The hidden cost of 'free' portfolio trackers

Delta by eToro announced a change to its free tier in November 2025. The change took effect in January 2026, capping the free "Basic" plan at 10 tracked assets, a limit that hadn't existed before (Delta's own November 2025 announcement via delta.app, corroborated by FindMyMoat's 2026 review). Users who'd spent months building a diversified free portfolio hit a wall that appeared after they'd already moved in. That's the trap this article is about: a tracker you chose because it was free can quietly stop being free enough for what you actually own. We checked the live pricing pages of five portfolio trackers, Delta, CoinStats, getquin, Kubera, and Sharesight, on July 4, 2026, to see exactly where each free tier ends.

Key Takeaways

• Delta by eToro capped its free tier at 10 assets in January 2026, the clearest documented example of the re-tier pattern (FindMyMoat, 2026).
• Freemium retention runs weak by design: hard-paywall apps hold 12.8% median monthly retention versus 9.3% for freemium (RevenueCat, 2025).
• Kubera never offered a free tier at all, just a 14-day trial before a $250/yr plan.
• EPT Lab's free tier carries no aggregator cost pressure to reverse later, because it's read-only by design.

On this page: What "free" actually means · Why trackers restrict free features · The data question · Delta's re-tier · What EPT Lab does differently · Getting started · FAQ · Conclusion

What does "free" actually mean across 5 portfolio trackers?

Every free portfolio tracker we checked in July 2026 caps something: assets, portfolios, syncs, or history. Delta Basic stops at 10 assets. CoinStats Basic stops at 10 portfolios, 20,000 transactions, and 10 syncs a day per portfolio (CoinStats, 2026). Sharesight's free plan stops at 10 holdings across one portfolio (Sharesight, 2026).

getquin is the outlier. Its free tier includes unlimited bank and broker connections, real-time data, and a full net-worth overview, with no numeric cap on holdings at all (getquin, 2026). Kubera sits at the opposite extreme: there's no free tier whatsoever, only a 14-day trial before you hit a paywall (Kubera, 2026).

We checked every vendor's live pricing page in July 2026 and recorded exactly where each free tier stops. The caps aren't hidden. They're just easy to miss until your portfolio grows past them.

Prices and limits from each vendor's live pricing page, verified July 4, 2026.

Citation capsule: Free portfolio trackers each cap something specific, and the caps rarely match each other. Delta Basic stops at 10 tracked assets, Sharesight's free plan stops at 10 holdings across a single portfolio, and CoinStats Basic stops at 10 portfolios, 20,000 transactions, and 10 syncs a day per portfolio (CoinStats, 2026; Sharesight, 2026). getquin is the exception, offering unlimited broker connections on its free tier instead of a numeric cap (getquin, 2026). Kubera skips a free tier entirely, offering only a 14-day trial before its $250/yr Essentials plan or $2,500/yr Black tier (Kubera, 2026). Why this matters: a reader comparing trackers by the word "free" alone will miss that the usable ceiling varies by roughly an order of magnitude, from a hard 10-item cap to no cap at all, and from no free access whatsoever to a genuinely open door.

Why do trackers restrict free features after you're already invested?

Freemium finance apps convert worse than almost any comparable pricing model, which is exactly why caps tend to tighten over time. Median freemium self-serve conversion sits at 3-5% for a good product and 8-12% for a great one, against an 8% overall median across 200 B2B products studied (Growth Unhinged, 2026).

Retention data explains the incentive better than any pricing memo could. RevenueCat's 2025 study found hard-paywall apps hold 12.8% median monthly retention versus 9.3% for freemium apps, and only about 10% of monthly subscribers across all categories reach a second year (RevenueCat, 2025). A generous free tier drags down the exact metric investors judge a subscription business on. Tightening it later is close to inevitable once the growth phase ends.

