Alternative
Schwab Personalized Indexing Alternatives: Build and Backtest Your Own Index
Schwab Personalized Indexing is a serious institutional-grade product wrapped for retail. Schwab builds you a separately managed account that holds the actual stocks of an index, then screens and harvests tax losses on your behalf, and it does that at a lower entry point than most SMA providers historically allowed. If you have the balance and you want the ownership plus the tax work handled, it is a strong choice. The tradeoffs are the $100,000 minimum, the 0.40% starting fee, an equities-only universe, and the fact that you are choosing from Schwab index strategies with tilts rather than authoring an index from scratch. Indexes attacks the other side of the problem. It is educational and informational, track-and-analyze not trade. You author the index, weight stocks and crypto together, backtest it against real market history, and track it over time versus the S&P 500 or BTC. No account, no minimum, no trade ever placed, and a flat software fee instead of a slice of your assets.
Last updated July 2026
In short
Schwab Personalized Indexing is a managed separately managed account: Schwab buys the underlying stocks of an index for you and harvests tax losses. It requires a $100,000 minimum and fees start at 0.40% a year. Indexes is not a managed account and does not hold assets. It is the design and testing step: build a weighted index from stocks and crypto, backtest it against real market history, and track it against benchmarks, with no minimum and no trades.
Side by side
Indexes vs Schwab
| Capability | Indexes | Schwab |
|---|---|---|
| Author a custom weighted index from scratch | Schwab strategies with tilts | |
| Stocks and crypto in one index | US equities only | |
| Backtest against real market history | ||
| Track versus benchmarks over time | Partial | |
| Owns the shares for you | ||
| Automated tax-loss harvesting | ||
| Account minimum | None | $100K |
| Annual fee model | Flat software fee | From 0.40% AUM |
| Analyze-only, never places trades |
Comparison reflects general product positioning and is provided in good faith. Verify current capabilities with each vendor.
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Build, backtest, and track, self-serve
Educational only · Never places a trade
Questions
Schwab direct indexing, answered
What is Schwab Personalized Indexing?
Schwab Personalized Indexing is a direct-indexing service that buys the individual stocks of an index inside a separately managed account at Schwab. Because you own the shares, Schwab can harvest tax losses on individual positions and apply screens or tilts that a single index fund cannot offer.
What is the minimum for Schwab Personalized Indexing?
Schwab Personalized Indexing requires a $100,000 account minimum. That is lower than many traditional separately managed accounts, which have often started at $250,000 or more, but it still puts the service out of reach for smaller balances. Confirm the current minimum with Schwab.
How much does Schwab Personalized Indexing cost?
Fees start at 0.40% a year on assets, stepping down to 0.35% on balances above $2 million. That is on top of any underlying costs. As of July 2026 those are the published rates, and Schwab can change them, so verify before committing.
Is Schwab direct indexing worth it?
It depends on your tax situation. The value of direct indexing comes mostly from harvesting losses against realized gains, so it works best if you have a large taxable account and regular capital gains to offset. If you invest mainly inside an IRA or 401(k), the tax-loss harvesting is worth little and a plain index fund is usually the cheaper answer.
What is a Schwab Personalized Indexing alternative?
For ownership plus tax-loss harvesting, the closest alternatives are Fidelity Managed FidFolios, Wealthfront US Direct Indexing and Frec. For designing and backtesting the index itself without funding an account, Indexes does that with no minimum, since it is analysis software rather than a managed account.
New to the strategy? Start with our guide to direct indexing, what it costs and who it suits, or see how much direct indexing costs across providers.
Build your index and see how it backtests
Bundle stocks or crypto into your own weighted index, backtest it against real market history, and track it against the S&P 500 or BTC. Prosumer pricing, no brokerage account. Indexes is educational and informational only, and it never places a trade. Decide for yourself.