A checklist of the usual ways software manipulates people, what this tool does instead, and how to check each one yourself.
Most of the ways software gets people to do things are documented, named and well understood. This page goes through the common ones and says, for each, what this tool does instead, and how you can check that for yourself in about ten seconds.
It is deliberately not a statement of values. Values are unfalsifiable and every company claims good ones. What follows is a description of specific mechanics, each with a test you can run, plus a list of the places I fall short.
The pattern names come from deceptivepatterns.org, the public taxonomy maintained by the researcher who named this category of design. Being graded against someone else’s list is worth more than inventing a flattering one.
Eight named patterns. For each one: what happens here, and the test you can run to confirm it.
Two things can appear without you asking for them. An invitation to install the tool as an app, which shows up only after you have come back on several separate days and stays gone for good once dismissed. And a short welcome card when you return after a week away, which sits inside the page rather than on top of it, and closes for the rest of the day when you dismiss it. You will never be shown both at once. The card counts the days you have opened the tool, in your browser only, and there is no streak to break and nothing expires. There is no newsletter popup, no rating request and no interstitial.
Check it yourselfDismiss the install invitation, close the tab and come back tomorrow: it stays gone. Dismiss the welcome card and reload: it does not come back that day.
Declining is worded plainly. The dismiss control on the referral card is labelled “No thanks, don’t show this again”. Turning the funding surfaces off is described as what it is, with no guilt copy and no shrinking of the decline option.
Check it yourselfOpen the funding toggle in the footer and read both options side by side. Neither is written to make the other feel bad.
Nothing that shares more of your information is ticked for you. The option to include a rounded income when you share your percentile is off until you turn it on, and the share text says exactly what it will contain.
Check it yourselfOpen the share panel on your income percentile. The income checkbox starts empty.
No email is required to see a result. No account, no sign-up, no “unlock your report” step. Every number the tool can produce is visible without giving me anything.
Check it yourselfUse every tab, end to end, without entering an email address. Nothing is withheld.
The two referral surfaces are labelled as referrals, carry the sponsored link attribute, and say plainly that they are optional. In the What’s New panel, partner offers get a distinct “Live offer” chip so they cannot be mistaken for a release note.
Check it yourselfOpen What’s New and look for the chip. Or view the page source and search for rel=”sponsored”.
There are no countdown timers, no “3 people are viewing this” counters and no invented deadlines. One offer is described as running “right now” because it is a real promotion that will genuinely end, worded to age out rather than pretend to be permanent.
Check it yourselfReload the page as many times as you like. No timer resets, because there is no timer.
There is nothing to cancel, and nothing is one-way. The funding toggle switches back and forth from the same place in the footer. The reset control clears everything the tool has stored about you, immediately.
Check it yourselfSwitch the funding mode, then switch it back. Same control, same number of clicks.
Your financial inputs are never sent anywhere. Income, balances, savings rate and every figure calculated from them stay in your browser’s own storage. I cannot see them, because they never reach a server I control.
Check it yourselfOpen your browser’s network tab and fill in the whole tool. Your numbers are not in any request.
This tool is free because two optional things pay for it: a Wealthsimple referral link, and a tip jar. Both are clearly marked, both are entirely skippable, and neither one changes a single number the calculator produces.
Community mode removes both. It is a switch in the footer that strips every referral link and every tip prompt out of the tool, including from the What’s New panel, and gives you a link you can share that opens the same way for whoever clicks it. It exists because a calculator posted into a strict subreddit, or handed to a client, should not be carrying anything that earns me money.
Community mode is not a setting I get anything from. It is the version of this tool that makes me nothing at all, and it is one click away at all times. There is no advertising pixel in either mode: it was removed in September 2026, which leaves Google Analytics, set to measurement only, as the only tracking script on the site.
I am not going to promise this will be free forever, because nobody can honestly promise that and I would rather not pretend. What I will commit to is how any change would happen:
The checklist above is only worth reading if I also tell you where the edges are.
If you come back several times, the funding section can surface a Wealthsimple card. It has a permanent dismiss and Community mode removes it entirely, but it is still the most marketing-shaped thing in the product, and it is targeted at repeat visits rather than shown to everyone.
Google Analytics loads on every visit to the English edition, in both modes, to tell me which parts of the tool people actually use. It is configured for measurement only, with advertising features and cross-device signals switched off in the code, and it never sees your financial data. The French edition asks first and loads nothing until you agree, as Quebec's Law 25 requires. The English edition has no such button yet, and pretending otherwise would be its own kind of dark pattern.
In the Resources list on the home page, the two Wealthsimple pages use the same card styling as the editorial guides. Their titles say what they are, and Community mode hides them, but they are not visually distinguished from the rest.
Then I want to know, and I would rather hear it from you than read it in a comment thread. There is a feedback link in the calculator’s footer. Anything I get wrong here gets fixed and listed above.