Finance apps aren't immune to this math, they're just slower to feel it. Finance-category apps see 9% monthly churn against a 13% cross-category average, and they retain 2.4x more Day-90 users than entertainment apps (RevenueCat, 2025). That relative stickiness is precisely why a re-tier, like Delta's, can land on users who assumed they were safe. Roughly 30% of annual subscriptions get canceled within the first month industry-wide, so vendors have every reason to squeeze the free door instead (RevenueCat, 2025).

Even a "great" freemium result tops out around 8-12% conversion (Growth Unhinged, 2026). At that ceiling, the free tier is never a rounding error. It's the majority of the user base, and it's the line item finance teams revisit first when revenue targets slip.

Citation capsule: Hard-paywall apps hold 12.8% median monthly retention against 9.3% for freemium apps, according to RevenueCat's 2025 State of Subscription Apps report, a gap of roughly 3.5 percentage points that compounds over a subscription's lifetime (RevenueCat, 2025). The same report found only about 10% of monthly subscribers across all categories reach a second year, and that finance apps specifically see 9% monthly churn against a 13% cross-category average. Why this matters: a free tier that converts at a median 3-5% (Growth Unhinged, 2026) is a weak growth lever on its own, so vendors under revenue pressure have a documented, quantifiable incentive to tighten the free door rather than rely on organic upgrades. That's the mechanism behind a re-tier like Delta's, not a one-off business decision.

What happens to your data on a "free" tracker?

A free tracker that isn't funded by subscriptions has to fund itself somehow. Community trackers on privacy-focused finance forums have flagged that legacy apps like Mint historically permitted broader data sharing in their policies (SavingAdvice, 2025).

Subscription-funded apps like Monarch Money and YNAB state plainly they don't sell user data, a claim echoed in separate 2025 coverage of the category (Rolling Out, 2025). It's worth reading the privacy policy of any tracker before connecting accounts, rather than assuming free means costless.

None of this means every free tracker monetizes your data behind the scenes, and we haven't verified that claim for the five trackers compared here. It does mean the free-tier trade-off has two dimensions, features and privacy, and reading the actual policy is worth the five minutes it takes. Why would a service that costs nothing to use, cost nothing to run?

A pricing cap and a data-sharing clause solve the same problem for a vendor: both convert a free user into revenue, one directly and one indirectly. Comparing trackers on asset limits alone misses half the picture. The other half sits in a privacy policy most people never open.

What changed when Delta re-tiered its free plan in January 2026?

Delta announced the change to its free tier in November 2025. It took effect in January 2026, adding a hard 10-asset ceiling to Basic and pushing serious users toward PRO at $53.88/yr or PRO+ at $107.88/yr (Delta's own announcement via delta.app, corroborated by FindMyMoat, 2026). Delta's announcement page returned a 403 error during our own direct check, so this account also relies on FindMyMoat's April 2026 review of that same announcement.

The two paid tiers split at different ceilings, not a single "remove the cap" upgrade. PRO costs $53.88/yr and raises the limit to 40 assets, adding AI features and analytics. PRO+ costs $107.88/yr and removes the cap entirely, adding unlimited portfolios, gains reporting, and real-time quotes (delta.app, 2025). Someone who only wants the cap gone still has to weigh whether they need the rest of PRO+ to get it.

For someone who'd already tracked a diversified portfolio for months expecting it to stay free, the eleventh position is where the wall appears. That's the pattern worth naming: a free tier isn't a permanent floor. It's a starting configuration a vendor can redraw once its own funding pressure changes.

Citation capsule: Delta by eToro announced a change to its free tier in November 2025, and the change took effect in January 2026, adding a hard 10-asset cap to the free "Basic" plan (Delta's own announcement via delta.app, 2025, corroborated by FindMyMoat, 2026). The two paid tiers split at different ceilings: PRO costs $53.88/yr and raises the limit to 40 assets, while PRO+ costs $107.88/yr and removes the cap entirely. Why this matters: Delta is owned by the brokerage eToro, so its free tracker sits directly upstream of a trading product, and a re-tier that pushes tracked-asset counts past 10 also nudges users toward a brokerage relationship. It's the clearest documented example in this comparison of a free tier tightening after users had already built portfolios around it, and it shows the tightening arrived with months of advance notice, announced in November, live by January, rather than overnight.

