Handpick your holdings with a Custom portfolio. We’ll handle the rest.

Handpick your holdings with a Custom portfolio. We’ll handle the rest. Aug 17, 2026, 8:00:00 AM Start from scratch or from a Betterment template. Either way, you can now build a portfolio yourself without sacrificing the best of Betterment’s automation. Key takeaways Custom portfolios let you edit a Betterment template—fund-by-fund, stock-by-stock—or start from scratch. We handle the day-to-day management and tax optimization, instead of you being stuck doing it by hand. Powerful analysis tools help you kick the tires on your portfolio picks before you buy them. Custom portfolios are available now in individual taxable accounts, with joint and trust accounts and IRAs following in the months to come. Betterment-built portfolios start from the same research-backed foundation: a globally-diversified mix of low-cost funds, adjusted for your goals, risk tolerance, and interests. And while they work for many investors right off the shelf, some want a little more say in the mix. The ability to slot in a specific fund, strategy, or stock, for example, right alongside our Investing team’s picks. In practice, that could mean hedging with gold, tilting toward real estate, or prioritizing dividends. All three examples differ from our approach to asset allocation, yet they’re all reasonable calls an investor can make. That’s where a Custom portfolio comes into play. A custom fit, without all the fuss Until now, getting this granular with your investing meant dealing with the hassle of managing your assets by hand. Not just the routine maintenance of rebalancing your allocations and reinvesting dividends, but tax-saving strategies like harvesting losses and locating assets in the optimal accounts. Now, a Custom portfolio offers the best of both worlds: Customization down to a specific ETF or single stock All the added value of Betterment’s low-cost automated investing Tax-loss harvesting shines here in particular. The tax-deferral strategy works best when someone's watching closely for a window worth acting on. Betterment's tech does exactly that in the background. It’s the kind of optimization that's hard to replicate by hand. And Custom portfolios take it one step further, pairing your ETF picks with similar funds when available to unlock new harvesting opportunities. Image is illustrative Take the wheel, with guidance at every turn The customizing starts by searching our library of 5,500+ ETFs and individual stocks1. See any that you currently hold with another provider? Connect with a Betterment transfer specialist at transfers@betterment.com to explore bringing them into the fold, which could help you benefit even more from our automation and simplify your investing life in the process. You can also change your current Betterment portfolio strategy to a Custom portfolio assuming Custom portfolios are available in all of the underlying accounts (e.g. taxable, IRA, etc.). Once your Custom portfolio’s holdings start taking shape, you’ll see the sort of robust, real-time analysis that can guide your decision-making and help you customize with confidence. At a high level, there’s asset classes, the big buckets of U.S. and international markets that your stocks and/or bonds fall into. But dive deeper and you can break things down by sector and country. And coming soon, you’ll get additional tools like forward-looking projections and historical backtesting of your portfolio. Image is illustrative This is the sort of research many self-directed investors already do on the side, but scattered across spreadsheets and bookmarks. Having it all built into the portfolio you're actively building, updating in real-time as you adjust weights, means you're making the decision with more information in front of you, not lost somewhere in a sea of browser tabs. And it’s only the beginning. Coming next: direct indexing Custom portfolios will continue to evolve, and they’ll soon be joined by similar offerings. Direct indexing will let you own the individual stocks that make up an index rather than a fund that tracks it. More room to customize your holdings, more opportunities to harvest losses. Because just like with a Custom portfolio, the choice isn't customization or convenience. It's both. So open a Custom portfolio—or switch your existing Betterment investing to one. Swap one holding for another, then see the analysis play out in real-time. The fun part is yours. The upkeep and optimization isn't.