Editorial disclosure
Pension Planner UK is published by Retire Early Limited (Companies House 17106955), which also operates the retirement planning product FIRElogic. FIRElogic appears in this review. To mitigate the obvious conflict of interest, we have not ranked our own product at #1, we apply identical scoring criteria to every tool, and we explicitly note the strengths of competing products where they outperform ours. Readers should weigh this disclosure when interpreting the rankings. Nothing on this page is financial advice.
The UK retirement planning software market is unusually fragmented. There are perhaps thirty consumer-accessible tools that call themselves a "pension calculator" — most of them are single-pot projection widgets built by SIPP providers as marketing assets, and a handful are genuine multi-asset, tax-aware planning tools that can answer the questions a serious saver actually has. This review is about telling those two groups apart.
We've also excluded adviser-grade software (Voyant, Truth, Timeline, CashCalc) from the main ranking. Those are excellent products, but a consumer cannot buy them directly — access is gated through an IFA relationship. They appear in a sidebar at the end for completeness.
How we scored
Every tool was assessed against twelve criteria that distinguish a real retirement planner from a basic projection calculator. We weighted UK tax accuracy and wrapper coverage heavily, because for a UK saver these are not edge cases — they are the substance of the planning question.
A full tick () means the tool models the feature properly — for IHT, that includes the RNRB taper above £2m; for drawdown strategies, that means configurable strategies (Guyton-Klinger, dynamic withdrawal rules, strategy comparison) rather than a single deterministic withdrawal pattern; for PCLS, that means controllable crystallisation timing rather than a lump-sum toggle; for rental, that means a property model with growth, tax and sale rather than a simple income input. A partial mark () means the feature exists but is approximated, simplified, or implemented in a way users have flagged as limited. By design this is a strict rubric — most consumer tools score partial on the harder features, which is the honest position.
Couple/household modelling
Inheritance tax (NRB, RNRB)
PCLS & crystallisation control
One-off life events
SIPPs & workplace pensions
ISAs & LISAs
GIA & taxable assets
Rental income
Annuities
Triple-locked State Pension
Drawdown sequencing strategies
Later-life spending changes
Integrated budget planner
The ranking
01Rank
Ian Shadrack's UK Retirement Planning Spreadsheet
The capability champion. Because it is a spreadsheet, every cell is visible and every assumption is editable. Couples, IHT with RNRB, full PCLS control, life events, SIPP/ISA/LISA/GIA, rental, annuities, triple-lock, drawdown sequencing, and detailed later-life spending — all present. Widely used and widely recommended in the UK FIRE community for over a decade.
The honest weakness is the user experience. There is no scenario comparison without manual sheet duplication, no visualisation beyond what you build yourself, and a meaningful learning curve before you trust the outputs. You also have to maintain it as tax rules change, though Shadrack publishes updates.
Verdict
Best for serious DIY planners who want to see the maths and don't mind Excel.
Avoid if you want a polished interface or interactive visualisations.
02Rank
FIRElogic
Free annual check-up · £29.99/year subscription · Web app · UK-built ·
firelogic.uk
A modern UK-native planner aimed at the FIRE community and serious early-retirement planners. SIPP, ISA, LISA, GIA, DB pensions, annuities, multi-property rental income and NS&I Premium Bonds are all modelled as first-class UK wrappers with a reasonable approximation of UK tax rules. Distinctive features include configurable SIPP band-filling — drawing to the basic-rate ceiling and recycling into ISA — multi-person households with different retirement ages, IHT projection with the residence nil-rate band taper, configurable drawdown strategies, later-life spending changes and an integrated budget planner.
Disclosure: published by the same company as this review. We have placed it second rather than first because Shadrack's spreadsheet is more comprehensive on raw modelling depth, particularly for life-event modelling. FIRElogic's advantage over the spreadsheet is the user interface and scenario handling; over Guiide it is the breadth of UK-specific features; over RetireEasy it is a more current technical foundation. It is not the right choice for someone who only needs a basic projection.
Verdict
Best for UK FIRE planners who want native UK tax modelling with modern UX.
Avoid if you only need a single-pot projection or are not in the UK tax system.
