What is in it
Tab 1
Holdings
Type a ticker and the price arrives on its own. Value, cost, gain and return calculate themselves. Fifty rows ready.
Tab 2
Dashboard
Total value, gain and return at a glance, with allocation by sector and a chart that updates as you add positions.
Tab 3
Fees
Enter what your broker charges. It returns one annual number, and what that number becomes over ten years.
Tab 4
Instructions
Which markets work, which do not, and what to do when a ticker returns nothing.
The tab that changes how the portfolio reads
Every free tracker shows you what your portfolio is worth. None of them show you what it costs to hold. Five dollars a trade sounds like nothing, and it is nothing, right up until you multiply it by a decade.
Four trades a month at five dollars
With a 0.5 percent currency conversion charge on ten foreign trades a year, on a portfolio of roughly eight thousand dollars.
That is the whole idea. Once the number exists, the question of whether your broker is the right one stops being abstract. If it looks high, our broker cost comparison covers where the money actually goes, and the Interactive Brokers breakdown shows what the cheapest published option charges.
How it works
Prices come from GOOGLEFINANCE, the function built into Google
Sheets. No API key, no subscription, nothing to maintain. You type AAPL
and the rest of the row fills itself in.
Input columns are tinted so you always know where to type. Everything computed sits on white and is protected, so a stray keystroke will not break the sheet. Sector is a dropdown of the eleven standard categories, which keeps your allocation from splitting into "Tech" and "Technology" as two separate slices.
What it does not do
Read this before you download
- No broker sync. You enter holdings yourself. A first portfolio takes about twenty minutes, and after that it is a minute per trade.
- Prices lag. Up to twenty minutes. Fine for tracking, useless for trading.
- Coverage is partial outside the US. Nestle works with the SWX prefix. We tested Toyota on the Tokyo exchange and no price came back. Check your own tickers first.
- Dividends are manual. Yahoo Finance does this automatically and we do not.
Against the free trackers
| This sheet | Yahoo Finance | Google Finance | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual broker cost | Yes | No | No |
| Live prices | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sector allocation | Yes | Yes | AI answers |
| Dividends automatic | No | Yes | No |
| Setup by file upload | No | CSV import | Yes |
| Add your own columns | Yes | No | No |
| Works on a phone today | Yes | Yes | Rolling out |
| Who holds the data | You | Yahoo |
We have written up both in full: how to set up a Yahoo Finance portfolio and how Google Finance rebuilt its tracker in June 2026.
Honest recommendation: use one of the free trackers for a daily glance, and use this when you want to know what the arrangement is costing you. They are not really competing.
Frequently asked questions
- Is the portfolio tracker really free?
- Yes. There is no paid version, no trial and no card. You give an email address, the copy link arrives, and the sheet is yours.
- Where does my data go?
- Into your own Google Drive. Opening the link creates a private copy in your account. We cannot see it, edit it or open it, and nothing you type is sent anywhere.
- Where do the prices come from?
- From the GOOGLEFINANCE function built into Google Sheets. There is no API key and no cost. Quotes can be delayed by up to 20 minutes, which is fine for tracking and not suitable for trading.
- Which markets does it cover?
- US tickers work with the symbol alone. Many other exchanges work with an exchange prefix, for example SWX:NESN for Nestle. Coverage is not complete. We tested Tokyo and it did not return a price, so non-US holders should check their own tickers first.
- Do I need to know spreadsheets?
- No. You fill in seven columns that are tinted so you can see where to type. Everything else is a formula and is protected against accidental edits. If you can use a shopping list you can use this.
- How is this different from Yahoo or Google Finance?
- Those are faster to set up and Yahoo handles dividends automatically. Neither totals what your broker charges you into an annual figure, and neither lets you add your own calculations. That is the gap this fills.
- Will it keep working?
- It is a Google Sheet with standard formulas, so it does not depend on us staying online. Once you have a copy it is yours permanently, whatever happens to this site.