Free Fee Grade Lookup
401(k) Fee Checker — is your plan (or your prospect’s) overpaying?
Grade any U.S. employer’s retirement plan free from its latest Form 5500 filing. A through D, computed from real DOL-reported expenses — no signup needed.
Looking for a 401(k) from a former employer that closed its plan? Find an old 401(k) →
Why 401(k) fees matter more than they look
A fee difference that sounds trivial — 0.5% vs 1.5% per year — compounds into a life-changing gap. Over a 35-year career, an extra percentage point of annual fees can consume roughly a quarter of a participant’s final balance. Fees are deducted whether markets go up or down, which is why the Department of Labor requires plans to disclose them every year.
That disclosure is the Form 5500, filed annually with the DOL through the EFAST2 system by virtually every ERISA-covered retirement plan in the country. It reports the plan’s sponsor, total assets, participant count, administrative expenses, and the compensation paid to every major service provider. All of it is public record — this tool simply makes it searchable.
The A–D grade divides the plan’s reported administrative expenses by its total assets: A is under 0.5%, B is 0.5–1.0%, C is 1.0–1.5%, and D is anything above 1.5%. It’s a screening yardstick, not a fiduciary audit — some plans route fees through fund expense ratios that don’t appear in admin expenses — but it reliably flags plans whose participants are paying well above peers.
Grades are informational only and not investment, legal, or tax advice. See our disclaimers for details.
Frequently asked
How is the 401(k) fee grade computed?
The grade is the plan's reported administrative expenses divided by total plan assets, taken from its most recent Form 5500 filing. A = under 0.5%, B = 0.5–1.0%, C = 1.0–1.5%, D = over 1.5%. It's a simple, consistent yardstick — not a complete fee audit — but it reliably separates low-cost plans from expensive ones.
Where does the data come from?
Every U.S. retirement plan covered by ERISA must file a Form 5500 annually with the Department of Labor through the EFAST2 system. Those filings — sponsor, assets, participants, expenses, and service-provider compensation — are public record. 401kHunter ingests the DOL's bulk dataset and computes the grade from each plan's latest filing.
Is my company's plan included?
If your employer sponsors a 401(k), pension, or similar ERISA-covered plan, it almost certainly filed a Form 5500 and is searchable here. Search by the legal entity name — the one on your W-2 or paystub — rather than the brand name if you don't find it on the first try. Government and some church plans are exempt from filing and won't appear.