Autopilot investing app review: Autopilot investment app pricing, fees and alternatives.
What Autopilot really charges per Pilot, read from its SEC filing, what that flat fee does to a $2,000 account, and how to check whether a Pelosi or hedge fund basket beat the S&P 500 before you pay to copy it.
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Educational only · Never places a trade
In short
Autopilot is an SEC-registered investment adviser (Autopilot Advisers, LLC, CRD 331749) whose app copies the disclosed trades of politicians, fund managers and themed portfolios into your own brokerage account. It charges a flat fee per Pilot, $29.99 to $199.99 a quarter or $99.99 to $699.99 a year according to its Form ADV, with a $500 minimum per portfolio and no AUM fee today. The app works as described. The catch is arithmetic: a flat fee is a large percentage of a small account, the trades arrive up to 45 days late, and the gains are mostly short-term.
Autopilot pricing, from its own SEC filing
How much does the Autopilot app cost?
Review sites quote "$29 a quarter or $100 a year". That is the bottom of the range, for one Pilot. Autopilot's Form ADV Part 2A, dated March 31, 2026, is more complete.
Premium: priced per Pilot
$99.99 to $699.99
A year, per Pilot, or $29.99 to $199.99 a quarter. The filing is explicit that the fee "is assessed per Pilot" and "charged to a client's credit card in advance". Follow the Pelosi Tracker and a hedge fund tracker and you pay twice.
Basic: $0, but it does not rebalance
$0
"Clients who utilize Basic Tier are not charged any fees by us." Basic makes the initial allocation and stops. Without AutoTrade it does not follow the Pilot's later trades, which is the thing people are paying Autopilot for.
AUM fee: 0.00% today, 0.25% to 1% planned
0.00%
The filing says the AUM fee is "currently set at 0.00%. However, in the future we intend to charge an AUM Fee" of 25 to 100 basis points. That would sit on top of the subscription. Nobody else reporting on Autopilot mentions it.
The minimum is $500 per portfolio: "A minimum investment of $500 per Portfolio is required." Autopilot does not publish on the filing which Pilot sits at which price point inside the $99.99 to $699.99 range, so check the in-app price for the specific tracker before you subscribe. Your brokerage's own costs (commissions, margin interest if you let it trade on margin) are separate.
A flat fee is a percentage you have not been told
Is the Autopilot investing app worth it at your balance?
The same $99.99 a year, the cheapest published annual price for one Pilot, as a share of the money that Pilot manages. This is the hurdle the strategy has to clear before it beats an S&P 500 index fund that costs 0.03%.
| Money in the Pilot | Annual fee | Fee as % of balance | What that means |
|---|---|---|---|
| $500 | $99.99 | 20.0% | The published minimum. The strategy has to beat the index by a fifth of your balance just to break even with an index fund. |
| $2,000 | $99.99 | 5.0% | Still a very high hurdle. Most active funds that charge 1% are criticized for it. |
| $5,000 | $99.99 | 2.0% | About the cost of an expensive actively managed mutual fund. |
| $10,000 | $99.99 | 1.0% | The break-even point with a traditional 1% adviser fee. |
| $25,000 | $99.99 | 0.40% | Where a flat subscription starts to look cheap, as long as it is one Pilot and not three. |
| $50,000 | $99.99 | 0.20% | Cheaper than most managed portfolios. The tax cost of short-term trading now matters more than the fee. |
Autopilot's own marketing is built around the headline return of the Pelosi Tracker, and on a big balance a flat fee genuinely is cheap. The issue is who actually signs up. The minimum is $500, the product is sold through the App Store, and a lot of accounts are small. At $2,000 in one Pilot you are paying the equivalent of a 5% management fee, which is five times what a traditional financial adviser charges and more than 150 times an index fund.
The fee is also not the only drag. Autopilot's Form ADV warns that clients "should expect that, for tax purposes, they will largely experience short term capital gains and losses". In a taxable account a short-term gain is taxed as ordinary income, up to 37% federally, instead of the 15% or 20% long-term rate. On a strategy that turns over every time a member of Congress files a report, that difference can be larger than the subscription itself. Holding the Pilot in an IRA removes the tax problem but not the fee problem.
The practical rule: work out the fee as a percentage of what you will actually put in, add a realistic tax cost if the account is taxable, and only then compare it with the Pilot's advertised return. That is exactly the test the studio at the top of this page runs for free in the demo: load the tracker's disclosed holdings as a basket and compare the portfolio to the S&P 500 over the same window.
