Are you a dividend investor?
If so, you’re probably well aware how difficult it can be to track and manage a portfolio of multiple high-dividend paying stocks. You could always just invest with a plan in mind and just assume the dividends are being paid out… but there are plenty of dividend trackers that can help you get the job done and make managing your portfolio much easier.
Plus, hope is not a plan. 🙂
In this guide, you can see our list of the best dividend trackers available, compare each of them for their features, and see which is is right for you. Each offers a different service level, and while most are premium services, some are offered free.
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Why Use a Dividend Tracker?
You can invest in funds that specialize in dividend stocks, and even a few that focus on the so-called Dividend Aristocrats. But many investors prefer to pick from among the 50 or so stocks listed among that privileged group. You might choose only 10, 15, or 20 out of the group that you feel offer the best combination of dividend yield and future growth, in an attempt to outperform the group or even the funds.
But investing in individual stocks is always more complicated than fund investing. As your portfolio grows beyond a small number of stocks, keeping track of the group will become increasingly challenging.
A dividend tracker will enable you to aggregate your holdings on a single platform. By keeping your portfolio in one place, with a platform or app designed specifically for dividend stocks, you’ll find it much easier to keep track of the stocks and the dividends each pays.
In addition, a good dividend stock tracker can help you to identify stocks to add to your portfolio, as well as alert you to some you already hold that may be poised for a dividend cut or even elimination. That can give you a valuable opportunity to shed a company before it turns into a big loser.
What to Look for in a Dividend Tracker
Every dividend investor has somewhat different requirements for a stock tracker. But below are some of the more common features you should expect in the tracker you choose:
Ability to aggregate multiple accounts. Tracking dividend stocks can be a simple affair if your entire portfolio is held in a single account. But if it’s spread across several, like your own taxable account, your spouse’s taxable account, a 401(k) plan and an IRA, keeping tabs on all positions will be a challenge.
A good dividend tracker should be able to aggregate multiple accounts to give you a complete picture of your holdings.
Providing a snapshot of relevant information. This can include dividend yields, dividend growth histories, the dollar amount of dividends paid, the date dividends will be paid, as well as ex-dividend dates.
Stock alerts. The strength of many dividend stocks is in their dividend and dividend yield. If information is issued indicating a dividend increase, decrease, or elimination, you’ll need to know about as soon as possible. A good dividend tracker will provide real-time stock alerts.
Dividend calculators. You’ll need these to calculate changes in your overall portfolio yield from proposed changes in company holdings or payout amounts. But you may also want to use a dividend calculator to project future values, particularly with reinvested dividends.
Price. If your dividend tracking needs are light, you may be comfortable with a free dividend tracker service. But if dividend stocks occupy a large part of your portfolio, you may want to pay for a premium service. The right service can not only increase your dividend yields, but also the long-term performance of your dividend portfolio.
With the above criteria in mind, let’s move on to the best dividend trackers.
Empower Personal Dashboard
Empower Personal Dashboard offers a wealth management service for portfolios of $100,000 and up. But they also offer their free financial tools, which are available to anyone. They don’t provide a dedicated dividend tracker, but they offer plenty investment tools that will help you to better manage your money.
For example, they offer tools to track your net worth, plan for savings goals, set up a budget and track your cash flow. The Retirement Planner is available to determine if your retirement savings are where they need to be for your planned retirement age and needed income.
Meanwhile, the Investment Checkup tool will track your investments, and even help you to determine where you can make improvements. You can also compare your current portfolio allocation with an ideal target allocation. The Fee Analyzer will track hidden fees in mutual funds and retirement accounts, to show you exactly what you’re paying in expenses for your investing activities.
And if you do have at least $100,000 to invest, Personal Capital uses a proprietary mix of automated and human guided-investment management.
Here’s our full Empower Personal Dashboard review.
StockRover
StockRover is one of the most powerful portfolio management products out there because it is a freemium product – the Free version offers a lot of useful features but you really unlock it’s capabilities when you upgrade. I’d almost argue it’s better to start with Free so you can ease yourself into everything it can do.
The key feature in StockRover that helps with dividend tracking is the Future Income tool. Free users get an overview of their Future Projected Income by month – which is itself useful.
If you upgrade to Premium ($17.99/month) or Premium Plus ($27.99/month), you start getting the ability to drill down on a variety of factors such as at the portfolio or holding level. Their page describing the Future Income Tool explains how it all works and is incredible detailed.
Check out our StockRover review for a deeper dive into this powerful tool.
Simply Safe Dividends
Simply Safe Dividends is a premium dividend tracker that may well be the most comprehensive in the industry. It gives you the ability to track dozens of data points in your portfolio, which are updated in real time. It also provides an aggregate view of your accounts, either combined or individually, on the same platform.
One of the biggest concerns for dividend investors is the potential for a company to cut its dividend. Simply Safe Dividends provide their Dividend Safety Score system that helps you evaluate how likely a company is to cut its dividend. Scores are tracked for nearly 1,000 stocks, and you’ll receive email notifications when a company either raises or reduces its dividend.
Simply Safe Dividends allows you to both import spreadsheets to update or analyze your portfolio, or export portfolios or watchlists to a spreadsheet. You can monitor and watchlist stocks, view their recession performance and research new opportunities right on the platform.
The Timeliness metric will help you gauge a company’s current valuation. For example, it will show you how far above or below the stock’s current yield is to it’s five-year average yield. This is an important consideration because yields tend to revert to their long-term averages, at least over time.
Simply Safe Dividends is available for $399 per year, but there is a 14-day free trial to give you an opportunity to test the product. In addition, the subscription comes with a 60-day, 100% money back guarantee if you’re not completely satisfied with the service.
Get started with Simply Safe Dividends.
