Altruist vs Schwab Advisor Services for RIAs 2026

Key Takeaways

• Schwab Advisor Services is still the custody arm of Charles Schwab, and TD Ameritrade no longer shows up as its own custodian in the 2026 filing counts.

• Altruist has not been renamed. On August 26, 2026, Vanguard announced a definitive agreement to buy it. The companies did not disclose the price, and the close was still described as a later step.

• Neither firm publishes one all-in annual custody invoice. Altruist publishes a standard schedule plus an optional subscription. Schwab publishes a basic ticket schedule and then negotiates.

• On the schedules opened for this comparison, an electronic US-listed equity trade is $0 at both, and a full outgoing account transfer is $50 at both.

• The One subscription on Altruist is priced at 0.01% of assets per month, with a $1 monthly minimum when the daily balance is under $10,000.

• A custodian holds the assets. Billing exceptions, transfer checklists, and a human stop before a fee debit are a separate operating job.

What you are actually choosing

An RIA custodian is the broker-dealer that holds client cash and securities, clears trades, and keeps the official account record, while your firm remains the advisor. Altruist versus Schwab Advisor Services is a choice between two qualified custodians that both serve independent registered investment advisors, not a choice between two portfolio-management apps with a bank behind them.

The names on the door are easy to misread in 2026. Schwab Advisor Services was not renamed. What changed is the old TD Ameritrade custody book. AdvizorPro's 2026 custodian ranking no longer lists TD Ameritrade on its own, because those filings are now counted under Schwab. Altruist was not renamed either. Vanguard and Altruist announced a definitive agreement on August 26, 2026. Following closing, Altruist is expected to keep its leadership, brand, and advisor focus as a standalone business. Terms were not disclosed, and the close still required regulatory approvals, according to Vanguard (2026). Vanguard, founded in 1975, had already invested in Altruist in 2020. As of an October 5, 2026 interview, Altruist's founder was still talking about the transaction in the future tense.

The short version for an owner who has to decide this quarter: pick Schwab Advisor Services when you want the largest RIA custody platform and you can live with a negotiated bill. Pick Altruist when you want custody, trading, portfolio management, billing, and reporting described as one stack, and you can live with an owner change that has been signed but not closed. A published industry roundup puts custodian charges, across providers, in a wide band. Published custodian range: $0 to 200 basis points according to SmartAsset (2026). That span is why the schedule, not the slogan, is the document that matters.

Schwab RIA firms: 16,000 according to Financial Planning (2026). The same April 2026 report put client assets on that platform at $5.2 trillion, described about 2,000 customized pricing arrangements, and counted 235 third-party technology integrations. Those four figures belong together. They are one snapshot, not a promise that your firm will be priced like the firm next door.

Who this is for

This comparison is for the owner of an independent RIA who is close to naming a custodian, or close to adding a second one. You already know you must hold client assets at a qualified custodian. You are deciding where new households will open, which book is worth moving, and which monthly tasks you will stop buying from a separate vendor.

It is also for the operator who will personally live with account opening, fee debits, wires, and the file that your reporting system reads the next morning. If a salesperson will make the choice and hand you the leftovers, the tables below will not help until you are the person who can reject a fee.

Red flags: you need a single signed all-in price before any account moves, and the custodian will only discuss alternative pricing after a relationship review. Your client promise depends on a product the public schedule does not show, such as a private fund, a donor-advised fund, or margin, and you have not confirmed eligibility in writing. You want the custodian's screen to be the only control, with nobody on your staff allowed to stop a fee debit or an outgoing transfer.

Firms that only need a planning-software decision, with custody already settled, should settle that question in a planning comparison rather than here. The same is true of a reporting build that starts after the custodian file already exists. Those are downstream jobs. They do not pick the custodian for you.

How we evaluated these custodians

The weights below are a buying method for an independent firm that is close to a choice. They are not a score of either vendor, and they are not a ranking from a survey. A higher weight means a miss on that row should stop the move. A lower weight means you can fix the gap with a tool you already own.

The public fee schedule carries the most weight because this reader is at the bottom of the funnel. A feature list without a ticket charge is a brochure. Trading is next because a $0 equity commission can sit beside a mutual-fund ticket or an options contract fee that changes the year. Ownership is weighted with trading because Altruist's buyer is public and the close is not. Integrated billing and reporting matter only if you would otherwise pay a second system for the same job. Fit uses the firms already on each platform, not a minimum we invented. The last row is the export. If you cannot tie a row to a household, you cannot review a fee before it leaves the account.

