Best online estate planning services in 2026
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My neighbor Paul died last October. He was 58, had a decent job, a house, two kids in their twenties. No will. No trust. No beneficiary designations on anything except his 401(k). His daughter spent the next four months in probate court, paid $9,000 in legal fees, and discovered too late that his checking account went to the state while they sorted out intestacy rules.
Paul wasn't careless. He just kept telling himself he'd handle it next weekend. The paralysis wasn't about complexity. He didn't know where to start, and the idea of booking an appointment with an estate attorney felt like admitting something he wasn't ready to admit.
Online estate planning services exist because there are millions of Pauls. People who would do it if it took 20 minutes at their kitchen table instead of a $300/hour appointment. The question isn't whether these services work. They do. The question is which one fits your actual situation.
What online estate planning covers (and what it doesn't)
Every platform in this space handles some combination of the same core documents: a will, a revocable living trust, a financial power of attorney, a healthcare directive (sometimes called a living will or advance directive), and a HIPAA authorization.
The legal side is fairly standardized. State-specific requirements differ in how many witnesses you need, whether notarization is required, and whether certain digital or holographic formats are accepted. A 2024 American Bar Association report found that 67% of Americans still lack basic estate documents, even though valid online will creation has been available for over a decade. The National Institute on Aging recommends that every adult have at minimum a will, healthcare directive, and durable power of attorney.
What these platforms typically don't cover: personal letters to family, document storage vaults, life insurance beneficiary tracking, or any kind of emotional preparation. They handle the legal scaffolding and stop there. For a lot of people, that's enough. For others, legal paperwork without context leaves families confused about the "why" behind decisions.
Trust & Will
Trust & Will has become the default recommendation for straightforward online estate planning, and for good reason. The interface walks you through a questionnaire, generates state-specific documents, and stores them in a digital vault. Pricing in 2026:
- Will-based plan: $199 one-time (will, power of attorney, healthcare directive, guardianship)
- Trust-based plan: $599 one-time (revocable living trust, pour-over will, certification of trust, plus everything in the will plan)
- Annual vault fee: $19/year after the first year
The process takes 15-30 minutes for the will plan, about 45 minutes for the trust. You get unlimited updates during the first year and can add beneficiaries, update guardianship, or modify asset distribution.
Where Trust & Will falls short: there's no place for personal messages, no timed delivery system, and no support for documenting things like passwords, account access, or family explanations. It creates documents. Good documents, but only documents. I wrote about this more in my comparison of Trust & Will alternatives.
FreeWill
FreeWill is genuinely free for basic estate planning. The catch is the business model: FreeWill makes money when users donate to its partner nonprofits during the estate planning process. You'll see donation prompts throughout. You can ignore them and still walk away with a valid will at no cost.
The documents are solid. FreeWill was founded in partnership with Cornell University's behavioral science lab, and their completion rates are significantly higher than industry averages because the prompts are short and non-intimidating. According to FreeWill's own 2025 annual report, they've generated over $10 billion in planned giving commitments.
Limitations: FreeWill supports wills only, not trusts. If you need a revocable living trust, you'll need to look elsewhere. The platform also doesn't store documents or provide a vault. You print, sign, witness, and store the will yourself. For simple estates with clear beneficiaries, that's fine. For anything with real estate in multiple states or business interests, it's not enough.
LegalZoom
LegalZoom is the oldest player here, which brings both credibility and baggage. They've been generating legal documents since 2001, and their estate planning products include wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and business formation documents.
Pricing:
- Basic will: $89 one-time
- Comprehensive will: $249 one-time (includes healthcare directive, power of attorney)
- Living trust: $299 one-time
- Estate plan bundle: $249-$599 depending on complexity
The platform also offers attorney consultations for an additional fee. This is useful if your situation has complications, but the baseline cost is just for document generation.
LegalZoom's documents are legally sound. The interface feels older than Trust & Will's, and the process involves more legalese in the questionnaire. But they cover all 50 states, have extensive help documentation, and their trust product has been tested in probate courts for two decades.
What I notice: LegalZoom tries to be everything. Wills, business formation, trademark registration, LLC creation. Estate planning isn't their sole focus. That breadth can mean the estate planning experience feels less guided than dedicated platforms.
Cake
Cake (joincake.com) approaches estate planning differently. It's free and focuses on end-of-life planning broadly rather than legal document creation specifically. You can create an advance directive, document funeral preferences, designate who should be contacted, and share your plan with family members.
