The short version
FICalc is a free historical withdrawal simulator and nothing more; ProjectionLab models your whole financial life over time. If you only want a safe withdrawal rate sanity check, FICalc is enough.
Why people compare them
Both come up when someone wants to test whether a portfolio survives retirement, one paid and one free.
Price and fit, side by side
| Feature | ProjectionLab | FI Calc |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid plan | ProjectionLabFree tier, then $129 per year | FI CalcFree tier, then Free per n/a |
| Free tier | ProjectionLabYes | FI CalcYes |
| Billed in pounds | ProjectionLabNo | FI CalcYes |
| Best for | ProjectionLabConfident planners who want to model complex scenarios themselves | FI CalcAnyone who wants to stress-test a withdrawal rate against real historical sequences |
Where ProjectionLab wins
- Genuinely powerful scenario and projection modelling
- A real free tier, so you can try the core idea without paying
- Strong with Monte Carlo analysis and detailed assumptions
Where FI Calc wins
- Completely free, supported by donations, with no tier to upgrade to and nothing held back
- Runs entirely in the browser, so there is no account to create and no personal data to hand over
- Backtests against more than a hundred years of historical returns and inflation, which is a far better sanity check than a single average growth rate
Where both fall short
- Neither applies UK tax rules to what it shows you.
- Both are built US-first, so UK users pay in dollars and work around US assumptions.
If neither is quite right
If what you actually want is the retirement answer rather than a better dashboard, that is the gap Delphina was built for: UK pensions, ISAs and tax, projected to the age you want to stop. It does not do the job ProjectionLab does for confident planners who want to model complex scenarios themselves, so if that is the real problem, ProjectionLab is still the better buy. Free plan is £0, no card.
ProjectionLab vs FI Calc: common questions
ProjectionLab is $129 per year and FI Calc is Free per n/a. Compare the billing period before the number: an annual price and a monthly price are not the same thing.
You can, and some people do, because they solve different halves of the problem. It does mean paying for both, so add the two annual figures together before deciding.
Judge it on billing currency, Open Banking coverage and whether ISAs and pensions are handled. FI Calc has the edge here, because ProjectionLab bills in a foreign currency.
ProjectionLab suits confident planners who want to model complex scenarios themselves. FI Calc suits anyone who wants to stress-test a withdrawal rate against real historical sequences. The one that matches how you already think about money will take less setting up.
Delphina covers the gap both leave, which is UK pensions, ISAs and tax projected forward to retirement. The trade-off is that it does not do the job ProjectionLab does for confident planners who want to model complex scenarios themselves, so if that is the real need, pick one of these two.