Titan and Betterment are American financial services companies that offer accessible investing to all. In doing so, they both have similar business models. Customers can start investing after an app download and taking a few simple steps. You don’t need to be well off to start investing.
While Titan and Betterment offer similar services, the devil is in the details. A few key differences separate these investing companies, and we will go over the differences between Titan and Betterment. Let’s start with their backgrounds.
What is Titan?
Titan is a financial services company and investment platform. Their product is an actively managed investment portfolio. From the user’s point of view, the offer is quite simple. You just choose from one of the four strategies they offer. The Titan investment strategies primarily vary by risk, with their “Flagship” offer including stable, large-cap stocks for long-term growth. They also offer a crypto strategy if you’re interested in greater risk for potentially greater rewards.
Titan was founded in 2017, making it a relatively young company of its type. However, it’s grown quickly and close to $1 billion in investments for its customers. Their service is simple for users, who just need to pick a strategy and fund their accounts. After that, Titan manages the investment choices according to those preferences specified in the strategy.
What is Betterment?
Betterment is a financial services company offering investments. Their products include robo-advisor investing for a low rate of 0.25% annually. Alternatively, users who chose Betterment Premium get unlimited customer service by phone and access to certified financial planners.
Betterment offers several portfolio options with additional customization. They are a highly accessible platform; you don’t need to invest a large sum to get started. In addition, their fees are very low, and you can access the stock market through fractional shares available through their platform.
Founded in 2008, Betterment is one of the older companies offering these services. As of 2021, the company had $29 billion in assets under management. Their stated goal is to “help you make the most of your money.” To do so, they offer management, guided investing, and even retirement planning.
Titan vs. Betterment: The Differences
Titan and Betterment offer very similar value propositions. However, their products differ in several key ways.
Titan vs. Betterment: Key Differences
The main difference between Titan and Betterment is the nature of investments on their platforms. While both offer management services for investing, Titan attempts to beat the market with modern robo-advisor technology. They offer a unique risk management style that serves as a more accessible alternative to hedge funds.
Betterment, however, offers a few features that Titan doesn’t. For example, Betterment’s tax strategy features are top-of-the-line. They offer tax-loss harvesting by default as the platform reviews your investments automatically every day. Then, they alter their course using the information gathered to reduce your tax exposure. While it’s not the most comprehensive tax strategy on the market, it’s more comprehensive than most. Titan doesn’t offer tax strategy features.
Betterment also offers more customization, which is either bad or good, depending on what you’re looking for. With Titan, you just pick from one of their four investment strategies, and they do the rest. However, with Titan, you can also access a human investment team. Each of Titan’s strategies is standardized according to:
- the same number range of assets
- similar risk profiles
With Betterment, your portfolio includes exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and various stocks and equities. Large-, mid-and small-cap stocks are available, as well as bonds and international developed and developing stocks. With Titan, you get large-cap stocks, international stocks, or a portfolio dedicated to crypto. So while a lot of overlap exists in the value offered, Betterment provides a wider range of financial instruments.
In terms of cost, both are relatively affordable options. However, Betterment has no minimum balance requirement, while Titan has a $100 minimum balance. Titan’s fee structure is simple; $5 per month, or 1% annually for balances above $10,000. Betterment’s fee structure is similarly simple, with 0.25% for balances under $100,000 and 0.40% for balances over $100,000. Of course, this makes Betterment the more inexpensive choice.
Titan vs. Betterment: Key Similarities
In some ways, both platforms’ products are pretty similar. The structures are similar as each platform offers a choice in portfolio type. Titan offers four investment strategies while Betterment offers five. Your choice in both cases determines how the platform selects your investments, starting with risk tolerance.
Both Betterment and Titan are fairly hands-off. You can interact with your accounts either through their respective apps. However, you usually won’t be doing much after you select your investment preference and fund your account.
Titan vs. Betterment: Pros and Cons
To help you make an informed decision, let’s review the pros and cons of each of the investment apps and robo-advisors:
Pros of Betterment
You may want to consider these pros when looking into Betterment:
- Mostly hands-off investing
- Retirement planning
- Automatic investment rebalancing
- Many goal-based investment tools
- Extremely inexpensive
Pros of Titan
Titan also has key benefits that may be appealing to you:
- Strong, transparent historical returns
- Low cost
- Humans managing your investment portfolios
- Low minimum balances
- Completely hands-off investing
Cons of Betterment
- High fees for large-scale investment
- Limited investment options
Cons of Titan
- Higher fees than robo-advisor alternatives
- No tax strategy
Titan vs. Betterment: Which One Should You Use?
In the end, both of these platforms are trusted by thousands of users to meet their investment goals. When considering which is better for you, you must consider the key differences between them.
When Titan May Be Better for You
Titan is the better option when you don’t mind paying more for human attention to your portfolio to try to outperform platforms like Betterment. With four simple strategies to choose from, Titan stands out more for its returns and the active management angle they take. Like Betterment, Titan is very hands-off for the user, but in a different way than your typical robo-advisor.
Does Titan offer what you’re looking for in an actively managed investment platform? Get started investing with Titan by visiting their website and creating an account.
When Betterment May Be Better for You
If you don’t want to invest much and don’t want to meet any minimum balance requirements, Betterment is probably the choice for you. You can customize your portfolio with several default settings. But after that, the rest is automated.
Although Betterment doesn’t offer the human attention that Titan does, it’s a far cheaper alternative that offers many features that Titan does not.
Titan vs. Betterment: The Bottom Line
Titan offers a simple service from the user’s perspective. But they also offer more focus for each portfolio they manage. All you need to do is choose a strategy for them to follow. Looking at their historical returns, this is a good deal for Titan users.
Betterment offers less service, but its offer is no less strong. Since they are a robo-advisor, you will not get the human component that Titan offers to actively manage your investments.
