Set an advice-only fee from the hours each engagement takes, then check it against other advice-only firms, not against firms that also manage money. US fee-only firms whose websites list no percentage-of-assets fee charge a median $1,950 for a one-time plan, $300 an hour and $5,000 a year for ongoing planning (Wellspent fee report data, October 2026). Across all fee-only firms the ongoing median is $4,500, so an advice-only planner who prices off the overall number is likely undercharging.
Advice-only means you advise but don’t hold or manage the client’s investments. Clients carry out the plan themselves, so your fee is the whole of what they pay you.
What advice-only firms charge
These are prices from US fee-only firms whose websites say how they charge and list no percentage of assets, the closest public sign that a firm works advice-only.
US medians at fee-only firms that list no percentage-of-assets fee
Source: Wellspent fee report data, October 2026
For comparison, across all US fee-only firms that publish prices the medians are $2,000 for a one-time plan, $300 an hour and $4,500 a year. One-time plans and hourly rates are about the same at advice-only firms. Ongoing fees are not.
The pool is large. 37% of US fee-only firms whose websites say how they charge list no asset-based fee (927 of 2,503), and in Canada it’s 83% (59 of 71) (Wellspent fee report data, October 2026).
Why advice-only ongoing fees run higher
At firms that also charge a percentage of assets, the median ongoing planning fee is $3,600 a year. At advice-only firms it’s $5,000 (Wellspent fee report data, October 2026). The reason is structural. A firm that also manages money often prices planning as an add-on to an investment fee. An advice-only firm has nothing else to earn from the client, so the planning fee has to cover the whole relationship: the meetings, the plan updates, the email between meetings and the time spent on research.
Kitces Research found the same split eight years earlier. In its 2018 study, advisors who charged only retainers had a median retainer of $5,000 a year, against $2,400 for advisors who charged retainers alongside asset fees (Kitces, April 8, 2019). If you’re leaving an asset-fee firm to go advice-only, don’t carry its planning price with you.
Pick the menu first
Most advice-only firms sell some mix of three things. Decide which you’ll offer before you set any number.
- A one-time plan. A fixed price for a defined project. It’s the easiest first purchase for a client who has never paid for advice, and a natural way into an ongoing engagement.
- Hourly. Best for single questions, check-ups on a plan the client runs, and second opinions. It’s hard to sell for full engagements. Replying to another planner’s account of hourly billing gone wrong, one advisor wrote that “hourly should be for project-based work only. For full engagements, either AUM or flat fee” (thread). That’s one advisor’s view, and it’s a common way to build an advice-only menu.
- An ongoing fee. A yearly price, billed monthly or quarterly, for a continuing relationship. It gives you predictable revenue and gives the client permission to call.
Two or three clear options beat five. A prospect should be able to tell which one fits them from your fees page.
Set the number from hours
Estimate the hours a typical engagement takes and multiply by the rate you want to earn. Count the hours clients don’t see. One advisor on r/CFP, pricing plans backward from an hourly rate, warned: “Client data gather usually takes longer than you think (2-3 hours)” (thread), from their own experience. Then add plan building, meeting preparation, the meetings themselves and the written follow-up.
At the median rate of $300, the median advice-only one-time plan of $1,950 buys about six and a half hours of work, and the median ongoing fee of $5,000 about 17 hours a year. If your engagements take longer than that, either your scope is bigger than the median firm’s, which is fine if your page says so, or your price is too low.
Then set tiers by complexity: a household with salaries and workplace plans at one price, one with a business, equity pay, rental property or cross-border income at another. Tie them to the work, not to the client’s assets. Pricing an advice-only fee off net worth brings back the asset logic you left behind.
Price the implementation question
Advice-only clients carry out the plan themselves, and a plan that never gets carried out is the one a client later decides wasn’t worth the money. Decide up front what you’ll do to help, and price it:
- Whether you’ll name specific funds or only an approach
- Whether a follow-up meeting a few months later is included
- Whether you’ll sit with the client, by video, while they open accounts or place trades
- Whether email questions after delivery are included, and for how long
A one-time plan that includes a 90-day follow-up is a different product from one that ends on delivery. Say which you sell.
Canada
In Canada, where “advice-only” is the usual term, the same firms charge a median C$1,600 for a one-time plan (middle half C$900 to C$2,900, 41 firms), C$250 an hour (C$180 to C$300, 13 firms) and C$2,300 a year for ongoing planning (C$1,200 to C$4,000, 21 firms) (Wellspent fee report data, October 2026). Across all Canadian fee-only firms that publish prices, the medians are C$1,900, C$250 and C$2,300.
Billing and the rules
Your fee schedule goes in your Form ADV Part 2A brochure. Item 5 asks you to state it, say whether fees are negotiable, and, if clients pay in advance, explain how they get a refund when the engagement ends early.
Prepayment has a hard threshold. Under Item 18, a state-registered firm that requires or solicits more than $500 in fees per client, six or more months in advance, must include an audited balance sheet in its brochure. For SEC-registered firms the threshold is $1,200. This matters more for advice-only firms than most: a firm with no assets under management is generally regulated by its state rather than the SEC, and a one-time plan is easy to bill upfront. Many planners take a deposit at signing and the balance on delivery, and bill ongoing fees monthly or quarterly.
Where advice-only clients look
Clients looking for this kind of planner tend to search with words like “advice-only,” “flat-fee” and “hourly” rather than “financial advisor,” so those words belong on your site and in every place you can be found. On find.wellspent.co, the consumer side of the public graph, the advice-only planning guide shows them these same prices and sends them to planners who fit.
Where Wellspent fits
Paying per lead is hard to justify when the engagement is a $1,950 plan. Wellspent is $89 a month: a verified record in the public graph that shows your advice-only model and prices to the people and AI assistants looking for one, introductions with no lead fees and no share of any fee, a monthly report on who AI recommends in your market, and quarterly press placement with media partners. See how it works, compare the cost of buying leads in how much financial advisor leads cost, or see how it sits beside an advice-only directory in Wellspent vs Advice-Only Network.