Cake doesn't create wills or trusts. It creates a shareable end-of-life plan that covers medical wishes, organ donation preferences, digital account decisions, and funeral details. Think of it as the non-legal complement to a formal estate plan.
I covered this in depth in my Cake comparison, but the short version: Cake is excellent for people who want to organize their preferences quickly and share them with family at no cost. If you need legally binding documents, pair it with one of the services above.
Nolo's Quicken WillMaker
Nolo has been publishing legal self-help books since 1971. Their WillMaker software is a desktop application (now also available online) that generates estate planning documents for $99/year.
The subscription gets you:
- Will and trust creation for all 50 states
- Healthcare directive and power of attorney
- Executor documents and funeral planning forms
- Pet care planning documents
- Regular updates when state laws change
Nolo's strength is depth of guidance. Because they come from a publishing background, the help text alongside each question is genuinely educational. You learn as you fill things out. The downside: the interface feels utilitarian. It's not trying to be beautiful or fast, it's trying to be thorough.
One consideration: Nolo charges annually. If you create your documents and don't need to update them for five years, you're paying $500 for what Trust & Will covers with a $199 one-time fee plus a $19/year vault charge. But if your situation changes regularly, Nolo's unlimited updates might justify the ongoing cost.
Betterment (estate planning add-on)
Betterment, the robo-advisor, added estate planning to their premium tier in 2024. If you already use Betterment for investing (Premium plan, $299/year minimum or 0.65% AUM), you get access to will and trust creation bundled with financial planning.
This makes sense if Betterment already manages your portfolio. Your estate documents and investment accounts live under one roof, and the platform can flag mismatches between your asset allocation and your beneficiary designations. It does not make sense if you don't already invest through Betterment. You'd be paying wealth management fees just to access a will generator.
The estate planning feature itself uses the same underlying legal engine as many standalone tools. The value is integration with your financial picture, not superior document quality.
How to choose between them
The honest answer depends on three things: your estate's complexity, your budget, and whether legal documents alone feel like enough.
If your estate is simple (one state, clear beneficiaries, no business ownership, no blended family): FreeWill or Trust & Will's basic plan covers you. You're looking at $0-$199.
If you need a trust: Trust & Will's trust plan at $599 or Nolo at $99/year are the most established options. Both create revocable living trusts with pour-over wills. (If you're unsure whether a trust is necessary, I wrote about alternatives to a will that covers when trusts make sense.)
If you want guidance while learning: Nolo's WillMaker explains the legal reasoning behind each question. You come away understanding your estate plan rather than just having one.
If you have a financial advisor already: Ask whether their platform includes estate planning before paying separately. Betterment and similar services are increasingly bundling it.
If you want more than legal documents: None of these platforms handle the personal side well. They don't help you write a letter explaining why you left the house to one child and not another. They don't give you a way to record the stories behind the heirlooms, or leave birthday messages for grandchildren who haven't been born yet.
The gap between planning and saying something
I keep coming back to this when I write about estate planning tools. The legal side is increasingly solved. You can get a valid, state-specific will for somewhere between $0 and $599 in under an hour. That's remarkable compared to even 2015, when the cheapest option was usually a $1,500 meeting with an attorney.
But I talk to families after someone dies, and the will is rarely what they wish existed. They wish there was a letter. They wish their dad had explained the trust distribution instead of leaving them to interpret a legal document. They wish their mom had told them what the necklace meant, or written down the recipe, or said the thing she never said at the dinner table.
Estate planning tools solve the legal problem. They leave the human problem untouched.
When I Die Files sits in that gap. It's where you write the letters your will can't contain, store the documents your family will actually need to find, and set up delivery so the right person gets the right message at the right time. You can pair it with any of the legal services above. The legal stuff says what happens to your assets. When I Die Files says what you wanted your family to hear.
A note on what "best" means
Every list like this pretends objectivity it doesn't have. I've tested these platforms, read their documents, compared their pricing. But "best" depends on you. A 28-year-old renter with $40,000 in a 401(k) and no kids doesn't need a $599 trust package. A 55-year-old with property in three states, a blended family, and a complicated relationship with an adult child needs more than FreeWill can offer.
Start with the legal basics. Update beneficiary designations on every account that offers them (the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has guidance on this). Create at minimum a healthcare directive and financial power of attorney. Then decide whether a will or trust makes sense for your specific assets.
And somewhere in that process, write something down that isn't legal. A paragraph. A page. Something that tells the people you love what no lawyer can draft for them.