We did not award points, run a composite score, or treat a missing price as zero. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, the cell says Quote-based. Primary evidence is the vendor fee document or the company announcement. Filing counts come from a research firm's reading of Form ADV. Service color comes from trade press that named the person who said it.

Side-by-side on the decisions that move money

Altruist share of RIAs: 7.4% according to AdvizorPro (2026). That share is of 15,722 RIAs that report at least one separately managed account custodian. Schwab's share on the same cut is 67.8%. Median assets of the RIAs using each name are $17 million at Altruist and $107 million at Schwab. The same report says 88% of Altruist RIAs manage under $100 million, that Altruist moved from fourth in 2025 to third in 2026, and that 14.5% of new RIAs named Altruist against 62.7% for Schwab. TD Ameritrade, sixth in 2025, is absent because those listings now sit under Schwab.

Read those shares as filing presence, not as client-asset rank and not as a satisfaction score. A firm can appear because one sleeve is custodied there. Schwab's much larger share of RIA names coexists with the $5.2 trillion custody figure from the April 2026 trade report. Those are different meters. Do not average them.

The operating contrast is simpler than the market-share table. Altruist's own description, repeated in the acquisition announcement, is a self-clearing brokerage plus software for account opening, trading, portfolio management, billing, and reporting, including fractional shares, alternatives, margin, and automated rebalancing. Schwab Advisor Services is the custody, trading, and support platform inside a firm that also runs a large retail brokerage and its own advice offers. Financial Planning's account of the tool list Schwab provided includes a client portal, Portfolio Connect, thinkpipes, and iRebal, sitting next to Schwab Advisor Center.

For a firm that wants fewer vendors, Altruist's stack is the clearer public claim. For a firm that already runs a reporting system, a CRM, and a rebalancer, Schwab's job is custody, trading, and a wide integration list, not a replacement for that stack. Either way, the client household still needs a plan and a report. A separate look at how planning tools differ when the custodian is not the plan and at how portfolio reporting gets built once the custodian file exists belongs after the custodian is chosen, not instead of the fee schedule.

Firms under $100 million: more than 11,000 according to RIABiz (2026). That figure is Jon Beatty, head of Schwab's RIA custody unit, describing his own book on October 3, 2026. The same article says Fidelity has put sub-$100 million RIAs on notice for mid-2027. Small is not a Schwab disqualifier on that evidence. It is also not proof that service will feel the same at $20 million as at $2 billion. Beatty called the small-firm book a choice the firm makes, which cuts both ways. A choice can be revised.

Pricing checked against the public schedules

Pricing checked October 10, 2026. None of these custodians is a simple software list price. Print the number that is on the vendor document, and mark everything else Quote-based. Alternative pricing at Schwab can be lower than the basic schedule and can differ by firm. Jalina Kerr, a managing director in Schwab Advisor Services, compared that negotiation to about 2,000 flavors in the Financial Planning interview. Treat the basic guide as the rack rate, not as your invoice.

Full outgoing transfer: $50 according to Altruist (2026). The schedule effective August 14, 2026 also lists partial transfers at $0, annual account maintenance at $0, paper statements at $5 per document, paper trade confirmations at $3, physical certificates at $100, and voluntary corporate actions at $50. Stocks, options, and ETFs are listed at $0. A separate options regulatory and OCC clearing fee is listed at $0.04. Donor-advised fund administration starts at 0.50% on the first $500,000, then 0.30% on the next $500,000, 0.20% on the next $1.5 million, and lower tiers after that. Online wire distribution is $15. A wire submitted by form is $30. A returned or stopped wire is $35.

One subscription: 0.01% per month according to Altruist (2025). The terms, versioned July 28, 2025, calculate that rate on the assets in each subscribed account. The daily math is the daily average balance times the monthly rate divided by the number of days in the month. If the daily balance is under $10,000, a $1 monthly minimum can apply, and the greater of the two daily amounts is what gets summed. Accounts at a $0 balance, and restricted or closed accounts, are not billed. The firm can pay from a house account or pass the fee to the client. The terms say mutual-fund and money-market transaction fees, several fixed-income transaction fees, and the tax-loss-harvesting tool fee are waived inside the subscription. A July 28, 2025 product note described the same 0.01% rate per household. The contract language we opened prices it per subscribed account. Confirm which unit your firm will be billed on before you model a year.

