Autopilot vs Composer Pricing Comparison for Automated Investing

Autopilot charges a flat subscription for each person or fund you copy, $99.99 to $699.99 a year per Pilot under its SEC filing, and trades in a brokerage account you already have. Composer, now Composer by SoFi, charges for the number of rule based strategies you automate, from $0 for one strategy to $384 a year for up to 500, and trades in its own brokerage account. On a $5,000 account the cheapest Autopilot Pilot costs 2.0% a year and Composer's Starter plan costs nothing, so for small balances the fee, not the strategy, decides the winner.

People searching for this comparison usually have a few thousand dollars ready and two apps installed. One promises to copy Nancy Pelosi or a hedge fund for you, the other promises to run whatever strategy you can describe. They look like rivals on the App Store, but they charge for completely different things, and that difference is what this page prices. Every figure comes from Autopilot Advisers, LLC's Form ADV Part 2A dated March 31, 2026 and from Composer's pricing page, both read on October 12, 2026. We build index construction and backtesting software and are not affiliated with either firm; nothing here is investment advice.

Autopilot vs Composer pricing comparison at five balances

Both apps charge a flat dollar amount, so the honest way to compare them is as a percentage of the money you put in. The table assumes one Pilot at Autopilot (the filing's lowest and highest annual price) and each of Composer's three individual plans.

For scale, a broad S&P 500 index fund costs around 0.03% a year, and a traditional financial adviser around 1%. At $5,000, even Autopilot's cheapest Pilot is twice the adviser's fee; at $100,000 it is a rounding error. Composer's Starter plan is the only option on the table that costs nothing at any balance, with the limit that it automates a single strategy of up to 200 nodes.

What's the total cost of using Autopilot for a full year including subscription and any per-trade costs?

For one Pilot paid annually, $99.99 to $699.99, depending on the Pilot. Paid quarterly, the same range is $29.99 to $199.99 a quarter, which works out to $119.96 to $799.96 a year, so annual billing saves about 17% to 13%. Autopilot charges no commission of its own and its AUM fee is currently 0.00%, but your broker's own fees, regulatory fees and the expense ratios of any ETFs bought still apply.

Three details in the filing change the real total. First, the fee "is assessed per Pilot", so following the Pelosi Tracker and a hedge fund tracker means two subscriptions. Second, Autopilot says it intends to add an AUM fee of 0.25% to 1% for Premium Tier clients in the future, after notifying them; on $25,000 the top of that range would add $250 a year. Third, the free Basic Tier makes only the first allocation and then sends alerts, so keeping the copy current is on you.

How much does Composer cost?

Composer lists three individual plans. Starter is $0 and automates your first strategy, with unlimited building and backtesting in the no code editor. Advanced is $10 a month and automates up to five strategies of up to 350 nodes. Pro is $32 a month billed yearly, $384 a year, and adds up to 500 automated strategies, API access, manual overrides and priority trade timing closer to the market close. Trades carry no commission and no management fee; FINRA and SEC regulatory fees are charged on sales.

Business accounts are priced by call rather than listed. The plan you need depends on how many strategies run at once, not on your balance, which is why Composer gets cheaper in percentage terms faster than Autopilot does as an account grows.

How does Autopilot's brokerage-linked model compare to Composer's algorithmic strategies?

Autopilot copies a person; Composer runs rules you choose. Autopilot connects to an individual or IRA account at one of its supported brokers and sends that broker instructions to mirror a Pilot's portfolio. Composer opens a new account at Composer Securities LLC, carried by Alpaca Securities and Apex Clearing, and executes a "symphony" of if then rules on a schedule. SoFi acquired Composer Securities and relaunched the product as Composer by SoFi on June 23, 2026.

The Autopilot filing is frank about two costs that never show up in the price. Congressional trades are disclosed up to 45 days after they happen, so "a possibly advantageous trade by a Pilot may turn out to be far less advantageous" by the time you buy it. And Autopilot strips out short positions, options and anything your broker cannot trade in fractional shares, so you may hold only part of what the Pilot actually did. If the politician is the reason you are interested, our Autopilot investing app review walks through the disclosure lag in detail.

Composer's hidden cost is the opposite one: nobody else's judgment is in the strategy. A symphony does exactly what its rules say, including in markets the backtest never saw. Before paying to automate an idea, it is worth being able to test a trading rule on 20 years of daily data and read an honest verdict on it, because a rule that only worked in the last three years is the most common way these strategies disappoint.

Which one is cheaper on taxes?

Probably neither, in a taxable account. Autopilot's filing tells clients to "expect that, for tax purposes, they will largely experience short term capital gains and losses", because portfolios change often. A Composer symphony that rebalances daily or weekly produces the same result. Short term gains are taxed at your ordinary income rate, up to 37% federally, against 15% or 20% for most long term gains. Composer pitches "tax-smart active trading in your retirement account" and Autopilot accepts IRAs, so both are cheaper to run inside an IRA where trades are not taxed each year.

Is Autopilot or Composer better for a small account?

Under about $10,000, Composer's Starter plan, because it costs nothing and the subscription is the largest drag on a small account. Autopilot's cheapest Pilot takes 2% of a $5,000 account before any return, and the $500 minimum means many accounts are far smaller than that. Above $50,000 the subscription stops mattering at either app, and the choice is only about whether you trust a person's disclosed trades or your own rules.

• You want to copy a specific politician or fund and have $25,000 or more: Autopilot. The cheapest Pilots cost under half a percent at that size, and the account stays at your broker.
• You have an idea you can state as a rule: Composer. Start on the $0 plan, backtest it, and pay only when you run more than one strategy.
• You want several strategies running at once: Composer Advanced automates up to five strategies for $120 a year, roughly what a single low priced Autopilot Pilot costs.
• You mainly want exposure to a theme, not a person or a timing rule: neither. Buy the stocks once and hold them, with no subscription at all.

Check the basket against the S&P 500 before you subscribe

Both apps ask you to pay before you know whether the portfolio beats simply owning the index. That is the step Indexes covers. You can take a Pilot's disclosed holdings or the stocks a symphony would buy, build them as a weighted custom index, backtest it, and compare the portfolio to the S&P 500 over the same period. If you like the congress idea but not the lag, the NANC ETF alternative page shows how to hold a congress basket on your own terms, and our Composer alternative page covers what to use if writing rules is not for you. Indexes is analysis software: it never holds money or places a trade, so a subscription you decide against costs you nothing beyond the time to look.