What happens between a filing and your trade
How the Autopilot app copies a Pilot
1
A trade happens
A member of Congress, their spouse, or a fund manager buys or sells. Nobody outside knows yet.
2
It gets disclosed, late
House rules require a periodic transaction report by the earlier of 30 days after learning of the trade or 45 days after it. Funds file 13F holdings quarterly, 45 days after quarter end.
3
Autopilot reads the filing
Its FAQ says positions update "Immediately! Our systems will pick up the report as soon as it is filed." It then drops shorts, options and anything your broker cannot trade in fractional shares.
4
Your broker places the trade
Through your brokerage's API, using tokens rather than your password. At some brokers AutoTrade is unavailable and you confirm each trade from a push notification.
Step two is the one that decides your result. Autopilot's filing calls it Time Delay Risk: "a possibly advantageous trade by a Pilot may turn out to be far less advantageous, or even ill advised" by the time it is public. The speed of step three does not help if step two took six weeks. Before you research any single name the Pilot adds, it helps to pull up a structured research summary of the ticker and ask whether you would buy it on its own merits at today's price.
Autopilot vs dub vs Composer vs Quiver vs Unusual Whales
Autopilot alternatives, compared honestly
These tools solve different jobs. Two of them trade for you, two sell you the data and let you trade, and one (ours) tests the basket without trading at all. Prices are from each company's own pricing page or filing, read September 25, 2026.
| Tool | What it does | Places trades? | Price | Minimum | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Autopilot | Copies a Pilot's disclosed trades into your own brokerage account | Yes, via your broker's API | $29.99 to $199.99 a quarter or $99.99 to $699.99 a year, per Pilot. Basic tier $0 with no rebalancing | $500 per portfolio | Hands-off copying of a specific politician or fund tracker |
| dub | Copy trading inside its own built-in brokerage | Yes, in a dub account | Premium subscription, several prices listed in the App Store | $100 | People happy to open a new brokerage to copy creators and investors |
| Composer | No-code algorithmic strategies ("symphonies") that it executes | Yes, through Composer Securities | Starter $0, Advanced $10 a month, Pro $32 a month billed yearly | Not stated on the pricing page | Building and running your own rules rather than copying a person |
| Quiver Quantitative | Congressional trading data and published strategies | No. "We do not currently offer brokerage integrations" | API Hobbyist from $25 a month billed yearly | None | Research on congressional trades, executed yourself |
| Unusual Whales | Options flow and politician trade data | No | Retail Basic $42 a month billed yearly | None | Traders who want the raw filings and flow data |
| Indexes | Builds, backtests and tracks a weighted index of stocks or crypto | No, analysis only | From $12 a month billed yearly | None | Testing whether a basket beat the S&P 500 before you pay to copy or buy it |
Where Autopilot wins
It keeps your money at your own broker, it is a registered adviser with public filings, and it is genuinely hands-off. If you have a large balance, one Pilot you believe in, and an IRA to hold it in, the flat fee is low and the tax problem disappears.
Autopilot vs Composer
Autopilot copies a person. Composer runs rules you build: "Build trading algorithms with AI, backtest them, then execute." Composer executes through its own broker-dealer, Composer Securities, rather than linking yours. If you would rather understand the rules than trust the filer, our Composer alternative comparison goes further.
Where Indexes fits
We do not copy trades and never will. Indexes is the step before: rebuild the tracker's disclosed holdings as a weighted index, backtest the basket against the S&P 500, and track it from today. If it did not clear the fee and the tax, you have saved the subscription.
Match the tool to the job
Who should pay for Autopilot, and who should not
A good fit: someone with $25,000 or more to put behind one specific tracker, ideally inside an IRA or Roth IRA, who has read the Pilot's history and wants the trades placed without watching filings. At that size the $99.99 fee is 0.40% or less, and inside a retirement account the short-term gains are not taxed each year.
A poor fit: someone putting $500 to $2,000 into two or three Pilots in a taxable brokerage account. Every one of the three drags lands at once: a fee of 5% to 20% of the balance, trades that arrive weeks after the move, and gains taxed at ordinary income rates. The headline return has to be enormous to survive that.
A different job entirely: if what attracts you is the theme rather than the person (AI infrastructure, defense, semiconductors), you do not need anyone's disclosure lag. You can build a custom thematic index with the exact names and weights you want, or build a stock basket and track it, then buy it at any broker with zero subscription.
Autopilot app questions
What people ask before they subscribe
How much does the Autopilot app cost?
