquin, Sharesight and Snowball Analytics

You've done the hard work. Spent countless hours researching investment strategies, analyzing which stocks and ETFs fit your goals, carefully building a diversified portfolio. You've executed your buys, maybe even across multiple brokers to get the best fees. But then what?

How do you know if you're actually sticking to your plan? Are your investments performing as expected? Is that international ETF really diversifying your portfolio, or just adding hidden currency risk? When you decided to overweight technology stocks, did it pay off?

These questions are important for me. As the founder of Capitally, I'm deeply invested (pun intended) in understanding portfolio performance - not just for my product, but for my own investments. I built Capitally because I couldn't find a portfolio analyzer that gave me the control and insights I needed. But I'm always curious about what else is out there.

So I decided to take a deep dive into other popular portfolio tracking tools, approaching them not as a competitor, but as an investor who genuinely wants to understand if they could help me analyze my portfolio better. What I discovered surprised me. While each tool - GetQuin, Sharesight, and Snowball Analytics - has its strengths, they each make fundamental compromises that would prevent me from truly understanding my investment performance.

Let me walk you through what I found, examining each investments tracker through the lens of someone who actually wants to track stock performance, analyze portfolio decisions, and optimize their investment strategy.

GetQuin review: When social features overshadow portfolio analysis

What GetQuin does well as a portfolio tracker

GetQuin brings a fresh approach to investment tracking by making it social. It's built around the idea that investors can learn from each other. The platform offers real-time price updates for stocks, ETFs, funds, cryptocurrencies, and bonds - which makes it a capable stock tracker as well (as all other apps in this comparison offer only End-of-day or delayed prices).

The social aspect is a great way to find new investing ideas, and built-in stock screeners help with that too. Stock fundamentals, dividend income, yield on cost, and other market metrics let you quickly check how your stocks are doing and decide which ones to include. The mobile apps feel polished and modern, making it easy to check your portfolio on the go.

Critical limitations for serious portfolio optimization

Here's where my experience with GetQuin became frustrating. The most shocking limitation? No CSV import. If your broker isn't supported for automatic sync, you must add every single transaction manually. I have years of trading history across multiple brokers - entering this one by one would take weeks.

Even if you get your data in, the portfolio analysis tools are severely limited. You get predefined reports that show basic metrics - cost, current value, profit/loss. Want to analyze your performance over the previous quarter? Not possible. Need to compare how your US stocks performed against European ones? Can't do it. The platform offers no customization, no filtering, no grouping options.

The broker integration relies on third-party aggregators, meaning you're sharing your banking credentials with external services. Even then, major brokers like Interactive Brokers only sync balances, not transaction history. For a tool meant to track stock performance, this is a dealbreaker.

Privacy concerns run deep. Your financial data sits unencrypted on their servers. There's no two-factor authentication. Most troubling - you can't export your own data. Once it's in GetQuin, it's essentially trapped there.

Verdict on GetQuin as a portfolio analyzer

At €49.99 yearly, GetQuin works for casual investors who prioritize community over analysis. But for serious portfolio optimization? The lack of analytical tools and data control makes it unsuitable. You'll spend more time working around its limitations than gaining insights.

Sharesight review: Tax reporting excellence with portfolio tracking constraints

Where Sharesight excels as an investments tracker

Sharesight, carved out a niche by focusing on what many portfolio trackers ignore - taxes. For investors in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, and the US, it provides tailored tax reports that can save hours during filing season.

It does many things reasonably well. It automatically tracks announced dividends, processes stock splits and corporate actions, and handles dividend reinvestment plans seamlessly. You can check the announced dividends, or compare your results against benchmarks.

Sharesight also tracks underlying holdings in ETFs, helping you spot overlap and understand true diversification. If you hold both SPY and QQQ, Sharesight shows you exactly how much Apple exposure you have across both funds.

Significant drawbacks for portfolio performance tracking

The user experience feels stuck in 2010. Every action requires loading a new page, filling out forms, waiting for calculations. Quick portfolio analysis becomes a slow, frustrating process. Even checking basic performance metrics requires navigating through multiple screens.

Multi-currency support comes with a major flaw - each portfolio locks to one base currency permanently. As someone managing USD, EUR, and PLN investments, I couldn't switch my portfolio to a different currency. There's a currency vs capital gains returns, but it doesn't tell you the whole story.

The free tier limits you to 10 holdings - too restrictive to properly evaluate the platform. Without a real free trial, you're committing money just to test if it meets your needs. At around $23.25 USD monthly for meaningful features, it's not cheap either.

Custom asset support is an afterthought. You can add property or private investments, but they're second-class citizens without proper categorization or analysis capabilities.

Sharesight as a portfolio analysis tool - final thoughts

Sharesight works best for tax-conscious investors in supported countries who primarily hold publicly traded securities. The tax reporting is genuinely valuable, but the dated interface and rigid structure limit its usefulness for dynamic portfolio optimization.

