Robo-advisors were built to make investing easier: answer a few questions, get a diversified portfolio, and let automation handle the rest.

Yet a growing number of investors are doing the opposite of “set it and forget it.” They’re funding several robo platforms at once, then tracking them like a scoreboard to see who “wins.”

Robo Fever

This trend is fueled by curiosity and social proof. Online creators and personal finance coaches have popularized side-by-side comparisons of major robo-advisors, often using identical starting deposits and similar risk settings. The idea sounds sensible: instead of trusting marketing claims, run a real-world test and watch performance over months or years.

For many investors, the motivation is simple: returns feel like the clearest proof. If two services both promise diversified portfolios, the temptation is to open multiple accounts and wait for the best performer to reveal itself. The result is a personal “robo showdown” played out across phones and dashboards, even when the underlying holdings are nearly identical.

Why Compare

A key driver is transparency. Many reviews highlight fees, minimums, and sign-up perks, but investors often want something else: a clear picture of what happens after money is deposited. Without a long personal track record, it can feel difficult to judge how each service behaves during rallies, pullbacks, and choppy periods, so testing becomes a substitute for trust.

There’s also a practical angle. Some people use multiple robo services as an intentional A/B test before committing their main savings. Trying two or three platforms with small balances can reveal differences that marketing pages don’t emphasize, such as deposit speed, customer support quality, how goals are displayed, and whether automation actually matches the investor’s habits.

What Tests Show

Public side-by-side tests often reach the same surprise: most diversified robo portfolios move in broadly similar patterns when the risk settings are comparable. Over time, accounts tend to rise and fall together because the underlying building blocks are often the same broad funds.

Even a simple benchmark can look better in some windows and worse in others, depending on start date and market leadership. The broad S&P 500 index—a simple benchmark tracking 500 large U.S. companies—still outperformed all of them. The bigger takeaway is that short scoreboards rarely prove “skill,” and timing can dominate small differences.

False Diversification

Holding five robo accounts can feel like diversification, but it often isn’t. Most mainstream robos build portfolios using broad exchange-traded funds that overlap heavily across providers. Splitting money across multiple platforms may simply recreate the same stock-and-bond mix several times, adding complexity without adding true variety in exposure or strategy.

The main exception is when a robo follows a genuinely different approach. A real estate-focused service, for example, may move differently than a standard stock-and-bond portfolio. Even then, “different” does not automatically mean “better.” It means risk shifts into new places, including liquidity limits, valuation uncertainty, and unique fees that don’t show up in basic comparisons.

Rebalancing Clash

Robo-advisors rebalance automatically to keep a target mix on track—say 60% stocks and 40% bonds. That’s a real benefit inside a single system. With multiple robos running at the same time, each platform rebalances without understanding the investor’s full household picture unless the investor links outside accounts and updates them accurately.

That can lead to odd results. One robo may buy stocks to restore its target, while another sells stocks for the same reason, depending on how each measures drift and triggers trades. Individually, each algorithm may be “doing the right thing,” yet combined they can cancel each other out and create an overall allocation the investor never intended.

Tax Traps

Multiple robo accounts can also create tax friction in taxable portfolios. Automated selling for losses can be helpful, but it becomes tricky when separate platforms trade similar funds around the same time. In some tax systems, a loss can be disallowed if a substantially similar holding is repurchased within a short window, even across separate accounts.

Paperwork is another drag. Each platform can generate its own tax forms, trade confirmations, and multi-page reports. What starts as a fun experiment can turn into a tedious filing season, with more documents to review and more opportunities for small mistakes. The time cost can quietly outweigh any minor performance differences.

Better Approach

A cleaner strategy is to test with intention, then consolidate. If choosing between a few robos, a small, time-boxed trial can help evaluate the experience: onboarding clarity, recurring deposit tools, goal tracking, customer support, and whether the risk profile feels consistent. After the test, move the bulk of assets to the best fit and simplify.

Returns matter, but they should not be the only scoreboard. Fees, tax features, cash management, and the ability to stay invested during stressful markets often matter more than a narrow performance gap. Harry Markowitz, an economist, states, ‘Diversification is the only free lunch in investing.’

For some investors, buying a diversified set of low-cost ETFs directly through a brokerage can also reduce ongoing advisory fees.

Conclusion

Running a robo showdown can be entertaining and occasionally informative, but most broad-market robo portfolios move in similar patterns, so multiple accounts rarely create meaningful diversification. The bigger risk is unnecessary complexity: rebalancing conflicts, tax surprises, and paperwork overload. If simplicity is the point of automation, why not pick one strong option and start building now?