Wealthsimple is one of the best brokerages in Canada — commission-free, beautifully designed, and genuinely easy to use. But its built-in analytics stop at account balances and a basic return figure. If you want to know exactly which sectors you own, how your real time-weighted return compares to the S&P 500, when your next dividend is landing, or whether your ETFs overlap more than you think — you need a companion tool. WealthWise is that tool, and it connects directly to your Wealthsimple account for free.
None of this is a knock on Wealthsimple — it's a brokerage, not a research platform. WealthWise fills the gap via a read-only connection.
Wealthsimple's interface is intentionally streamlined. That's a strength for getting started — fewer distractions, cleaner execution. But as your portfolio grows, that same simplicity starts to hide important information. You might own three ETFs that together hold hundreds of individual stocks, but Wealthsimple just shows you three ticker symbols and a dollar amount.
Here's what the platform currently doesn't show you:
None of this is a criticism of Wealthsimple — it's a brokerage, not a research platform. WealthWise fills precisely this gap, and because it connects via read-only broker sync, you never have to leave Wealthsimple or migrate your account.
WealthWise uses SnapTrade's read-only API to pull your Wealthsimple holdings into the dashboard. "Read-only" is the critical word: the integration can see your positions and balances, but it cannot place orders, move funds, or do anything transactional. Your Wealthsimple credentials never touch WealthWise's servers.
The setup takes about two minutes. You authorize the connection through SnapTrade's secure OAuth flow, and your accounts appear in WealthWise automatically — TFSA, RRSP, margin, and cash accounts all supported. From that point on, your data stays current without any manual imports.
If you prefer not to connect a live account, you can also import your portfolio via CSV or enter positions manually. The analysis tools work identically either way.
| Sector | Actual weight after look-through |
|---|---|
| Technology | 28% |
| Financials | 14% |
| Other sectors | and so on |
WealthWise recursively decomposes fund-of-funds ETFs like XEQT or VEQT into their underlying sector weights, then aggregates everything into one picture for your whole portfolio.
This is one of the most genuinely useful features for ETF investors, and it's something almost no free tool does correctly.
When you buy XEQT or VEQT, you're buying a fund of funds — each holding is itself an ETF, which holds hundreds of individual stocks. A surface-level sector chart would just call the whole thing "ETFs" and stop there. WealthWise does something more useful: it recursively decomposes your ETFs into their underlying sector weights, then aggregates everything into a single sector picture for your entire portfolio.
In practice, this means you can see that your supposedly diversified portfolio is 28% technology, 14% financials, and so on — numbers that actually reflect what you own, not just how many funds you hold. This matters when you're deciding whether to add a position that might inadvertently concentrate you further in one area.
You can explore this in detail on the ETF sector look-through feature page.
Fund providers like BlackRock and Vanguard don't publish a daily country breakdown via any public API. WealthWise derives geographic exposure by analyzing each ETF's actual top holdings, identifying where those companies are domiciled, and weighting the result by position size — including recursive look-through for funds-of-funds like XEQT.
The result is an approximation, not a perfect audit, but it's far more informative than the high-level "North America / International" labels most platforms offer. You can see whether your Canadian bias is larger than you intended, or whether your "global" ETF is 65% US stocks underneath the hood.
This is particularly relevant for Wealthsimple investors who use a simple two or three-ETF approach: VFV plus a Canadian equity ETF, for instance, may produce more US concentration than expected. See also: home-country bias and geographic diversification.
Wealthsimple shows you a return percentage, but it's important to understand what that number measures and how to contextualize it. WealthWise calculates your Modified Dietz time-weighted return — the industry-standard method that strips out the effect of deposits and withdrawals so you can compare your actual investment skill against a benchmark.
That benchmark is the S&P 500 (in CAD terms), which is roughly what you'd have earned by simply buying a low-cost index fund like VFV and doing nothing else. This comparison doesn't mean you should be beating the S&P 500 — a diversified Canadian investor typically holds bonds, Canadian equities, and international stocks, so underperforming a US-only index in a US bull market is entirely expected. What matters is whether your return makes sense given your allocation.
