Optiml is a Canadian retirement planning tool built around decumulation — the order you draw from RRSP/RRIF, TFSA and non-registered accounts, and when to start CPP and OAS. MoneyLens is a full personal finance platform: connected bank accounts, automatic categorization, budgets, documents, an AI agent that acts on your books, plus retirement projection and Monte Carlo stress testing. Pick MoneyLens if you want your everyday money and your plan in one place; pick Optiml if a detailed drawdown schedule is the only thing you need.
Best for
Everyday money plus planning in one place: MoneyLens — Bank sync, categorization, budgets and planning share one set of numbers.
Detailed retirement withdrawal ordering: Optiml — Decumulation sequencing across registered and non-registered accounts is its core product.
Knowing what you actually spend: MoneyLens — Plans are built on real transactions, not estimates you type in.
Asking questions in plain language: MoneyLens — The AI agent answers from your data and can create budgets, goals and entries.
Business and personal in one login: MoneyLens — Separate ledgers with GST/HST tracking; Optiml is personal-retirement only.
Feature comparison
Canadian bank & card connections — MoneyLens: Connect Canadian banks, credit cards and credit unions; balances and transactions refresh on demand. Optiml: Planning inputs are entered manually; not a bank-aggregation product.
Automatic transaction categorization — MoneyLens: Every transaction is categorized automatically, with manual overrides that stick. Optiml: Not offered.
Budgets, goals and alerts — MoneyLens: Category budgets with rollover, savings and debt goals, and threshold alerts. Optiml: Not offered.
Retirement projection — MoneyLens: Projects your nest egg and monthly retirement income, including CPP and OAS assumptions. Optiml: Detailed year-by-year retirement modelling is the core of the product.
Withdrawal-order / decumulation optimization — MoneyLens: Compares scenarios and account-level strategies; does not produce a full year-by-year drawdown schedule. Optiml: Purpose-built for drawdown sequencing across RRSP/RRIF, TFSA and non-registered accounts.
Monte Carlo stress testing — MoneyLens: Runs thousands of market paths and reports the chance your plan survives. Optiml: Offers scenario modelling around retirement outcomes.
RRSP / TFSA / FHSA contribution room — MoneyLens: Tracks contribution room against current-year limits alongside your real balances. Optiml: Contribution assumptions feed the retirement model.
AI agent that acts on your data — MoneyLens: Ask a question, or tell it to log an expense, build a budget or set a goal — it writes the change. Optiml: No conversational agent.
Receipt & document extraction — MoneyLens: Reads statements, receipts and tax slips, with a confidence score and full override history. Optiml: Not offered.
Business + personal ledgers — MoneyLens: Separate business and personal books under one login, with GST/HST tracked per transaction. Optiml: Personal retirement planning only.
When to pick Optiml
You are at or near retirement and the only question you need answered is the drawdown order across your accounts.
You want a year-by-year withdrawal and tax schedule you can hand to an accountant.
You do not want your bank accounts connected and are happy entering figures by hand.
Day-to-day tracking, budgets and receipts are already handled somewhere else.
Switching from Optiml
Note the assumptions you entered in Optiml — retirement age, target spending, expected returns.
Create a MoneyLens account and connect your bank, credit card and investment accounts.
Let categorization run so your real monthly spending is measured, not estimated.
Open the planning suite and enter the same retirement age and target spending to compare.
Run the stress test, then ask the AI agent what changes most improve the outcome.
Frequently asked questions
Is MoneyLens an Optiml alternative? For most Canadians, yes — MoneyLens covers retirement projection, Monte Carlo stress testing and RRSP/TFSA/FHSA room on top of everyday tracking. If your only need is a detailed year-by-year withdrawal schedule in retirement, Optiml goes deeper on that one job.
Does MoneyLens plan retirement withdrawals? MoneyLens models retirement income, tests it against thousands of market paths, and lets you compare scenarios such as retiring earlier or spending less. It does not currently produce a full year-by-year decumulation schedule across every account.
Can I use both? Yes. Some people run their day-to-day money and planning in MoneyLens and use a dedicated decumulation tool once retirement is close. The numbers MoneyLens collects from your accounts make the inputs for any other tool far more accurate.
Which one uses my real spending? MoneyLens. It builds your plan from the transactions in your connected accounts, so the spending figure behind your retirement target is measured rather than guessed.
Do either connect to Canadian banks? MoneyLens connects Canadian banks, credit cards and credit unions for balances and transactions. Optiml is a planning tool built around figures you enter.