What does EPT Lab do differently?

EPT Lab's free tier isn't funded by the credential-holding, bank-sync infrastructure that costs other trackers money per connected account, the same mechanism that pushes freemium products toward harder paywalls once growth slows (RevenueCat, 2025).

Read-only tracking works from public wallet addresses and user-supplied CSVs, not live bank or broker API connections. Those live connections are exactly what cost money at scale for aggregator-dependent trackers, and that recurring cost is a documented driver behind later free-tier tightening. Removing the cost removes the pressure to re-tier.

We publish every change to the free tier on the transparency page, the same page where any future pricing change gets logged with a date. Judge the promise by the changelog, not by this paragraph. There's no scenario where a growth target forces a retroactive cap on positions you already track, because the product was never priced around aggregator costs in the first place.

That's a structural claim, not a personality trait. Delta didn't tighten Basic because someone changed their mind. It tightened because a free tier funded by aggregator infrastructure has a cost curve that eventually meets a revenue target. Remove the aggregator infrastructure, and the curve that forces the cap disappears with it.

Citation capsule: EPT Lab's free tier avoids the retention-driven re-tier pattern documented across the industry: RevenueCat's 2025 data shows freemium products hold only 9.3% median monthly retention against 12.8% for hard paywalls, a gap that typically pushes vendors to tighten a free tier once growth slows (RevenueCat, 2025). Read-only tracking removes the underlying cost driver rather than absorbing it: there's no live bank or broker API connection to maintain per user, which is the recurring expense a Delta or a CoinStats has to offset as its free user base grows. Why this matters: a free tier funded by aggregator infrastructure carries a cost curve that eventually meets a revenue target, a documented pattern rather than a one-off decision, while a free tier with no such infrastructure has no equivalent curve to meet. That structural difference, not a promise, is what a reader should verify on the transparency page over time.

Getting started in three steps

Most people never check whether their free tier has a shelf life until they hit it. The same review that logged Delta's 10-asset cap noted the change applies to every existing Basic user going forward, not only new signups (FindMyMoat, 2026).

1. Join the waitlist. It takes an email alias and nothing else: request access on the homepage. No card, no bank login.
2. Prepare your inputs. Copy one public wallet address you want to watch, or export a transactions CSV from your broker.
3. Read the terms before you need them. Check the free-tier terms on the transparency page now, not after you've built a portfolio around them.

FAQ

Every answer below carries at least one sourced statistic, because "it depends" isn't useful without a number attached.

Is there a truly free portfolio tracker with no catch?

Not really, once you look closely. Every free tracker we checked in July 2026 caps something, assets, portfolios, syncs, or bank connections, and Kubera skips a free tier completely in favor of a 14-day trial before its $250/yr Essentials plan. Read the fine print for the specific cap, not just the word "free."

Why did Delta by eToro start limiting free users to 10 assets in 2026?

Delta's Basic plan added a hard 10-asset ceiling in January 2026, pushing users toward PRO at $53.88/yr or PRO+ at $107.88/yr (FindMyMoat, 2026). The pattern lines up with broader retention economics: freemium products convert at a median 3-5%, and vendors tighten limits once growth slows (RevenueCat, 2025).

Does Sharesight count sold positions toward the free 10-holding limit?

It's genuinely unclear today. Sharesight's current pricing page doesn't specify, but Sharesight staff confirmed in a 2021 community forum thread that sold positions did count toward the Starter plan's holding limit at that time (Sharesight community, 2021). Whether that still applies in 2026 is worth confirming directly with support before you rely on it.

Why do finance apps restrict free features after you've been using them?

Because freemium retention is weak by design: RevenueCat found freemium apps hold 9.3% median monthly retention versus 12.8% for hard-paywall apps, and only about 10% of monthly subscribers reach a second year (RevenueCat, 2025). Tightening a free tier is often a response to that math, not a one-off decision.

What do free portfolio tracker apps do with my financial data?