Electronic equity trade: $0 according to Charles Schwab (2026). The July 2026 pricing guide for clients of independent investment advisors lists that $0 on electronic US exchange-listed trades. Broker-assisted equity trades are $25. Electronic options are $0.65 per contract, and a broker-assisted option trade adds $25. Per-contract fees are waived for buy-to-close option trades executed online at $0.05 or less. Transaction-fee mutual funds are $45 electronic and $65 broker-assisted, with a reduced electronic rate of $24, and the per-trade mutual-fund fee is capped at 8.5% of principal. A full outgoing transfer is $50 per account. An outgoing wire is $25, or $0 when an electronic channel is used. A nonsufficient-funds or returned item is $25. Annual custody for non-publicly traded securities is $250 per position, with a maximum of $500 per account. OTC electronic equity trades are $6.95. The guide says Schwab can change or waive fees, and it separates basic pricing from alternative pricing.

What we will not do is turn those rack rates into your firm's total cost. Schwab's alternative pricing can move commissions, account fees, and credits based on assets, the mix of securities, and trading frequency. Altruist's subscription can be absorbed by the firm or passed through, and a household that never enrolls stays on the standard schedule. Cash yields are variable. A higher sweep rate can offset a subscription for one household and miss for the next. Model that with the balances you actually hold.

Altruist while the Vanguard agreement is still open

Best fit is the firm that wants the custodian and the daily operating system to be the same vendor, and whose book looks like the firms already there. The public record shows a younger, smaller typical RIA, digital account opening, and a fee schedule you can read without a sales call. The optional subscription is the main fork. Enroll an account when the waived fund tickets, the waived tax-loss-harvesting fee, and the preferred cash rate are worth 0.01% per month. Leave it off when they are not. The terms give at least 30 days' notice before a subscription-fee increase, and they say preferred yields generally start within four business days of enrollment. A downgrade stops new subscription accrual within one business day.

Limitations are concrete. The buyer is announced and the close is not, so any promise about how Vanguard will use the platform is still a statement of intent. Altruist has told advisors it was built for them rather than for a retail brokerage. Vanguard also serves investors directly and through its own advice offers. That tension is the point to underwrite in the client letter, not a reason to invent a conflict that has already changed the fee schedule. Data access, on the developer docs opened for this piece, is a prior-day picture. The accounts file is named accounts_v3_[rep_code]_mm-dd-yyyy.csv and includes HOUSEHOLD_ID, ACCOUNT_NUMBER, and STATUS. It is not a live order book. The broker-assisted line needs a direct question: the August 14, 2026 schedule extract shows $25 in the columns we could read, while the subscription terms say that fee is waived. Do not blend those two sentences into one price.

Implementation is an account-by-account enrollment, not a firm-wide switch you cannot undo. Map which households will carry the subscription, who pays it, and which accounts are under the $10,000 minimum. Order the prior-day file or the read-only prior-day API before you turn off a legacy reporting vendor. A full departure later is $50 an account on the current schedule, and a partial move is $0, with the footnote that a partial request for all assets is charged as a full transfer. Primary documents are the subscription terms and the August 14, 2026 fee schedule.

Schwab Advisor Services when scale is the point

Best fit is the firm that wants the custodian used by the largest number of RIAs, a published basic ticket schedule, and a negotiation if the book is large or noisy enough to earn one. The April 2026 picture is 16,000 firms and $5.2 trillion. More than 11,000 of Schwab's firms are under $100 million, so a small practice is not automatically turned away. The integration count in that same trade report, 235, matters if your CRM, planning tool, and reporting system are already chosen. You are buying a place those systems can attach, plus custody.

Limitations follow from the same scale. Two firms can custody at Schwab and pay different economics, because alternative pricing is a negotiation tied to assets, holdings, and trade frequency. The basic guide is the document you can show a client. Your actual schedule may be an amendment you have to request in writing. Schwab also runs retail advice. Advisors have long treated that as a conflict to disclose, not as a secret. Mutual-fund transaction fees, options contracts, non-public custody, and paper or phone handling are where a "$0 custody" conversation goes to die. If your book is full of transaction-fee funds, price those $45 electronic tickets before you price the equity commission. If you hold private positions, price $250 per position before you celebrate a $0 stock trade.

Implementation starts with the July 2026 guide, then a written question: which of these basic rates apply to us, and which alternative terms are on offer? Ask the same question about block orders. Financial Planning reported that Schwab delayed a new per-account charge on certain large block orders until June 1, 2026, after advisors and outside managers asked for time. Confirm whether that charge is on your addendum now. Plan transfers at $50 per full account. Budget a human for the conversion itself. Schwab's TD Ameritrade conversion is the industry's recent reminder that a custodian change is an operations project, not a logo swap. Primary document: the July 2026 advisor pricing guide.

Who should not pick from brand comfort alone: a firm that will hold only a handful of transaction-fee funds and a pile of non-public positions may find Schwab's published special-asset fees larger than the equity line suggests. A firm that wants every household on one subscription price, with no negotiation, will not get that from the Schwab guide. A firm that wants the custodian to have no other advice business in the corporate family will not get that from Schwab, and may not get it from Altruist after the Vanguard close.