Understanding the difference between time-weighted and money-weighted returns is worth a few minutes of reading — they can diverge significantly when you've made large contributions at specific moments. The time-weighted vs money-weighted return explainer breaks down when each method is more informative.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Dividend calendar | Every upcoming payment across all accounts in one view; switch monthly/annual or zoom into one account |
| Real yield including CDRs | Correct yield calculations for Canadian Depositary Receipts, which behave differently from the underlying US shares |
| Yield on cost | Return relative to what you actually paid, not today's price |
| DRIP simulator | Projects income and share count compounding over a 10 or 20-year horizon at different reinvestment rates |
One of the most practical free feature sets for income-focused Wealthsimple investors.
For income-focused investors — and many Wealthsimple users who hold dividend ETFs or Canadian bank stocks — the dividend suite in WealthWise is one of the most practical sets of features available for free anywhere.
See every upcoming dividend payment across all your accounts in one calendar view. You can switch between monthly and annual income totals, or zoom in to a specific account like your TFSA. This makes it easy to plan cash flow and verify that payments are arriving as expected.
Canadian Depositary Receipts (CDRs), available on Wealthsimple, are currency-hedged versions of US stocks. Their dividend yields behave differently from the underlying US shares, and many tools get this wrong. WealthWise applies correct yield calculations for CDRs, so your displayed income is accurate.
Your current yield is calculated on today's price. Yield on cost shows you the return relative to what you actually paid — a useful number for long-term holders who want to see how their income stream has grown as a percentage of their original investment.
If you reinvest dividends (either automatically or manually), the DRIP simulator projects how your income and share count compound over time at different reinvestment rates. It's a concrete way to see the snowball effect over a 10 or 20-year horizon.
A portfolio can look diversified on the surface — multiple ETFs, multiple accounts — while actually being highly concentrated in a small number of companies. WealthWise calculates a concentration score that accounts for look-through holdings, so if three of your ETFs all hold Apple as a top-five position, the system counts that exposure correctly rather than treating each ETF as an independent diversifier.
This is especially relevant for Wealthsimple investors who mix VFV (S&P 500) with sector ETFs, since both can be heavily weighted toward the same mega-cap technology names.
WealthWise is built specifically for the Canadian context, which means the analysis reflects how Canadian investors actually invest — not just a US-centric dashboard with a currency toggle.
| Feature | WealthWise | Wealthsimple (built-in) |
|---|---|---|
| ETF sector look-through | Yes (recursive) | No |
| Geographic breakdown | Yes (derived from holdings) | No |
| TWR vs S&P 500 | Yes | No |
| Dividend calendar | Yes | No |
| DRIP simulator | Yes | No |
| Norbert's Gambit helper | Yes | No |
| Multi-broker support | Yes | N/A |
| CDR support | Yes | Limited |
| Cost | Free | Free (trading commissions apply) |
The best portfolio tracker in Canada for 2026 comparison covers how WealthWise stacks up against other standalone tools as well.
If you already use Wealthsimple, setup is straightforward: create a free WealthWise account, authorize the Wealthsimple connection through the broker sync flow, and your holdings appear in the dashboard within seconds. No data entry, no spreadsheets.
From there, the analysis runs automatically. Your sector breakdown, geographic exposure, dividend calendar, and benchmark comparison update whenever your holdings change. You can add accounts from other brokerages too — Questrade and Disnat are both supported — so if you ever spread positions across platforms, everything stays in one place.
WealthWise is free to use. The goal is to be the analytical layer that makes Wealthsimple more powerful, not a replacement for it.
Yes. WealthWise connects to Wealthsimple via SnapTrade's read-only API and supports TFSA, RRSP, margin, and cash accounts. The connection is read-only — it can view your holdings and balances but cannot place trades or move funds.
Yes, WealthWise is free to use. There is no premium tier required to access the core analysis features including sector look-through, geographic breakdown, dividend calendar, or benchmark comparison.
Wealthsimple is optimized for simplicity and execution. Deep portfolio analytics — especially ETF look-through and benchmark performance attribution — add complexity that doesn't fit their core product philosophy. A companion tool like WealthWise can go deeper without cluttering the brokerage experience.
WealthWise derives geographic exposure from each ETF's actual top holdings, weighted by position size, with recursive look-through for funds-of-funds. Fund providers don't publish exact country data via API, so the result is an informed approximation rather than a perfect audit — but it's substantially more accurate than high-level region labels.
Yes. WealthWise supports multiple brokers simultaneously. You can connect your Wealthsimple account alongside Questrade or Disnat accounts and see your entire portfolio consolidated in one dashboard.
Start with WealthWise for free →Educational content. Figures and rules verified against the official sources above; tax amounts change annually.
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