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 and a full breakdown of every number. If budget is zero, here’s how they stack up.
Coastline vs ProjectionLab, feature by feature
| Coastline | ProjectionLab | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free tier + paid subscription |
| Account / signup required | No | Yes (to save plans) |
| Year-by-year projection | Yes | Yes |
| Federal + state tax math | Yes | Yes |
| Roth conversion / withdrawal-order strategy | Yes | Yes |
| Monte Carlo / historical stress-test | Yes | Yes |
| Shows the exact math behind every number | Yes | Partly |
| Canada (CPP/OAS, RRSP/TFSA) | Yes | Limited |
| Polished dashboards / milestones / UI depth | Focused | Extensive |
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), plus native Canada support. It’s built to answer your planning questions directly rather than to be a subscription you maintain.
Both tools are free. 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 below are about focus, not quality.
Common questions
Is ProjectionLab free?
ProjectionLab has a limited free tier, but its full feature set requires a paid subscription. Coastline is entirely free with no account required.
Is Coastline a good free alternative to ProjectionLab?
Yes — for tax-aware year-by-year projections, retirement withdrawal strategy, and market stress-testing, Coastline covers the core of what ProjectionLab does, for free and with full transparency into the math. ProjectionLab offers more dashboards and ongoing-planning polish.
Do I have to sign up for Coastline?
No. Coastline needs no account and stores nothing on a server — your inputs run the projection and are then discarded.