Cadances vs Sharesight: Which Portfolio Tracker Fits a Dividend Investor?

If you track your portfolio seriously, you have probably come across Sharesight. It has been tracking portfolios since long before Cadances existed, it is a household name among Australian and New Zealand investors, and it does what it promises: performance reporting with dividends and tax included.

So why does Cadances exist? Because "dividends included" and "built for dividends" are two different products. Here is an honest look at where each one wins.

The short version

If you want the answer without the detail:

• Choose Sharesight if you file taxes in Australia or New Zealand, or if you share a portfolio with an accountant through Xero.
• Choose Cadances if dividend income is the point of your portfolio: what it pays you, when the next payment lands, what the tax office takes in your country, and what your income looks like ten years out. This matters most in Europe, where Cadances models your country's actual rules and fills in your official forms.

Both are good products. They are built around different questions, and that is the whole comparison.

Cadances and Sharesight side by side

The full comparison follows, but the table below holds the facts that decide it. Every row is unpacked in the sections after it.

What both tools do well

Credit where it is due. Both trackers:

• Follow stocks and ETFs across global markets, with dividends recorded automatically
• Convert multi-currency holdings into your base currency at real rates
• Show your true annualised return rather than just the price change
• Compare your portfolio against major indices
• Import your history from broker files
• Produce tax-ready summaries of dividends and capital gains
• Ship a mobile app alongside the web app

If that list were the whole job, you could flip a coin. The differences start when you ask what each tool is organised around.

Sharesight is performance-first, Cadances is income-first

Sharesight's reporting answers one question above all others: how did my portfolio perform? Its engine is genuinely deep, with contribution analysis, exposure reporting and multi-period comparisons on the higher plans. Dividends feed those returns, and they are tracked well, but they are an input to the performance picture rather than the subject of it.

Cadances starts from a different question: what is this portfolio paying me? The dashboard opens on your income rhythm for the month, your forward yield, what has landed and what is still to come. Around that core sit the tools an income investor actually reaches for.

Seeing your income before it arrives

A dividend calendar maps every ex-date and payment onto a month grid with amounts on it. When a European payer has not published a payment date yet, which happens constantly, Cadances estimates it from the ex-date and marks it as approximate, so your calendar never has a hole where a payment should be.

A 12-month forecast projects your upcoming income with growth assumptions you can tune, and prices it net of the dividend tax in your own country rather than showing a gross figure you then have to discount in your head.

The free dividend calculator takes the same idea further out: model reinvestment, contributions and decades of dividend growth, with no account needed.

Judging the income you already hold

Every dividend payer carries a safety score from 0 to 100, built from payout ratio, dividend growth and the fundamentals behind the payment, so you can see cut risk before it becomes a cut. Your whole portfolio gets the same treatment as a single safety read on the dashboard.

An alerts inbox then tells you what changed: upcoming ex-dividend dates, dividend cuts and raises, concentration in one position or one sector, reclaimable foreign withholding, and drawdowns. It reads like an email client, so you triage it rather than hunt for it.

Finding the next income holding

A stock screener points filters at a curated universe of dividend payers: forward yield, payout ratio, five-year dividend growth, increase streak, payment cadence and safety score. The Dividend Kings shortlist is one click from there, the 50 US companies that have raised their payout for at least 50 consecutive years.

That is the part no performance tracker does. Sharesight tells you how what you own has done. Cadances also helps you decide what to buy next.

Tax: reports to interpret, or forms to file

This is the biggest practical difference, and where you live decides how much it matters.

Sharesight ships country-specific tax reporting for five countries: Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, as its own investment portfolio tax reporting page sets out. In Australia and New Zealand in particular it is excellent, and many accountants take its reports directly. Outside those five, you get generic capital-gains and taxable-income summaries. Useful, but translating them into your country's actual rules is your job.

Cadances does that translation for you, across 34 residences: every EU country plus the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Norway and more. Each one carries its own rules rather than a shared approximation:

• France: the PFU flat tax compared against the progressive barème at one tap, so you know whether ticking case 2OP actually costs you less.
• Germany: the Abgeltungsteuer with the Sparer-Pauschbetrag treated as the shared pool it is, church tax folded into the rate the way the law computes it, and the Günstigerprüfung run for you.
• United Kingdom: HMRC's own share-matching rules, same-day then the 30-day rule then the Section 104 pool, windowed to the 6 April tax year.
• Canada: dividend gross-ups and credits, the real bracket for all thirteen provinces and territories, and the superficial-loss rule flagged before you file.
• United States: qualified against ordinary dividends on the 0 / 15 / 20 ladder, the 3.8% net investment income tax layered on above the threshold, and a Form 1116 worksheet for your foreign tax credit.