03Rank
RetireEasy
The longest-established consumer subscription planner in the UK. Couples, IHT, life events, all major wrapper types, rental income, annuities and Monte Carlo sustainability testing are all supported. Triple-locked State Pension is handled. The drawdown engine works but offers a single deterministic withdrawal pattern rather than configurable strategy comparison; the PCLS implementation has been criticised on forums as opaque, with the tool tracking surpluses in a hidden account users find unintuitive. Rental is modelled at the income level rather than as a full property asset with growth, tax and sale.
The interface shows its age and the development pace appears slower than newer entrants. That said, it does the core job and has years of UK user feedback behind its assumptions, which is not nothing.
Verdict
Best for a comprehensive subscription tool with proven UK coverage.
Avoid if you want a modern interface or rapid feature iteration.
04Rank
Guiide
The strongest free UK consumer tool, by a margin. Its standout feature is tax-aware drawdown guidance — it suggests an efficient order to draw from SIPP and GIA based on UK tax sequencing logic. This is heuristic optimisation rather than full configurable strategy modelling (no Guyton-Klinger guardrails, no strategy comparison), but for most users the guidance is more useful than the manual configuration paid tools require. PCLS, SIPPs, annuities and triple-lock are covered. The tool is single-person only — there is no household or couples view — ISAs are not modelled as a wrapper, life events are not supported, and IHT and rental income are not first-class.
For a free tool with no signup friction, the gap to paid alternatives is genuinely small for users with a straightforward UK pension/State Pension setup. If you have an ISA pot, a partner's finances to model, or any one-off life event, you'll need to look elsewhere.
Verdict
Best for single planners with a straightforward pension setup who want a free tool that understands UK tax.
Avoid if you need couple modelling, ISA modelling, or life-event handling.
05Rank
UK FIRE Calculator
A focused free tool for working out your FIRE number — the pot size needed for financial independence — using UK wrappers and 2026/27 tax rates. Models DC pensions, ISAs, LISAs, GIA and the State Pension correctly. Couples coverage is limited, IHT is not modelled, rental income is not supported, and life-event modelling is sparse. Drawdown handling is basic.
Within its narrower remit, it does the job well. Use it alongside Guiide rather than instead of.
Verdict
Best for calculating a FIRE number with correct UK tax assumptions.
Avoid if you need couple modelling or comprehensive planning.
06Rank
cFIREsim
A historical-data backtester that runs your retirement plan against every starting year in over a century of market data, returning a success rate. It is US-built and has no concept of UK wrappers or UK tax, so it cannot be used as a primary planner. What it can do is provide an independent stress-test of withdrawal sustainability — a useful second opinion once you've built your plan in a UK-native tool.
Treat it as a sanity check on your safe withdrawal rate, not as a planner.
Verdict
Best for stress-testing withdrawal sustainability against historical data.
Avoid if you need any UK tax or wrapper accuracy.
07Rank
ProjectionLab
Often recommended as the gold standard of consumer retirement planners — and on user experience, scenario design and life-event modelling, it earns that reputation. The problem for UK users is that it is a US-first product. Account types are 401(k), Roth IRA and taxable brokerage; the tax engine runs US federal and state brackets; there is no native concept of an ISA, LISA, SIPP, PCLS, MPAA, tapered annual allowance or UK income tax bands.
UK users typically work around this by mapping ISA to Roth IRA and SIPP to Traditional 401(k). The approximation is closer than nothing, but it does not give you accurate UK tax outcomes. Listed here because it is genuinely the best-designed tool in the category — but recommended only with this caveat clearly understood.
Verdict
Best for users who value UX and scenario modelling above tax accuracy.
Avoid if you need correct UK tax treatment of your wrappers.
08Rank
MoneyHelper Pension Calculator
The official tool from MoneyHelper (the consumer guidance arm of the Money and Pensions Service). Single-person, single-pot, basic projection from contributions, salary and growth assumptions, with State Pension included. No couples, no IHT, no rental, no drawdown sequencing, no life events.
Its value is not feature depth — it is impartiality. As a government-backed tool with no commercial interest in the answer, it is the right reference point for sanity-checking other tools' projections. Use it to triangulate, not to plan.
Verdict
Best for an impartial sanity check on other calculators' assumptions.
Avoid if you need anything beyond a basic single-person projection.
