Orion vs RightCapital: Which One in 2026?

Orion and RightCapital get paired on shortlists because both sell to financial advisors, not because they occupy the same layer: one is an operating platform for portfolio accounting, trading, compliance, planning, a portal, and optional outsourced investment management, and the other is a client-facing planning system built around cash-flow maps, tax scenarios, and a plan summary.

A partner who wants "one winner" is asking for a category error. The book still has to be reconciled and billed. The household still has to see why a Roth conversion or a Social Security claiming age changes the plan. Buying the wrong layer leaves the original complaint intact.

Orion publishes no public price; write quote only. RightCapital is also not published in the store this lane uses. This page prints no dollar figure next to either name.

TL;DR: Hire Orion when the bottleneck is running the book — accounting, trading, billing, compliance, and the operating stack around it. Hire RightCapital when the bottleneck is producing and presenting the plan. A firm that needs both should sequence the hire, not force a single-vendor story.

How we evaluated

We scored both products on six tests: what object is the system of record, who logs in daily, how trading and billing relate to the plan, how tax and retirement math are shown to a client, what a conversion consumes, and whether a public price exists.

Public vendor pages were the evidence. Orion's site describes portfolio accounting, a CRM, trading, planning, compliance, a client portal, an AI layer, and TAMP or OCIO options, and it states ISO/IEC 42001 certification for that AI layer. RightCapital's site describes Monte Carlo retirement math, Tax Analyzer uploads, Blueprint and Snapshot visuals, cash-flow maps, insurance and estate modules, risk questionnaires, and a client portal.

Pricing is quote only for Orion and not published for RightCapital. Any cell that would have held a number holds that language instead.

This page is a two-name comparison. Adjacent stacks still matter — calendar cost, CRM-versus-scheduler questions, and reporting-platform alternatives live on their own URLs. See Scheduling Software Cost for Advisors: $15-50/Mo 2026, Redtail vs Calendly: 2 Tools for Advisors 2026, and Black Diamond Alternatives: 6 Picks for 2026 when those jobs are the actual open question.

Who Orion is built to serve

Orion is built for firms that want the operating stack in one place: household and account data, performance, trading, billing, compliance workflows, a portal, and, if they choose, outsourced investment management through OCIO or TAMP models.

The public homepage frames the buyer as independent advisors, operations leads, technology leads, and growth-stage RIAs. It also documents custom indexing and tax-aware trading for high-net-worth work. That is a "run the firm" story.

The buyer who fits is the person currently reconciling the book in one system, trading in another, billing in a spreadsheet, and hoping the portal matches. The buyer who does not fit is the advisor whose only complaint is that the plan still looks like a slide deck.

Ask Orion to convert a real household across your custodians, show a trade, show a bill, and show the compliance alert that would fire on a restriction. Then, separately, ask it to produce the client-facing tax and retirement conversation you actually run. If the second demo is thin, you have learned that planning is not the reason to sign.

Who RightCapital is built to serve

RightCapital is built for advisors whose meetings run on a plan: probability of success, tax-return analysis, Roth conversions, cash-flow maps, Social Security claiming, insurance needs, estate flow, and a one-page Snapshot the client can keep.

Public pages also document business-owner cash flows, student-loan options, account aggregation into the plan, and a client vault. That is a "run the meeting" story, not a "run the blotter" story.

The buyer who fits is the paraplanner or advisor who spends too long building the plan, cannot load a tax return, or cannot show a client why two retirement dates diverge. The buyer who does not fit is the operations lead whose statements are late.

Ask RightCapital to load a two-earner household with a business, a tax return, and a planned Roth conversion, then produce Snapshot and cash-flow maps in the meeting. If the demo cannot do tax year-by-year, you are not yet looking at the product the feature list describes.

Platform versus planning

Rows follow each vendor's public product description. Price cells record quote-only / not-published status.

Capability detail

Depth is qualitative. Neither vendor publishes a scored side-by-side benchmark a third party maintains.

