Comparisons

BullBenchmark vs Portfolio Dividend Tracker: the Dutch neighbours

Portfolio Dividend Tracker is the reference in the Netherlands for investors who follow their dividend income. It earned that position by handling the export files Dutch brokers produce, and by years of explaining how the tool works.

It is also the tool closest to ours, with the same market, the same import model and no broker login on either side. This page is written by the people who make BullBenchmark, so read it with that in mind.

It covers what each tool is for, where each one is the better answer, and five questions to put to any tracker, including ours.

What each one is

Portfolio Dividend Tracker is built around dividend income for a Dutch and Belgian audience. It shows what you receive, when it arrives, from which holding, and how that income develops over time.

Transactions go in as broker export files, the same thing we ask of you. It is published in Dutch and English.

BullBenchmark is built around one comparison. You upload the same kind of export file, and the dashboard puts your time-weighted return next to a simulated index portfolio that received your deposits on the same dates. Dividends, allocation, closed positions and costs are tracked too, but the comparison is the centre of the product.

It exists in six languages and costs €5.99 a month or €59.99 a year, with a 14-day trial that takes no card.

Where Portfolio Dividend Tracker is the better choice

Dividend income is your main question. If the number you want on the home screen is what lands in your account this month and next, a product designed around income shows it in more detail than one designed around a benchmark.

You measure yourself against the AEX. We offer the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 as total-return series in your base currency, and the AEX is not among them. For a Dutch investor holding mostly Dutch shares, an American index can be the wrong comparison.

You want Dutch material around the product. There is far more written and spoken Dutch content about Portfolio Dividend Tracker than about us. Reading how other people explain the tool you use helps when an import does not balance.

Where we are different

There are four differences, and they are narrow on purpose.

The benchmark replays your cash flows on a total-return index. Comparing your percentage with an index's own chart compares an instalment plan with a lump sum. We build a simulated index portfolio that received your deposits on the same dates and bought an index tracker with dividends reinvested. The gap between the two is what your choices did.

The method is described in how to check whether you are beating the S&P 500, and the difference between the two return figures in time-weighted versus money-weighted return.

More than one currency, converted at historical rates. If you hold both American and European positions, the exchange rate is part of your result. You choose the base currency, and we convert both your portfolio and the benchmark at the rate of each day. Small differences from your broker's statement are normal, because the broker converts at its own timestamp.

Six languages rather than two. The site and the dashboard exist in English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish and Italian. The weekly email and the year reports are still in English for all six. This matters if you live outside the Netherlands, and not at all if you do not.

A tax report across brokers. You can download a tax report with your realized and unrealized gains and a position overview, with all brokers combined, for every year you have invested.

The figures come from your own export files, and we are not a tax adviser. Check them and decide for yourself whether they help with the return you have to file. Whether another tracker gives you the same numbers is a question for that tracker.

Five questions to ask any tracker

This is the same test we put on every comparison page, and the fair way to check the claims above.

Does it show a time-weighted return, and does it say so? If the only number is a percentage next to your total value, you are looking at something that mixes deposits with performance.
When it compares you with an index, does it replay your cash flows, or does it draw the index's own chart next to yours? Ask for the number after a large deposit and see whether the comparison moves.
Is the benchmark the total-return version of the index, with dividends reinvested?
Is everything converted to one base currency at historical rates, including the benchmark?
Does the calculation include closed positions, fees and withheld tax, or only what you still hold today?

Ask them of us first. If we cannot answer all five about our own product, the rest of this page is not worth much.

What we are deliberately not claiming

We do not publish Portfolio Dividend Tracker's prices, plans, supported brokers or benchmarks. Those things change, and a competitor is not a reliable source for them.

Nothing on this page is a complaint about the product, which earned its position. We answer a different question.

Our own side is easy to state. BullBenchmark costs €5.99 a month or €59.99 a year, in a single plan with everything in it. The trial is 14 days and takes no card.

The import is a CSV or XLSX export you download yourself, with a column mapper for unfamiliar layouts. We never ask for a broker password.

Who should pick which

Pick Portfolio Dividend Tracker if dividend income is the point of your portfolio, if the AEX is the index you measure against, or if you want the larger Dutch community around your tracker.

Pick BullBenchmark if you want to know whether your stock picking beats an index fund after dividends, fees and currency, if your money sits in several currencies, or if you want one tax report across brokers without an evening of reconstruction.

Pick both if you want them for different reasons. You already have the export files.

The live demo is a sample portfolio across two brokers, and the broker pages describe what we read from each export file, including the Dutch ones.

BullBenchmark reads the transaction export from your broker and shows your return next to the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100, fed with the same deposits on the same dates, in your own currency. The first two weeks are free and no card is needed.