Snowball review: European approach to portfolio optimization

Snowball's strengths as a portfolio performance tracker

Snowball Analytics stands out by offering genuine portfolio optimization features. Where others just track, Snowball helps you optimize with rebalancing tools, risk analysis, and even simple backtesting capabilities.

The performance reporting is pretty good. You get both money-weighted and time-weighted returns, Sharpe ratios, and risk-adjusted metrics. The platform offers numerous predefined reports covering different angles - performance, income, risk, opportunities. While not customizable, the variety means you'll likely find what you need.

You can define targets for portfolio value or passive income, input your assumptions, and see the probability of success.

The dividend rating system adds qualitative analysis to raw numbers, helping identify stable dividend payers.

Limitations of Snowball as a portfolio analyzer

Data import flexibility disappoints, as initially it looks pretty promising. While it connects to brokers via Yodlee (requiring credential sharing), manual imports need pre-formatted files. There's no column mapping interface - you must prepare data exactly as Snowball expects it. You also can't just import transactions exported from your broker - you always need to use the automated link - which often don't work that great and are at odds with my approach to privacy.

Ways to organize your portfolio, filter, group or compare parts of it are there, but very limited. You mostly rely on predefined reports and dashboards with some filtering support, which you have to setup every single time from scratch.

Custom assets get basic treatment. You can track real estate or P2P loans and log related income, but these assets can't be assigned to regions or industries. Entering historical prices requires manual input one date at a time - impractical for years of data. You can feel this is not the core feature of the app - more like an add on.

Despite good multi-currency support, there's no currency impact analysis. You can't see whether your international portfolio gained from favorable exchange rates or lost to currency headwinds. For global investors, this missing insight is crucial.

Privacy follows standard practices - encrypted transmission and storage, but your data remains accessible to company employees. Two-factor authentication helps, but there's no comprehensive data export option.

Is Snowball the right portfolio analysis tool for you?

At $7.99 to $24.99 monthly, Snowball offers good value for European investors focused on long-term wealth building. The portfolio optimization tools are genuinely useful, but data import hassles and limited custom asset support may frustrate advanced users.

Capitally: Built for investors who demand complete portfolio control

What makes Capitally different for tracking stock performance

Full disclosure - I built Capitally because existing tools frustrated me. But let me explain why it's genuinely different for portfolio analysis.

The cornerstone is privacy through end-to-end encryption. Your financial data gets encrypted on your device with a key that never leaves it. Even we can't see your data. For high-net-worth individuals or anyone valuing financial privacy, this is revolutionary among portfolio trackers.

The portfolio analyzer interface reimagines how you explore investment performance. Think of it as Excel's pivot tables meet modern charting, with powerful filtering throughout. Create any chart type, analyze any time period, group by one of dimensions - then save your favorite views for instant access, or use one of many built-in ones.

Multi-currency handling works exactly as global investors need. Mix currencies freely across transactions, see currency impact separated from capital returns, track one of the thousands of cryptocurrencies. When I analyze my international portfolio, I can instantly see whether currency movements helped or hurt returns.

There's built-in tax handling that calculates your due tax in real-time, including the tax impact in all return calculations. It can even consider the potential tax you'd have to pay if you sold everything today. Some countries are already supported, but the real kicker is you can create your own tax model or tweak the built-in one - just like you would in Excel if you had a few weeks to spare.

Where Capitally truly shines for portfolio optimization

Data import sets new standards. Upload any CSV or Excel file and use our column matching interface to map your data. Create reusable importers with logic and formulas - transform data during import instead of preprocessing them spreadsheets. See exactly what will be imported before committing.

Every asset type gets first-class treatment. Track real estate with rental income, P2P loans with interest, art, collectibles, even complex instruments like margin accounts. Unlike competitors where custom assets are afterthoughts, Capitally provides full analytical capabilities for everything.

Performance metrics cover all bases - MWR & TWR, dividend yields and growth, plus advanced features like tax-loss harvesting identification. Any asset, index, or portfolio segment can serve as a benchmark. Dividend handling includes DRIP support, withholding tax tracking, and multi-year forecasting based on growth patterns.

Current limitations of Capitally

There's no automated broker sync - you need to upload statements manually. While this ensures privacy and accuracy, it requires more involvement than set-and-forget alternatives.

Stock fundamentals and technical indicators aren't available - Capitally focuses purely on portfolio performance, not stock selection.

Dedicated strategy backtesting and rebalancing tools are planned but not yet implemented.

The interface's flexibility means a steeper learning curve. With so many customization options, new users might feel overwhelmed initially.

Why Capitally works as a portfolio analysis tool

At €80-130 yearly, Capitally costs less than competitors while offering more analytical power. For investors managing diversified, international portfolios who value data privacy and control, it's the most comprehensive solution available.

It gives you ample headroom in what you can track now and in the future, but it comes with the cost of being more hands-on.

Choosing your portfolio analysis tool: Key considerations

The most important lesson from this comparison? A good portfolio tracker should empower you to answer critical questions about your investments without compromising your data or limiting your analysis. Now or in the future.

For investors serious about portfolio optimization and tracking stock performance accurately, that tool is Capitally.