Coastline vs ProjectionLab

ProjectionLab is a genuinely excellent, highly-polished financial-independence planner — and a paid subscription for its full feature set. Coastline covers the core of the same job — tax-aware year-by-year projections, retirement withdrawal strategy, and market stress-testing — for free, with no account needed and a full breakdown of every number. If budget is zero, here’s how they stack up.

Coastline vs ProjectionLab, feature by feature

The same plan, run through Coastline

ProjectionLab models taxes and account types in its paid tier. The figures below are what the free engine here produces for the same plan, so the two can be set side by side. One retiree, $1,000,000 at 65 split 60% taxable / 30% traditional / 10% Roth, single filer, no-income-tax state, no Social Security, spending $40,000 a year in today’s dollars to 95:

The tax row is what a pre-tax simulator leaves for the reader to guess, and for this particular retiree it is small: a single filer drawing about $12,000 a year from a traditional account and the rest from a taxable account whose gains fall in the 0% capital-gains bracket has little to tax. A larger traditional balance, a pension or Social Security stacking on top, or a state with an income tax moves it — which is the case for running your own plan rather than reading this one. The figures are identical on every comparison page on this site because they are one plan run once; only the tool being compared changes.

When to use ProjectionLab

ProjectionLab is worth the subscription for many people: its dashboards, milestone tracking, and breadth of what-if modeling are best-in-class, and if you want a long-term tool you’ll live in, it’s a superb choice. If you value polish and ongoing planning and don’t mind paying, it’s hard to beat.

When to use Coastline

Choose Coastline when you want serious, tax-accurate planning at zero cost and zero signup — including a transparent, click-through breakdown of how every figure is computed (a differentiator even against paid tools), with itemized deductions, IRMAA, ACA credits, 72(t) and the tax on student-loan forgiveness modeled as the actual rules. It’s built to answer your planning questions directly rather than to be a subscription you maintain.

Coastline is free with no signup; ProjectionLab has a free tier plus a paid subscription for its full feature set. This comparison is written by Coastline, so weigh it accordingly — try both and use whichever answers your question. ProjectionLab is a well-regarded tool; the differences here are about focus, not quality.

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