Looking for a ProjectionLab alternative?

ProjectionLab is the most respected pure planning tool in the FIRE community, and deservedly so — for a lot of people it is the right answer and this page will say so. Here is an honest Fire Horizon vs ProjectionLab comparison. The split: it is the deeper model, Fire Horizon is the live tracker. The decision usually comes down to one question — do you want to link your accounts, or not?

Pricing verified July 2026

Side by side

Feature	Fire Horizon	ProjectionLab	Edge
Starting price	Free tier, paid from $6.99/mo	Free tier; Premium $129/yr; Pro $549/yr	Fire Horizon
Free tier	Monte Carlo, dividends, what-ifs and net worth all free	Forecasting, Monte Carlo and historical backtesting	Comparable
Account linking	Plaid, SnapTrade or CSV import, priced daily	None by design — entered and maintained by hand	Fire Horizon
Privacy posture	Linking is optional, but syncing means holding your data	Nothing to link, so nothing to leak — a deliberate choice	ProjectionLab
Historical backtesting	Monte Carlo only	Historical backtesting alongside Monte Carlo	ProjectionLab
Modelling depth	Focused on the FIRE question and the portfolio behind it	Very deep — life events, estate, ACA subsidies, tax optimization	ProjectionLab
FIRE variants	Coast, Barista, Lean and Fat as first-class plan types	Expressible through flexible modelling, not preset types	Fire Horizon
Live portfolio tracking	Holdings, dividends and splits tracked and priced daily	A planner rather than a tracker	Fire Horizon
Withdrawal strategies	Fixed dollar, percent-of-balance, or guardrails with a floor	Withdrawal strategies included on the paid tier	Comparable

Which one fits you

Choose Fire Horizon if…

You would rather your plan updated itself than sit down to maintain it.
You want holdings, dividends and splits tracked, not just balances estimated.
You want Coast, Barista, Lean and Fat as ready-made plan types.
You want to spend less — free, then a few dollars a month.

Choose ProjectionLab if…

You do not want to connect a brokerage to anything, full stop.
You want historical backtesting as well as Monte Carlo.
You want to model complicated life events, estate plans or ACA subsidies.
You enjoy building the model yourself and want maximum control over it.

The decision is really about linking accounts

ProjectionLab does not connect to your brokerage, and that is not an oversight — it is the product's position, and a reason people recommend it. The cost of that position is maintenance: a hand-built model is accurate on the day you build it and drifts quietly afterwards. Fire Horizon takes the other side of the trade, syncing through Plaid or SnapTrade so the answer stays current, which means we do hold your holdings data. Neither choice is wrong; they suit different people.

Where ProjectionLab is simply deeper

Historical backtesting is a real gap on our side. Replaying a plan through actual market sequences — including the ones that broke retirements — catches things a Monte Carlo drawn from a distribution can smooth over. Their life-event and tax modelling also goes further than ours does today.

Where being a tracker changes the answer

A plan you check twice a year is a plan that was right twice a year. Because Fire Horizon prices your real holdings daily, the retirement date moves when your portfolio does, and the readiness check re-runs on the balances you actually hold rather than the ones you last typed in.

Common questions

Is Fire Horizon a ProjectionLab alternative?

It is, with one important difference in philosophy. ProjectionLab is a modelling tool you maintain by hand and it is excellent at that. Fire Horizon connects to your accounts and keeps the plan current for you. Which is better depends entirely on whether you want to link accounts at all.

Why does ProjectionLab not link to accounts?

It is deliberate, and a genuine feature for a lot of their users. Nothing is connected, so there is no brokerage credential and no synced holdings sitting anywhere. If that matters more to you than automation, that is a good reason to choose them.

Which is cheaper?

Fire Horizon starts lower — paid plans begin at $6.99/mo against ProjectionLab Premium at $129/yr — and both have real free tiers you can stay on. Verified July 2026.

Which has better Monte Carlo?

Both run proper simulations rather than a single average return. ProjectionLab adds historical backtesting, which replays real market sequences and is a genuinely useful second opinion we do not currently offer.

Which is better for Coast FIRE?

Fire Horizon models it directly: you set the age you stop contributing and the chart draws both markers — where saving stops and where the coasting balance finally reaches your number. In ProjectionLab you can express the same thing, but you build it yourself.

See all six FIRE calculators compared →

Fire Horizon vs Boldin →

See what a tracked plan looks like.

Free to start, no card required — and linking a brokerage stays optional. Import a CSV instead, or just type the numbers in.

Create your free account

Not financial advice — projections are estimates based on your assumptions

Disclosure: we build Fire Horizon, so we are not a neutral party — read this the way you would any comparison written by one of the entrants. Every competitor figure is quoted from their own public pricing and feature pages, and we have tried to be specific about what they do better.