Apps to Track Pensions UK: Combine Old Pots in One Place

If you want an app to track pensions in the UK, you are trying to solve a problem the pension industry created: every job came with a new pot, nobody forwarded your address, and now you have no idea what any of them are worth. The Pensions Policy Institute counted 3.3 million lost pots holding £31.1 billion in its 2024 Lost Pensions survey, up from 2.8 million pots and £26.6 billion two years earlier. The average lost pot was £9,470, and £13,620 among people aged 55 to 74.

A tracking app fixes the visibility problem in two stages. First it traces the schemes you have forgotten. Then, if you want, it transfers them into a single plan you can open on your phone. Those are separate decisions, and the second one is not always the right call.

Why the official dashboard is not the answer yet

The Pensions Dashboards Programme is the government-backed fix. Every personal pension provider under FCA rules and every occupational scheme with 100 or more relevant members must connect to the dashboard infrastructure by 31 October 2026. More than a thousand providers and 60 million pension records are already connected.

Connecting the plumbing is not the same as switching on the tap. The public MoneyHelper dashboard is not expected to open to consumers on the connection deadline, and the Money and Pensions Service has said it will announce the public launch date at least six months in advance. Until that announcement lands, a commercial app is the only way to see your pensions in one screen.

The free step almost everyone skips

Before you hand your details to any app, use the government’s free tracing service at gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details. Type in an old employer’s name and it searches a database of over 320,000 workplace and personal schemes run by The Pensions Regulator, then returns the administrator’s contact details instantly. There is also a phone line on 0800 731 0175.

Two limits are worth knowing. It will not tell you whether you actually have a pension with that scheme, and it will not tell you what the pension is worth. It hands you a name and an address, and you write to them. That is slower than an app, but it costs nothing and it gives you the reference numbers that make everything afterwards faster.

For most people the sensible order is: run the free search for every employer you can remember, then use an app for the pots you cannot pin down.

What the tracking apps actually do

PensionBee is built around consolidation rather than tracking. You give it an employer name, it traces the scheme, requests the transfer and reports progress in the app. Its pricing is a single annual fee with no charge for transferring in or switching plans, and the fee is halved on the portion of your savings above £100,000. Each customer gets a named account manager, which matters more than it sounds when a transfer stalls at the old provider’s end.

Penfold runs a Find My Pension tool alongside a full pension of its own, so it suits self-employed people who need somewhere to contribute as well as somewhere to consolidate. It contacts previous providers and handles the paperwork, updating a dashboard as each transfer moves. It also forecasts projected retirement income and lets you pause or change contributions in the app.

Moneybox is the softer entry point. Its pension sits next to round-ups, Cash ISAs and Stocks and Shares ISAs, so if you already use it for savings the pension appears in the same balance screen. Our Moneybox review covers the wider account range.

The pattern is the same across all of them: tracing is free because the business model is the transfer. That is not a scandal, it is just worth naming, because it means the app has an obvious interest in you consolidating and no interest at all in you deciding to leave a pot where it is.

Tracking versus combining: know which one you want

Seeing all your pensions in one app and moving all your pensions into one app are different things, and the industry blurs them deliberately.

Combining genuinely helps when your old pots are small, invested in expensive default funds from the 2000s, and scattered across providers whose websites you cannot log into. One plan means one charge to monitor, one set of investment choices, one beneficiary form, and one address to keep updated so you never join the lost-pot statistics again.

Leaving a pot alone is the better answer when the old scheme has something the new one cannot replicate. That is the whole game, and it comes down to one word.

Safeguarded benefits: the check that stops a bad transfer

Some older pensions carry a guarantee attached to them. A defined benefit promise, a guaranteed minimum pension, or a guaranteed annuity rate written when annuity rates were far higher than they are now. These are called safeguarded benefits, and giving one up to chase a tidier app is one of the more expensive mistakes available in personal finance.