A household bill you can calculate

Take one taxable account with a $250,000 average balance that the firm enrolls in the subscription on Altruist. The contract rate is 0.01% of assets per month, so the monthly charge is 0.01% times $250,000, which is $25, and twelve months is $300. The terms also say a balance under $10,000 can fall back to a $1 monthly minimum. This account is far above that floor, so the $25 applies. If that household later leaves in a full transfer, the August 14, 2026 schedule adds $50 for the outgoing account. Put the same household's option trades on Schwab's basic electronic schedule instead and ten contracts cost 10 times $0.65, or $6.50, before any regulatory pass-through. Two outgoing wires on Schwab's electronic channel are $0 on that guide. Two wires sent online on the Altruist schedule are 2 times $15, or $30. None of this is a client we served. It is the published arithmetic, and it ignores fund expense ratios, cash yields, and any negotiated credit. The prior-day accounts file is what makes the $300 reviewable: each row carries HOUSEHOLD_ID, so the accrual can be matched to the household before anyone approves a debit, as documented in Altruist's account file specification.

Use the $300 as a ceiling check, not as a recommendation to enroll. If the household trades no transaction-fee funds and does not use the tax tool, the subscription can cost more than the tickets it waives. If the household wires cash twice and then moves the whole account, add the $30 and the $50 to the conversation with the client before you start the paperwork. The same discipline belongs on the Schwab side: ten option contracts are a small line, and a book of transaction-fee mutual funds at $45 a trade is not.

The operating work neither custodian finishes

Custody answers where the assets sit. It does not, by itself, answer which households were billed twice, which transfer is stuck, or which new account was opened without the document your compliance file expects. A proposed design, not a live deployment, is a configurable flow at US Tech Automations. The trigger is the arrival of the prior-day accounts file, or a Schwab export the firm is already allowed to pull. The action reads HOUSEHOLD_ID, ACCOUNT_NUMBER, and STATUS, compares them with the firm's billing list, and writes an exception queue. The output is a review packet, not a debit. Prerequisite: the custodian has approved the file or API for that firm. A person with authority to stop the debit reviews the packet before any fee file is released. Nothing here is a measured time save, and no client is implied.

A second configurable path sits on the way out, which is where surprise fees show up. When a household is marked for a full transfer, the flow attaches the published $50 line from the custodian that will charge it and puts that figure on the checklist next to the account number. When the mark is only a partial move, the Altruist schedule's $0 partial line is what the checklist shows, unless the request is actually for all assets, in which case the full-transfer rule applies. US Tech Automations would not enter the trade or send the wire. The output is a draft client note and an exception if the account status is restricted or closed. A human sends the note. The same review point is where credit-opening rules still have to be checked if the new account is a credit-related product rather than a plain brokerage account.

The buyer's real alternative is often Zapier, Make, or n8n, or a small script the operations lead maintains. Those tools can keep run histories, retries, error branches, and an audit trail when someone configures them. The firm then owns observability, idempotency so the same file does not create two exceptions, escalation when a feed fails, access control on the file, and the maintenance when a column name changes. A proposed US Tech Automations design can configure the custodian-file intake, the exception queue, and the required human stop as the default path, with the custodian's export permission and a named reviewer as prerequisites. It does not remove the need for that reviewer, and it does not replace the custodian.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: stay with the custodian's own screens if you have one custodian, you bill inside that custodian, and you do not reconcile an outside book. Stay with Zapier, Make, or n8n if the only job is a single alert from a file drop to an email box and a named person already owns retries and the log. Do not add an orchestration layer to enter orders. The order belongs at the custodian. If the pain is prospect follow-up during a long transfer, fix the follow-up in the CRM first. A useful companion is what happens to prospect follow-up while accounts are in transfer.

Mistakes that show up after the ACAT

Owners who treat this as a brand choice, then discover the invoice, tend to repeat the same misses.

• Modeling "$0 custody" and forgetting the subscription, the mutual-fund ticket, the options contract, or the non-public position fee.

• Quoting a household price from a blog post when the contract prices each subscribed account.

• Starting a full transfer without telling the client about the $50 outgoing charge at either firm.

• Assuming the Vanguard agreement has already changed Altruist's fee schedule. The schedule we priced is Altruist's, dated August 14, 2026, and the close was still ahead on the pages opened in early October.

• Turning off the old reporting system before one prior-day file has been matched to HOUSEHOLD_ID and reviewed by a person.