Industry scale numbers

The reason a wrong-layer purchase hurts is the size of the book on a small staff. Average advisor book size is $98M AUM. Succession pressure is already in the channel, according to Cerulli Associates, with RIA consolidators at $1.5 trillion in AUM and 37% of the RIA channel's advisors expected to retire over the next decade, putting 35% of channel assets in motion.

Consolidator and succession figures from Cerulli; 2025 mix from the Investment Adviser Association. None of these figures is an Orion or RightCapital price.

The registered population those books sit in is still growing, according to Investment Adviser Association, with 16,544 SEC-registered advisers in 2025, 73.7 million clients, and $176.8 trillion in assets under management. A platform migration and a planning migration are both exam-visible at that scale.

Regulatory assets on the SEC tally are in the same neighborhood, according to SEC, at $177 trillion in 2025 across 22,932 investment advisers, up 4.2% in adviser count year over year. That is the pool of money a trade blotter or a plan has to describe without drifting apart.

Retirement household money is the meeting agenda, according to SIFMA, with U.S. retirement assets at $53.6 trillion in 2025 and IRAs at 35.0% of that total. the other product's public tax and claiming tools are aimed at that IRA-heavy conversation; the other product's public accounting and trading tools are aimed at keeping the accounts underneath it in line.

Job and wage figures from BLS; CFP count from CFP Board; representative count from FINRA. These are labor-market figures, not software prices.

Staff time is priced even when the vendor quote is not, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, with 299,400 personal financial advisor jobs in 2025, a median wage of $105,070, and about 17,100 openings a year. Re-keying the book into a plan, or the plan into a blotter, is that wage.

Orion: pros and cons

Pros: The public product story covers the operating jobs most RIAs eventually hit — accounting, trading, billing, compliance, portal, and optional OCIO or TAMP. Firms that are currently stitching those jobs together will recognize the pitch.

Pros: The site documents an AI governance certification (ISO/IEC 42001) and a long list of custodian and data connections. Those are diligence items for a CCO, not decorations.

Cons: A full operating platform is not the same as a planning meeting tool. If the gap is tax-return analysis and a client-facing cash-flow map, confirm that Orion's planning module actually does that job on your households before you sign, or you will still need a planning layer.

Cons: Pricing is quote only. Ask for modules (accounting, trading, CRM, planning, compliance, portal, OCIO/TAMP), seats, conversion, and which services are optional. Print no figure.

RightCapital: pros and cons

Pros: The public feature list matches a planning meeting — Monte Carlo, tax uploads, Roth math, Blueprint, Snapshot, cash-flow maps, insurance, estate, risk, and a client portal. Advisors who live in those conversations will not have to invent a new meeting format.

Pros: Account aggregation into the plan and a vault are documented, which shortens intake when the client will connect accounts.

Cons: RightCapital is not a portfolio accounting and trading platform. Daily reconciliation, model trades, and advisory billing are a different system of record. Buying planning software to "replace the book" fails in the first billing cycle.

Cons: Pricing is not published. Ask for seats, tax and aggregation modules, workflow add-ons, and plan-migration help as lines. Print no figure.

What a move costs in time

An Orion conversion is a firm-operations project. Historical performance, lots, households, models, billing codes, restrictions, and portal credentials have to land. Run a parallel quarter: statements, bills, and a sample of trades reconciling against the old system. CCO sign-off belongs on that sample, not on a vendor slide.

A RightCapital conversion is a plan-file project. Goals, tax returns, policies, claiming ages, and firm assumptions have to be certified. The vendor documents assisted plan import on its own site, which cuts typing, but someone still has to attest that the new plan matches the advice you already gave. Budget paraplanner hours for that attestation through a full review cycle.

Retraining splits by role. Traders and operations live in Orion. Advisors and paraplanners live in RightCapital. Do not send both groups to both classes if only one system is changing.