09Rank
Hargreaves Lansdown Pension & Drawdown Calculators
Free · Web tools · UK provider ·
hl.co.uk
HL publishes two separate tools — a pension projection calculator and a drawdown sustainability calculator — that together cover slightly more ground than the typical provider widget. The drawdown calculator in particular models life expectancy and growth-rate sensitivity in a more useful way than most. They remain single-person, single-pot tools with no IHT, no rental and no proper sequencing across multiple wrappers, but as free quick-projection tools from the largest UK SIPP platform they are the best of the provider category.
Useful for HL customers checking whether their pot is on track. Not a substitute for an actual planning tool.
Verdict
Best for a quick projection or drawdown sustainability check from a credible source.
Avoid if you need anything beyond single-pot projection.
10Rank
MyFinanceFuture
A free UK retirement tool that on paper covers more ground than the typical provider calculator — it attempts couples, multiple wrappers and a degree of drawdown modelling. In practice it is extremely cumbersome and unintuitive to use. Inputs are spread across a long sequence of screens with limited ability to navigate freely between them, the data model is opaque, error messages are unhelpful, and small changes often require re-entering information that should have been retained. Users repeatedly report abandoning the tool partway through.
The underlying calculations may well be reasonable, but a planning tool that most users cannot finish a session in is not, in practice, a planning tool. It is included here because it is genuinely free and does attempt the harder modelling problems — but the workflow makes it hard to recommend over Guiide for free users, or any of the paid options for serious planners.
Verdict
Best for users determined to persist with a free tool that attempts comprehensive modelling.
Avoid if you value being able to actually complete a planning session.
·Category
Other provider calculators (Aviva, Standard Life, Vanguard, et al)
Free · Web tools · Various
The pension calculators offered by Aviva, Standard Life, Royal London, Scottish Widows, Legal & General, Aegon, AJ Bell, Fidelity, Vanguard, interactive investor, PensionBee, Nutmeg and Wealthify all sit in similar territory — single-person, single-pot, contribution-and-growth projections with basic State Pension assumptions. They exist primarily as marketing and lead-generation assets rather than as planning tools.
We list them as a category because differentiating between them on capability is largely beside the point. They share the same core limitations: no couples, no multiple wrappers, no IHT, no life events, no rental, no drawdown sequencing.
Verdict
Best for existing customers of the relevant provider.
Avoid if you want to do actual retirement planning.
Feature comparison
How the ten tools score against the twelve criteria. full support · partial or workaround · not supported.
| Criterion |
Shadrack |
FIRElogic |
RetireEasy |
Guiide |
UK FIRE |
cFIREsim |
ProjLab |
MoneyHelper |
HL |
MyFF |
Others |
| Couples / households |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | · | · | ✓ | · | · | ~ | · |
|---|
| IHT (NRB + RNRB taper) |
✓ | ✓ | ~ | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
|---|
| PCLS / crystallisation |
✓ | ✓ | ~ | ~ | ~ | · | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ |
|---|
| One-off life events |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | ~ | ✓ | ✓ | · | · | ~ | · |
|---|
| SIPPs / workplace |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | ~ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
|---|
| ISAs / LISAs |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | ✓ | · | ~ | · | · | ✓ | · |
|---|
| GIA / taxable |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | · | ~ | · |
|---|
| Rental income |
✓ | ✓ | ~ | · | · | · | ~ | · | · | · | · |
|---|
| Annuities |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | ✓ | ✓ | · | · | ~ | · |
|---|
| Triple-lock State Pension |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | ~ | ✓ | ~ | ~ | ~ |
|---|
| Drawdown strategies |
~ | ✓ | ~ | ~ | · | ✓ | ✓ | · | ~ | ~ | · |
|---|
| Later-life spending |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | ✓ | ✓ | · | · | · | · |
|---|
| Budget planner |
✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | · | ✓ | · | · | · | · |
|---|
A note on adviser-grade tools
Voyant, Truth (Prestwood), Timeline and CashCalc are the dominant cashflow modelling tools used by UK financial advisers. They are excellent — Voyant in particular is the benchmark for adviser-grade lifetime planning — but they are sold to advisory firms, not to consumers. Voyant's VoyantGo and ClientGo, and Timeline's client portal, do allow consumer access, but only if your IFA invites you.
If you work with a financial adviser, asking whether they use Voyant or Timeline and whether you can have portal access is a reasonable question. If you're planning DIY, these tools are not realistic options.