Capitalize vs Beagle: Which 401k Service Wins (2026)

There are 31.9 million forgotten 401k accounts sitting dormant in the US right now, holding roughly $2.1 trillion in retirement savings. That’s according to research from Capitalize and the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. If you’ve changed jobs more than once — and most people reading this have — there’s a reasonable chance some of that money is yours.

You have two realistic services to help you find and consolidate it: Capitalize and Beagle. Picking the wrong one means either paying a monthly fee for a problem you didn’t have, or missing accounts a more thorough search would have caught.

Quick verdict: if you know where your 401k is and just need someone to handle the rollover paperwork, Capitalize is free and excellent. If you’ve changed jobs several times and don’t know how many accounts you have or where they are, Beagle’s paid search may be worth the upfront cost. Read the SSN and billing fine print on Beagle before you sign up.

Before either of these services, check the DOL’s free Lost and Found tool at lostandfound.dol.gov — it requires your SSN too, costs nothing, and pulls from the same plan-administrator database.

What Capitalize Actually Does (And How It Makes Money for Free)

Capitalize handles the actual 401k rollover process — contacting your old plan administrator, filling out the paperwork, following up, and moving your money to a new IRA. It does not find unknown accounts. You tell Capitalize where your 401k is; it handles the rest.

The free tier covers rollovers to Capitalize’s partner IRA providers: Fidelity, Vanguard, Betterment, Robinhood, SoFi, Merrill Edge, Wells Fargo, and Charles Schwab. That list covers most people’s destination of choice.

How it makes money: Capitalize earns referral fees from those partner IRA providers when you open a new account through them. If you already have an IRA somewhere and want to roll into it directly, you’ll need Capitalize Plus — $44.99 per quarter or $139 per year. That’s the “free” asterisk. It’s genuinely free for most rollovers; it only costs money when you’re rolling into a non-partner destination.

On Trustpilot, Capitalize sits at 4.8 out of 5 based on 2,467 reviews, with 95% rated five stars. That’s unusually strong social proof for a fintech service.

Critically: Capitalize does not require your SSN. It works by contacting plan administrators directly using the employer information you provide. This matters — more on that below.

What Beagle Actually Does (And What It Actually Costs)

Beagle solves a different problem: finding 401k accounts you might not even know you have. It searches plan-administrator databases using your SSN and returns a list of accounts linked to your name and employment history.

If you find accounts, Beagle can also facilitate rollovers. But account discovery is the core value proposition, not rollover execution.

What it actually costs:

• Starter plan: $4.99 per month
• Finding 2+ accounts: $19–$25 upfront (billed separately from the monthly plan)
• 401k loan setup: $99 one-time + $2 per month maintenance

The monthly subscription adds up. If you’re on the hook for $4.99/month for three months while tracking down accounts and executing rollovers, you’re looking at roughly $15–$40 total depending on what you find.

Beagle holds a 4.6 out of 5 on Trustpilot (1,470 reviews), which is solid. But spend ten minutes on Reddit and the picture gets more complicated. Users on r/personalfinance regularly flag opaque billing, difficulty cancelling, and surprise charges. The BBB has logged similar complaints. That’s not a dealbreaker — but it means you should set a calendar reminder to cancel the moment you’ve gotten what you came for.

Head-to-Head Comparison: Capitalize vs Beagle

Which One Should You Pick? (Our Take)

The decision is actually simple once you’re honest about your situation.

Use Capitalize if: You know which employer held your 401k and roughly which plan provider it’s with. Capitalize will contact them, handle the paperwork, and move your money. It’s free, the reviews are excellent, and you don’t have to hand over your SSN. There’s no reason to pay Beagle for account discovery you don’t need.

Use Beagle if: You’ve worked four jobs in the past decade, you can’t remember whether you enrolled in the 401k at a company you left in 2018, or you flat-out don’t know how many accounts you have. A $5–$20 search is worth it if it surfaces a $70,000 account you forgot about — and the average dormant retirement account holds roughly that amount, according to PensionBee.

Try the DOL first: Before either service, go to lostandfound.dol.gov. It’s the Department of Labor’s free government tool. It requires SSN (same as Beagle), costs nothing, and searches the same databases. If it returns your accounts, you can hand off to Capitalize for the actual rollover. The DOL tool won’t help you execute the rollover — it just finds accounts — but it eliminates the need to pay Beagle for search.

The wrong tool creates a real cost: paying Beagle’s monthly fee when Capitalize would have handled everything for free, or skipping account discovery and leaving an old 401k to slowly get lost in plan-administrator shuffles. Dormant accounts went from 14.8 million in 2012 to 28 million in 2023 — that trend exists partly because people assume their old plan is “probably fine.”