If you keep both layers, the household key is the glue. When an Orion household is opened, US Tech Automations can push the account list into the planning intake so the plan is not built from a stale spreadsheet. When a RightCapital plan is marked complete, US Tech Automations can drop a "plan vs book" exception if an account exists in the plan but not on the operating platform.

Those are two workflow steps. Price them on the pricing page after the vendor sequence is written down. Firms that want that match as a reusable flow can look at agentic workflows once the contracts are in draft.

Which one to sign, and when not to

Sign Orion if the partner argument is about the book: accounting, trades, bills, restrictions, and a portal that matches custody. Sign RightCapital if the partner argument is about the plan: tax, retirement math, and a meeting artifact the client will use.

They are close only as "advisor software." They are not close as layers. A firm that needs both should buy the broken layer first.

Who should pick the other one: an operations lead who is angry that planning software "does not trade the model" should not buy a bigger planning seat, and an advisor who is angry that the platform "does not show Roth math in the room" should not buy more accounting modules and expect the meeting to change.

15,400+ retail-serving SEC-registered RIAs are making a version of this layer choice. CFP professionals are the people running the meeting half of it, according to CFP Board, which counted 110,946 CFP professionals as of 1 September 2026, with an average age of 47.8. Software that does not match how those meetings actually run will be abandoned in a quarter.

If the remaining work is keeping the plan and the book on the same household, US Tech Automations can hold the account-list push and the plan-versus-book exception. Keep both quotes as line items. Orion is quote only. RightCapital is not published. Inventing a number for either is how a partner meeting goes badly.

Portfolio OS versus planning software

Orion-shaped tools hold the book and the household. RightCapital-shaped tools run the plan the client sees. Advisors who buy planning software to replace a portfolio OS will still retype. Advisors who skip planning because the OS has a chart will still walk into reviews with a PDF from somewhere else.

Cerulli: average advisor book $98M AUM in the 2024 RIA marketplace figure. SIFMA: 15,400+ retail-serving SEC-registered RIAs. Those are market facts, not vendor scores. Quotes only. Household model, planning output, and who retypes. Date the PDFs. Do not migrate both in the same quarter as a custodian change.

US Tech Automations can connect this trigger to the next step in the workflow so the queue is not a paste. That is a configuration, not a slogan.

FAQs

Can RightCapital replace our portfolio accounting?

No. Public RightCapital materials are planning, tax, and client collaboration; daily reconciliation, trading, and billing remain an operating-platform job.

Can Orion replace our planning meetings?

Only if the planning module you are quoted actually produces the tax and retirement artifacts you use in the room; confirm that on your households before you retire the planning tool you have.

What does "quote only" mean for Orion?

It means this page will not print a dollar figure; ask for modules, seats, conversion, and optional OCIO or TAMP services as separate lines.

How long should dual-running last?

Keep Orion dual-running through a full billing and statement cycle with sampled trades, and keep RightCapital dual-running until every active plan is certified against the prior advice file.

Do we migrate both layers in the same quarter?

No. Pick the broken layer first; a combined conversion hides which system is still wrong when the first exam or client meeting lands.

Should a two-person RIA start with the platform or the plan?

Start with the loop that currently fails in front of a client: late or unreconciled statements point to Orion, and meetings that still run on slides point to RightCapital.

The paid conversation is on pricing.

Key Takeaways

• Orion is the operating platform for the book; RightCapital is the planning layer for the meeting; they are stacked jobs, not substitutes.

• Orion is quote only; RightCapital is not published; request modules, seats, and conversion as line items.

• RIA consolidators already hold $1.5 trillion in AUM, which is the backdrop for any platform or plan conversion.

• Sequence the hire around the current bottleneck; do not migrate both layers in the same quarter.

• If you keep both, automate the household match between the book and the plan.

• Put calendar-cost, CRM-versus-scheduler, and reporting-alternative questions on their own pages so this comparison stays two names.