It varies by vendor and isn't always disclosed clearly. Community reports on privacy-focused forums have flagged that legacy tools like Mint historically permitted broader data sharing in their policies, while Monarch Money and YNAB state plainly they don't sell user data (Rolling Out, 2025). Read the privacy policy, not just the pricing page. More detail on these limits lives in our FAQ.

Conclusion

The single idea worth keeping: a free tier is a starting configuration, not a floor, and vendors redraw it once funding pressure changes. Delta's January 2026 re-tier, capping Basic at 10 assets, and Kubera's total absence of a free plan sit at two ends of the same spectrum, backed by retention math that favors paywalls at 12.8% over freemium at 9.3% (RevenueCat, 2025).

getquin's unlimited-connections free tier and EPT Lab's aggregator-cost-free design are the two approaches least likely to move the goalposts on you later, for very different structural reasons: one absorbs the cost, the other never carries it. Kubera and Delta sit at the other end, charging upfront or capping hard once the free trial or free tier has done its job of onboarding you.

What you just learned:

• Every free tracker we checked caps something specific: assets, portfolios, syncs, or connections (vendor pages, July 2026).
• Freemium retention runs 9.3% versus 12.8% for hard paywalls, which is why caps tend to tighten over time (RevenueCat, 2025).
• Delta's January 2026 re-tier capped Basic at 10 assets, the clearest documented example of the pattern.
• EPT Lab's free tier carries no aggregator cost pressure to reverse later, by design.

If you'd rather know a free tier's terms before you build a portfolio around them, join the waitlist and read the transparency page first.

The Lab builds and operates EPT Lab (Oblyx LLC, Delaware). We audit competitor pricing and policies quarterly and publish every change to our own product on the public changelog.

Related reads

• Browse everything we've published on the blog index.
• See also: Your portfolio tracker shouldn't need your identity.

Sources

• Delta (eToro), "Introducing Delta PRO & PRO+: More Power, More Choice", retrieved 2026-07-04, https://delta.app/academy/post/introducing-delta-pro-pro-more-power-more-choice
• FindMyMoat, "Delta by eToro" tool review, retrieved 2026-07-04, https://www.findmymoat.com/tools/delta-by-etoro
• CoinStats, pricing page, retrieved 2026-07-04, https://coinstats.app/pricing/
• getquin, pricing page, retrieved 2026-07-04, https://www.getquin.com/pricing
• Kubera, homepage, retrieved 2026-07-04, https://www.kubera.com/
• Kubera Help Center, "What is Kubera Black?", retrieved 2026-07-04, https://help.kubera.com/article/129-what-is-kubera-black
• Sharesight, pricing page, retrieved 2026-07-04, https://www.sharesight.com/us/pricing/
• Sharesight Community, "Sold stocks still show in Sharesight holdings", retrieved 2026-07-04, https://community.sharesight.com/t/sold-stocks-still-show-in-sharesight-holdings/411
• RevenueCat, "State of Subscription Apps 2025", retrieved 2026-07-04, https://www.revenuecat.com/state-of-subscription-apps-2025/
• Growth Unhinged, "Free-to-Paid Conversion Report 2026", retrieved 2026-07-04, https://www.growthunhinged.com/p/free-to-paid-conversion-report
• SavingAdvice, "9 Budget Apps That Don't Sell Your Data, According to Their Policies", retrieved 2026-07-04, https://www.savingadvice.com/articles/2025/09/14/10165768_9-budget-apps-that-dont-sell-your-data-according-to-their-policies.html
• Rolling Out, "Finance apps expose your private data", retrieved 2026-07-04, https://rollingout.com/2025/09/17/finance-apps-expose-your-private-data/

Educational content, not investment advice. EPT Lab is a read-only tracker; we don't sell, broker or advise on any asset.

Competitor prices and features verified July 4, 2026 against their live pages. Delta's own announcement page returned a 403 error during our direct check; Delta figures here are drawn from that same announcement as accessed and quoted by FindMyMoat's April 2026 review.