• Letting a partial-transfer request pull every position, then acting surprised when it is billed as a full transfer.

• Ignoring the retail-advice overlap at Schwab, or the future overlap if Vanguard's direct investors sit beside your clients, until a client asks who else can see the relationship.

A clean decision checklist is short. Confirm the owner and the close status in writing. Price one real household on the standard schedule and, for Altruist, on the subscription. List the products you must hold. Name the export you will get on day one. Name the person who can stop a debit. If any line is blank, you are not ready to move assets. You are ready to ask a better question.

Short glossary

• RIA custodian. The broker-dealer or similar institution that holds client assets and keeps the official account record. Your firm gives the advice.

• ACAT. The account-transfer system used to move a brokerage account, in full or in part, from one firm to another. Both schedules price a full outgoing transfer at $50.

• Basis point. One hundredth of one percent. The One subscription's 0.01% per month is one basis point per month, which is 0.12% if you multiply by twelve. That annual figure is arithmetic, not a separate published annual rate.

• Basic pricing. Schwab's published rack rate in the advisor pricing guide. Alternative pricing is the negotiated version and can be higher or lower.

• SMA custodian. The custodian an RIA names for a separately managed account sleeve on Form ADV. Market-share tables built from those filings are not the same meter as a custodian's own asset total.

• Household. The group of accounts you service together. Altruist's file uses HOUSEHOLD_ID for that link. The subscription terms we opened bill per subscribed account, so do not assume one fee per household.

• Prior-day file. A snapshot of yesterday's close, delivered after the fact. It is the right input for a billing review. It is the wrong input for a live trade.

Frequently asked questions

Is Schwab Advisor Services the same product as TD Ameritrade custody?

No. Schwab Advisor Services is Charles Schwab's RIA custody platform, and the old TD Ameritrade listings are now counted inside Schwab's totals. You are not choosing a renamed TD Ameritrade menu. You are choosing Schwab's current guide, including the $0 electronic equity line, the $0.65 options contract, and the $50 full outgoing transfer. Advisors who converted during the TD Ameritrade migration already learned that account numbers, lot details, and standing instructions need their own test, even when the corporate owner is familiar.

Has Vanguard already closed the purchase of Altruist?

Not on the records opened for this article. Vanguard and Altruist announced a definitive agreement on August 26, 2026, did not disclose terms, and said closing was expected later in 2026 after regulatory approvals. On October 5, 2026, Altruist's founder was still describing the close as a future event. Until a closing announcement exists, price the firm you can see: Altruist's fee schedule and the subscription terms, not a guessed post-close rate card.

Does either custodian publish one all-in price for an RIA?

No. Altruist publishes a standard schedule, including $0 annual account maintenance and a $50 full transfer out, plus an optional subscription at 0.01% of assets per month. Schwab publishes basic ticket and service fees and negotiates alternative pricing, which a Schwab managing director described as about 2,000 different arrangements. If a salesperson offers one number with no schedule attached, ask which document it amends.

Who should choose Altruist?

Choose Altruist if you want custody plus billing, rebalancing, and reporting described as one system, you can read a public fee schedule, and you accept that the corporate owner is in the middle of a signed, unclosed sale. The firms already there skew smaller in the filing data, with a $17 million median and 88% under $100 million. That is a description of the current book, not a rule that a larger firm is barred. Confirm alternatives, margin, and any donor-advised fund tier before you promise them.

Who should choose Schwab Advisor Services?

Choose Schwab Advisor Services if you want the platform that 16,000 RIAs and $5.2 trillion already sit on, you value a long integration list, and you will manage a negotiated addendum on top of a public basic guide. More than 11,000 of those firms are under $100 million, so size alone is not the filter. Choose it with your eyes open if a retail advice business inside the same company is a conflict you are willing to disclose and supervise.

What should you verify the week you decide?

Verify four documents, not a demo. The July 2026 Schwab advisor pricing guide. Altruist's fee schedule effective August 14, 2026. The One subscription terms if any household will be enrolled. The ownership announcement if the Vanguard close matters to your client letter. Then run one household through the arithmetic in the section above, using your balances. If the export you will receive does not include a household key, do not turn off the old system yet.

Can a smaller operations team keep this honest without a new custodian?

Yes, if the job is truly small. One custodian, billing inside that custodian, and a person who already checks the debit do not need another system. A file-to-inbox alert can live in Zapier, Make, or n8n when that person owns the failure path. Add a configurable review flow only when more than one custodian, a subscription accrual, and an exit fee all have to hit the same checklist before a client is told a number. The custodian still holds the assets. See how US Tech Automations configures this on the home page only as an operations design beside the custodian, with a human still approving the debit.