Once your accounts are consolidated and rolling, use retirement planning software to model your consolidated accounts to see what your actual retirement trajectory looks like. The rollover is step one, not the destination.

Does Beagle or Capitalize Roll Over to Any IRA Provider?

Capitalize rolls to its partner list for free: Fidelity, Vanguard, Betterment, Robinhood, SoFi, Merrill Edge, Wells Fargo, and Charles Schwab. That list includes most of the major discount brokers and robo-advisors.

If you want to roll into a provider not on that list — say, M1 Finance or a small regional credit union — you’ll need Capitalize Plus at $44.99/quarter.

Beagle is more flexible on destination IRAs, which is a real advantage if you have strong preferences about where your money lands.

If you haven’t already chosen an IRA destination, read our guide to the best robo-advisor to roll your 401k into. For most people, Fidelity or Vanguard for a traditional IRA, or Betterment for a managed option, makes the most sense — and all three are on Capitalize’s free tier.

One callout: if you’ve also got a lapsed HSA from a previous employer, that’s a separate consolidation problem. The best HSA account for investing follow-up is worth a look once your 401k is sorted.

Is It Safe to Give These Apps Your SSN?

Capitalize doesn’t ask for it, so there’s nothing to debate there.

Beagle requires your SSN to search plan-administrator databases — the same reason the DOL’s Lost and Found tool requires it. The SSN is how the IRS and DOL link your employment history to retirement accounts across employers. There’s no other way to do a broad search across all previous employers at once.

That said, centralized SSN storage carries inherent risk. Beagle is not a large financial institution with the security infrastructure of a Fidelity or Vanguard. Users on r/personalfinance have raised this concern repeatedly, and it’s a fair one — the complaint history in those threads is worth reading before you hand over the number.

The practical answer: the DOL government tool uses the same data, is backed by federal security standards, and costs nothing. If the free government option returns your accounts, use it. If it doesn’t — or if you want ongoing monitoring and rollover facilitation through a single interface — Beagle is a reasonable tradeoff. Cancel the subscription the moment you’re done.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Capitalize really free, and what’s the catch?

Capitalize is free for rollovers into its partner IRA network (Fidelity, Vanguard, Betterment, Schwab, SoFi, Merrill Edge, Robinhood, Wells Fargo). It earns referral fees from those providers when you open accounts. The only scenario where it costs money is rolling into a non-partner IRA — that requires Capitalize Plus at $44.99/quarter or $139/year. For most users, the free tier covers everything.

When is Beagle worth $4.99/month vs using Capitalize for free?

Beagle makes sense when you don’t know how many old 401k accounts you have or where they’re held. The $5–$25 search cost is easily justified if it surfaces an account worth thousands. But try the DOL’s free Lost and Found tool at lostandfound.dol.gov first — same database, no monthly fee. If DOL finds your accounts, hand off to Capitalize for the actual rollover.

Which service is better if I have multiple old 401k accounts from different employers?

Beagle is the better starting point for account discovery across multiple employers. Once you know what you have, you can use Capitalize to handle the rollover mechanics — Capitalize’s strength is the actual paperwork and coordination, not the hunting. Using both isn’t overkill; it’s the logical workflow.

Does Beagle or Capitalize roll over to any IRA provider I choose?

Capitalize rolls for free to its eight partner providers. Rolling to a provider outside that list costs $44.99/quarter via Capitalize Plus. Beagle offers more flexibility on the destination IRA. If you have a specific non-partner IRA you want to roll into and don’t want to pay Capitalize Plus, Beagle’s flexibility becomes a real advantage.

Are my credentials and account data safe when I connect my 401k to these apps?

Capitalize doesn’t require SSN — it contacts plan administrators using employer information you provide, which significantly reduces exposure. Beagle requires SSN for its database search, which carries inherent risk with any non-government centralized storage. The DOL’s equivalent tool has federal-grade security and no fee. If you do use Beagle, cancel your subscription immediately after completing your account search to minimize ongoing data exposure.

The Bottom Line

The average dormant retirement account holds roughly $70,000. Leaving it parked at an old employer’s plan — subject to plan-administrator changes, auto-cashout risk, and fee structures you can’t see — costs you more than $5 a month in long-run damage.

Capitalize handles the rollover problem well, for free, without requiring your SSN. Beagle handles the discovery problem when you don’t know what you’re looking for. Use them accordingly, not interchangeably.

Start with the DOL Lost and Found tool. If it finds everything, Capitalize handles the rest. If you’ve changed jobs more than you can count and the DOL comes up short, Beagle is a reasonable investment — just cancel it before month two.

Your future self will have strong opinions about whether you left $70,000 sitting in a forgotten account for another decade. Don’t give them the ammunition.