Autopilot charges a flat subscription per Pilot, not per account. Its SEC Form ADV, dated March 31, 2026, sets the range at $29.99 to $199.99 a quarter or $99.99 to $699.99 a year for each Pilot you follow, charged to a card in advance. A Basic tier costs nothing but only makes the initial allocation and does not rebalance. The advisory AUM fee is currently 0.00%.
Is the Autopilot investing app worth it?
It depends almost entirely on your balance. At the $500 minimum, the cheapest $99.99 annual fee is 20% of the account, so the Pilot has to beat an index fund by that much just to break even. At $10,000 the same fee is 1%, and at $50,000 it is 0.20%. Below roughly $10,000 per Pilot, the subscription is usually the biggest cost you pay.
Is Autopilot legit?
Yes. Autopilot Advisers, LLC is an SEC-registered investment adviser, CRD 331749, registered since July 30, 2024, and it files a Form ADV and a Form CRS you can read on adviserinfo.sec.gov. It reported $892,375,643 of discretionary assets and 103,270 accounts at the end of 2025. Registration is not an endorsement of the strategies, which carry the disclosure-lag and short-term tax risks the filing describes.
Is Autopilot safe to connect to my brokerage?
Your money stays at your own broker. Autopilot places trades through your brokerage's API using authentication tokens rather than your username and password, and it describes the connection as working "very similarly to Plaid". It never holds your cash. The real risk is not custody but the strategy: trades copied weeks after they happened, filtered to what your broker can trade in fractional shares.
What brokerages does Autopilot work with?
The App Store listing names Robinhood, Charles Schwab and Public "and more". Public became an official brokerage partner in January 2026 and, per Autopilot's Form ADV, pays Autopilot a referral fee of $50 to $5,000 depending on the new deposit. For some brokers Autopilot cannot run AutoTrade and asks you to confirm each trade from a push notification instead.
How does the Pelosi Tracker work on Autopilot?
Members of Congress must file a periodic transaction report by the earlier of 30 days after learning of a trade or 45 days after the trade itself, for transactions over $1,000. Autopilot reads each report as it is filed and places the matching trade in your account. So you are buying up to six weeks after the original trade, at whatever price the stock has moved to by then.
Does Autopilot copy options, shorts or crypto?
No. Autopilot's FAQ says it does not copy short positions and does not invest in crypto or options, and its Form ADV adds that filtering removes securities your broker cannot trade in fractional shares. If a Pilot's real return came from options, which several famous congressional trades did, your copy only holds the stock leg.
What are the taxes on Autopilot trades?
Expect mostly short-term capital gains. Autopilot's own Form ADV says clients "should expect that, for tax purposes, they will largely experience short term capital gains and losses." In a taxable account those are taxed at ordinary income rates, up to 37% federally, instead of the 15% or 20% long-term rate, which can cost more than the subscription.
Will Autopilot start charging an AUM fee?
Its filing says it intends to. The Form ADV states the AUM fee is "currently set at 0.00%" and that "in the future we intend to charge an AUM Fee" in a range of 0.25% to 1% a year. That would be on top of the per-Pilot subscription, so price your decision on the possibility, not just today's fee.
What is the best Autopilot alternative?
It depends on which part you want. If you want hands-off copy trading in a new account, dub is the closest match. If you want to build and run your own rules, Composer. If you want the raw congressional data and will place trades yourself, Quiver Quantitative or Unusual Whales. If you want to test whether a basket actually beat the S&P 500 before paying to copy it, build it as an index and backtest it.
Sources
Autopilot fees, tiers, minimum, AUM fee plans, tax disclosure, filtering, Time Delay Risk and the Public referral arrangement from the Autopilot Advisers, LLC Form ADV Part 2A dated March 31, 2026 and its Form CRS, both on adviserinfo.sec.gov (CRD 331749). Assets and account count from Form ADV Part 1. Brokerages from the Autopilot App Store listing and the January 28, 2026 Public and Autopilot announcement. How trades are placed and what is not copied from the Autopilot FAQ. Congressional reporting deadline from the House Committee on Ethics periodic transaction report guidance. Composer from composer.trade/pricing. Quiver Quantitative from its API pricing page and strategies FAQ. Unusual Whales from unusualwhales.com/pricing. dub from its App Store listing. All read on September 25, 2026; prices change, so confirm in the app before you subscribe. Indexes is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any company named here. We make index construction and backtesting software: we do not manage money, place trades or give investment advice.
Test the basket before you pay to copy it
Load the holdings a tracker has disclosed, weight them the way the filer did, and backtest the index against the S&P 500. If it only beat the market before fees and tax, you will see it in minutes.
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