# ProjectionLab

Model a whole financial life as milestones and cash flows, then run it against history.

*https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/projectionlab · Retirement & FIRE Calculators*

## Facts

### At a glance

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Vendor | ProjectionLab |
| Category | Retirement & FIRE Calculators |
| Job | retirement |
| Website | https://projectionlab.com |
| Pricing model | subscription |
| Free tier | true |
| Open source | false |
| Licence | none |
| Self-hosted | false |
| Tested hands-on | false |
| Last updated | 2026-09-13 |

### Pricing

| Tier | USD | Period |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Basic | 0 USD | year |
| Premium | 129 USD | year |
| Pro | 549 USD | year |

### Coverage

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Asset classes | stocks, bonds, crypto, real_estate |
| Markets | us, ca, uk, eu, au |
| Works outside the US | true |
| Data latency | none |
| Platforms | web |
| AI features | none |

### Interfaces

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| API | false |
| Webhooks | false |
| Scripting | none |
| Python | false |
| Spreadsheet add-in | false |
| MCP server | false |
| Export | csv, json, pdf |

### Capabilities

Yes: backtesting

No: charting, screening, scanning, automation, live_trading, paper_trading, portfolio_tracking, broker_import, tax_reporting, alerts, news, options_analysis

*Verified: pricing 2026-09-13; capabilities 2026-09-13; coverage 2026-09-13.*

## What it is

ProjectionLab is a browser-based financial planner. You build a plan out of milestones —
retirement, a move to another state, a house purchase, a spouse's death — then hang income
streams, accounts, expenses and financed assets off them and set cash-flow priorities that decide
where each year's surplus goes. The engine simulates one year at a time to life expectancy,
handling withholding, dividends, required minimum distributions and last year's tax bill without
being told what to save.

The same plan is shown two ways. The Plan tab runs it once at a fixed growth rate. Chance of
Success runs it many times with returns and inflation varying per trial, drawn either from
historical S&P 500 returns and dividend yields and historical US inflation or from normal
distributions you specify. The success rate is the share of trials that reach the end of the plan
without running out of money; the outcome buckets around it — failed early, failed late, almost
failed, large surplus — have thresholds and names you set yourself. Historical sampling can be
sequential, random-start-year or block bootstrap, and trials run up to 2,000.

## Pricing

Basic is free, Premium is $129 a year and Pro is $549 a year. Premium is annual only: the
month-to-month plan that used to cost $17.42 is marked retired in the site's own pricing data, and
the help centre says plainly that only Pro is sold monthly. The $1,199 Lifetime plan is retired
too, so a reader who remembers one cannot buy it. The trial is seven days, and employers can buy
seats at $9 per member per month.

What free gets you is worth reading closely, because the vendor's own wording is "run basic
retirement projections for free". Monte Carlo and historical backtesting are both in Basic. Tax
estimation is not — nor is the Sankey cash-flow view, Optimize, withdrawal strategies, tax
analytics, estate planning, downloadable reports or Multiple Plans. Basic is therefore one saved
plan with no tax engine under it.

## Data & coverage

No market data of any kind: nothing is priced, and every balance is a number you type. The
historical series behind Chance of Success are S&P 500 returns and dividends and US inflation,
extended each year — the changelog records 2025 being added.

The US modelling is the deep part. Federal and state income tax with a move milestone that
switches states mid-plan, the standard deduction, RMDs, Roth conversions, backdoor and mega
backdoor Roth, 72(t) SEPP distributions, capital gains harvesting, ACA premiums with subsidy
reconciliation, IRMAA cliffs, Medicare added automatically at 65, and Social Security computed
from a primary insurance amount with early-claiming reduction, delayed credits, the earnings test
and spousal benefits. Defined-benefit pensions pay out as a percentage of final or career-average
pay, mortgages and property tax ride along with a financed asset, and one-off or every-five-years
purchases are first-class events. Elsewhere there are account types and tax presets for Canada,
the UK, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands.

## Integrations

There is no account linking, by design and by the vendor's own statement. Plugins cover the gap:
browser extensions sync balances from YNAB, Lunch Money and Monarch Money through a key-gated
browser API exposed on the page, and anyone can write their own — but they are third-party code,
not the vendor's. There is no HTTP API. Reports export to PDF, CSV and JSON, and the whole
account exports and restores as JSON.

## Limitations

- Balances never import themselves. You type them, or you install someone else's browser
  extension and trust it.
- Projections are annual. There is no month-by-month or day-by-day view, and the vendor is still
  researching one.
- Data is not local. Plans live in ProjectionLab's Firestore, and self-hosting was discontinued
  in March 2025 with bug fixes ending that December.
- Outside the US the tax engine thins out fast. The presets are real, but tax estimation is
  Premium-only, and there is no Canadian or British equivalent of the Social Security, ACA and
  IRMAA machinery the US plans get.
- Tax Analytics is a planning estimate, not a filing document — it produces no forms and no cost
  basis records.
- Let a subscription lapse and you keep the account but drop to Basic, which means the cash-flow
  view, the tax engine and every plan past the first stop being available.

## Alternatives

[Boldin](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/boldin) covers similar US ground with account linking and a coaching upsell. [cFIREsim](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/cfiresim) answers the
narrower question — would this withdrawal rate have survived history — for nothing.

## FAQ

### Does ProjectionLab keep my data in my browser?

Not any more. Plans are saved to your ProjectionLab account and stored in Google Cloud Firestore, encrypted in transit and at rest. What the product does still refuse to do is link your bank or brokerage — it holds the numbers you type, not credentials — and you can export everything to JSON or delete the account from inside the app.

### Can I still self-host ProjectionLab?

No. The vendor announced on 6 March 2025 that future updates would ship to the web app only, and bug-fix support for self-hosted deployments ended on 31 December 2025. Existing instances keep running but receive nothing new, and the migration path is a JSON export into the hosted app.

### Is there still a lifetime plan?

No. The $1,199 Lifetime plan is marked retired in the pricing data, and so is the month-to-month Premium plan. Premium is sold annually at $129; only the advisor-facing Pro tier still has a monthly option.

### Can someone outside the US use it?

Yes, with caveats. There are account types and tax presets for Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands, but automatic tax estimation is a Premium feature, and the deepest modelling — Social Security, ACA subsidies, IRMAA, Roth conversions, 72(t) — is US-specific. Outside a preset country you fall back to a fixed effective tax rate.

## Also worth comparing

- [Boldin](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/boldin.md) — A year-by-year US retirement model — accounts, taxes, Social Security, Medicare, housing.
- [FIREproof](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/fireproof.md) — The cFIREsim author's second simulator, with the taxes and accounts the first one lacks.
- [cFIREsim](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/cfiresim.md) — Run a withdrawal plan against every market cycle since 1871 and count how many survived.
- [FI Calc](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/ficalc.md) — Twelve withdrawal strategies replayed against every US market cycle since 1871.
- [Portfolio Charts](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/portfolio-charts.md) — Any asset allocation, charted since 1970 in twelve countries' currencies and inflation.
- [Portfolio Visualizer](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/portfolio-visualizer.md) — Backtest an asset mix to 1972, run Monte Carlo, regress it on Fama-French factors.

## Named as a replacement for

- [Portfolio Visualizer](https://stockmarketstack.com/alternatives/portfolio-visualizer.md)