Track Your Dividends
Track Your Dividends is a freemium dividend tracker, even free for life, that may be right for you. It tracks both US and Canadian dividend income. It provides a dividend tracker where you can keep track of all your stock holdings, as well as diversification charting that will show you how well diversified your portfolio really is.
One of the most unique features of Track Your Dividends is the Future Value Projections tool. It provides you with a projection of what your portfolio is likely to yield in five years, 10 years, or 25 years. This is based on the dividend growth rate of the stocks in the portfolio applied to the current dividend yield over the selected timeframe.
They also offer a dividend reinvestment calculator. You can use it to calculate your returns over an unlimited number of years. It makes use of the annual dividend yield, the dividend growth rate, anticipated annual share price growth, your contributions, and the number of years you want to project over. It’s an excellent way to estimate dividend income for your retirement.
The free version offers unlimited dividend tracking, multiple portfolio support, a linked bank account, diversification, tracking, upcoming dividends tracker, future value projections and dividend alerts.
But you can also sign up for the Pro version, which offers everything in the free version, plus stock popularity, analytics, stock analysis dashboard, dividend safety scores, unlimited linked bank feeds and priority support. The Pro version is $99.99 per year (when paid annually) and starts with a seven-day free trial.
Get started with Track Your Dividends.
Dividend.com
As the name implies, Dividend.com is all about dividend investing. Unlike some of the other tracking services on this list, Dividend.com focuses specifically on dividend stocks and funds that are based on dividend stocks.
You can sync your brokerage account to the platform and take advantage of the many dividend related tools offered by the service.
For example, they provide dividend mutual fund and ETF information, including next dividend, income profile, income risk, returns profile, allocations, and expenses. And using a proprietary rating system, they provide a hand-picked list of their 20 best dividend stocks.
Dividends.com is available in both Free and Premium versions. The Free version comes with dividend strategy lists, dividend stock profiles, a dividend screener, ex-dividend date search, dividend payouts and profile, metrics, and news education and e-books.
The Premium version is available for $149 per year and includes everything offered by the Free version. But it also offers a wealth of additional services, including DARS Ratings & Recommendations, recommendation upgrades and downgrades, an assortment of “best lists”, watchlist alerts, data downloads, and much more.
Get started with Dividend.com.
Finbox
Finbox calls itself “The Complete Toolbox For Investors”, and that includes dividend investors. They provide up-to-date financial information on more than 100,000 stocks listed on over 135 exchanges around the world, tracking more than 900 million data points. The company licenses data directly from S&P Market Intelligence, which means you’ll be on the cutting edge of investment information.
Finbox offers a stock screener with over 1,000 metrics, allowing you to identify companies with the greatest upside potential. You can review up to 10 years of historical financial data on companies, and use prebuilt valuation models, like dividend, discount, and comparable company analysis.
The Free version offers access to waitlisted metrics, unlimited watch lists, whitelisted screen filters, view and edit financial models, and the ability to explore idea portfolios and create charts.
There are two premium versions. At $20 per month, you’ll get benefits for US stocks, premium metrics, premium stock filters, and the ability to export data from online tools. For $66 per month, you’ll get everything in the $20 per month plan, as well as even more premium metrics and premium screener filters.
DivTracker
DivTracker is an app available for your mobile device. It’s designed specifically to track dividend income, including payouts, portfolios, and annual and monthly dividends. They also provide the latest news on the companies you own and will send notifications to your phone on dividend-related events, like payments.
The app enables you to view your daily, monthly and annual dividend income, dates and confirmed amounts for upcoming dividends, the ability to track multiple portfolios, and notifications about important events regarding the stocks you hold.
DivTracker Pro enables you to track unlimited stocks, and it is available for just $9.99 per year. The app has a rating of 4.6 stars out of five by iOS users on The App Store, and 3.7 out of five stars by Android users on Google Play.
TheRich
This is another investment app, but one that specifically focuses on dividends. In fact, the emphasis is heavily on the Dividend Aristocrats. They take the position that companies that steadily increase their dividends for decades have made many people rich – which is where the name comes from.
It offers a dividend calendar to help you keep track of when dividends are paid, and also provides access to communities discussing dividend paying stocks.
The app has received 4.4 stars out of five by Android users on Google Play, and 4.1 stars out of five by iOS users on The App Store. You can download app the for free at either store.
Sharesight
Sharesight is a stock portfolio tracker that also extends to dividend stocks. You can track your dividends by importing your trading history. You’ll be provided with a running list of all your dividends and distributions over the timeframe of your choice to see the impact of dividends on your overall returns and enjoy the ability to track your reinvested dividends.
Where Sharesight excels is in providing tax information. No matter what country you live in, you’ll be able to set your portfolio base currency to automatically track currency impact of foreign shares, and set the end of tax year to generate tax reports.
The Future Income Report provides a list of upcoming dividends, with the actual amounts projected based on your holdings in each company. That will give you the ability to track your dividend stocks in one place.
Sharesight offers four different plans. The free version provides you with one portfolio of up to 10 holdings. It will provide limited reporting, automatic dividends, price alerts, a help center and community forum support.
For $15 per month, you’ll have one portfolio with up to 20 holdings, and also add chat support to everything offered in the free version.
$24 per month will give you three portfolios with unlimited holdings, and advanced reporting. And for $31 per month, you’ll have five portfolios with unlimited holdings and full reporting.
Bottom Line
Investing in dividend stocks is one of the most time-honored strategies for successful investing. Not only do you get the benefit of high dividend income from your portfolio, but stocks that have a history of increasing their dividends on a regular basis also offer consistent capital appreciation. That gives you both income and growth over the long-term.
It’s a strategy worth pursuing, but you’ll need the right tools to do it. A good dividend tracker is a must-have tool with a diversified dividend stock portfolio.