The part that goes further than a report

On the Elite plan, Cadances does not stop at a number. It maps every figure onto the line it belongs on and pre-fills the official forms. French residents get the 2042, 2047 and 2074. US residents get Schedule B, Form 8949, Schedule D, Form 1116 and Form 8960. UK, Canadian, German, Spanish, Italian, Australian and Swiss residents get the same treatment for their own returns.

Tax-advantaged wrappers are recognised everywhere in the app rather than only on the tax screen, so an ISA, PEA, TFSA, RRSP, 401(k), PIR or ISK shows its income untaxed in your forecast and simulator too.

Getting your holdings in

Sharesight is well known for its broker imports and for letting you forward trade-confirmation emails straight into your portfolio, and it supports a long list of brokers.

Cadances takes two routes. File import works with any broker, CSV or Excel, with no supported-broker list to check first. It works out which column is which in any language, shows a real value from your own file next to each guess so a wrong one is obvious, and skips duplicates. Automatic broker sync on the paid plans links your broker once and keeps positions, trades and dividends flowing in on their own, daily on Lite and Premium and hourly on Elite and Ultimate, with up to five years of history.

Both tools let you price unlisted assets by hand. Cadances also treats crypto and commodities as first-class holdings, with the same price history, allocation weight and return attribution as your stocks.

What each one costs

A caveat first: Sharesight prices in US dollars on its US site and Cadances prices in euros, so this is a comparison of what you get for the money rather than a currency-exact one.

Sharesight, billed annually, runs a free plan covering one portfolio and 10 holdings, then Starter at $7 a month for 30 holdings, Standard at $18 a month for four portfolios and unlimited holdings, and Premium at $23.25 a month for ten portfolios, according to its US pricing page. Tax reports and benchmarking start at Starter. Multi-currency valuation, labels and the Xero integration start at Standard. Annual billing saves around 25%.

Cadances starts every account on the Free plan, with no card and no time limit: one portfolio of up to 15 holdings and a one-ticker watchlist, with the calendar, the forecast, the simulator, the benchmarks and file import from any broker. The paid plans add volume and depth:

• Lite, €6.99 a month: 1 portfolio, unlimited holdings, a 5-ticker watchlist, real-time prices and daily broker sync.
• Premium, €14.99 a month: 5 portfolios, unlimited holdings, a 10-ticker watchlist, calendar sync, the screener and Dividend Kings, and up to 10 allocation rules.
• Elite, €29.99 a month: 10 portfolios, unlimited holdings, the screener and Dividend Kings, the alerts inbox, portfolio rules, the withholding report, hourly broker sync, and the pre-filled tax declarations.
• Ultimate, €49.99 a month: everything in Elite without limits, at the highest data cadence.

Yearly billing gives you two months free on any plan. You can see the current figures on the pricing page.

The honest read: both trackers start free, and the Cadances Free plan holds five more holdings than Sharesight's. Standard undercuts Elite on headline price. What no Sharesight plan includes at any price is a dividend safety score, an income screener, tax models tuned to 34 residences, or a pre-filled declaration. You are not paying Cadances for extra seats and portfolios. You are paying for the dividend and tax layer.

Which should you pick?

1. Small portfolio, want it free. Either one. Sharesight's free plan holds 10 holdings; the Cadances Free plan holds 15, with the calendar, the forecast and file import, for as long as you like.
2. Filing in Australia or New Zealand. Sharesight. Its local tax reporting is the standard there for good reason.
3. Dividend investor filing in Europe. Cadances, comfortably. The income tools go deeper and the tax model speaks your country's rules instead of approximating them.
4. Filing in the UK, Canada or the US. Both will serve you. Sharesight if you mostly want performance reporting; Cadances if dividends are the point and you want the declaration pre-filled.
5. Sharing with an accountant through Xero. Sharesight has that integration today.
6. You want the app in your own language. Cadances runs in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, German and Italian, with local date and number formats throughout.

Try it against your own portfolio

The only comparison that settles it is the one run on your own holdings. Create a free account, no card needed, import your broker file in about a minute, and see what your portfolio is really paying you: this month, after tax, and ten years from now.

Prices and features here were checked in September 2026 and change over time, so check both sites before deciding. Sharesight is a trademark of Sharesight Limited, which is not affiliated with Cadances.