The law recognises this. Under section 48 of the Pension Schemes Act 2015, if your safeguarded benefits are worth more than £30,000 the receiving scheme must check that you have taken regulated advice from a firm with FCA permission to advise on pension transfers before the transfer can proceed. There is a carve-out where the only safeguarded benefit is a guaranteed annuity rate.

Below £30,000 no advice is legally required, which is exactly where people get hurt, because a small pot with a guaranteed annuity rate can still be worth far more than its transfer value suggests. Ask every old provider one blunt question in writing: does this policy include any guarantees, guaranteed annuity rates or defined benefits? Get the answer before you press anything in an app.

Exit charges and what they can legally be

Old contracts sometimes charge you for leaving. Since 31 March 2017 the FCA has capped early exit charges at 1% of the value of existing contract-based personal pensions, including workplace personal pensions, for customers aged 55 and over. Charges already set below 1% cannot be raised to meet it, and personal pension contracts written after the rules took effect cannot carry an early exit charge at all.

If you are under 55 the cap does not apply to you, so the old contract’s own terms stand. Ask for the exit charge in pounds, not percentages, and weigh it against the annual saving from a cheaper plan. A £120 exit fee that buys you a 0.4% lower annual charge on a £15,000 pot pays for itself in about two years. On a £2,000 pot it never does.

Getting your data in without the paperwork

The practical friction is finding the numbers. Three things speed up any trace, whether you do it yourself or hand it to an app:

• National Insurance number. Every scheme indexes on it, and it is the single most useful thing you can supply.
• Employment dates. Approximate months are fine. Schemes merge and rebrand, and the dates tell an administrator which iteration of the scheme you were in.
• Old payslips or P60s. A payslip with a pension deduction proves the scheme existed and often names it.

If you were auto-enrolled after 2012, the scheme is most likely one of a handful of master trusts, and the pot may be small enough that a single phone call resolves it.

Small pots and what changes next

Auto-enrolment created the problem it is now being asked to fix. Ten years of short jobs produces ten pots of a few hundred pounds each, and administering those costs more than they earn. Government policy is moving towards automatic consolidation of tiny deferred pots, which would take the decision off your plate for the smallest ones.

None of that is live yet, and none of it covers the mid-sized pots where the real money sits. For anything above a few thousand pounds, the tracing and the decision are still yours. If you are already using an app for day-to-day money, our guide to managing money with apps covers how a pension fits alongside a budget and an emergency fund, and where to keep your emergency fund explains why pension money is the wrong pot to raid in a crisis.

Frequently asked questions

Is there one app that shows every UK pension I have? Not yet. No commercial app has a complete feed of every scheme in the country. The Pensions Dashboards Programme is building that, with providers required to connect by 31 October 2026, but the public MoneyHelper dashboard opens later and the Money and Pensions Service has committed to giving at least six months’ notice of the date.

Does using a pension tracking app cost anything? Tracing is normally free, because providers earn from managing the money once it transfers in. What you pay is the annual charge on the consolidated pot. Compare that charge against what your old schemes charge, since some 2010s workplace defaults are cheaper than a modern app plan.

Can I combine my State Pension with a private one? No. The State Pension is paid by the government based on your National Insurance record and cannot be transferred into any private plan. Check it separately with a State Pension forecast on GOV.UK.

Will combining my pensions affect my tax? A like-for-like transfer between registered pension schemes is not a taxable event, so nothing enters your income for the year. Tax only arises when you draw money out. Watch instead for a transfer that triggers a lump sum payment rather than a scheme-to-scheme move, because that can be taxed.

What if the old provider has lost my record? Ask the administrator to search by National Insurance number and employment dates rather than name and address, then escalate in writing if nothing turns up. Schemes are required to keep member records, and the free tracing service will tell you which company inherited a scheme that has since been bought or wound up.

Should I move a pension from a scheme I am still paying into? Generally not. Transferring out of your current workplace scheme usually means losing the employer contribution, which is the best return available to most savers. Consolidate the dormant pots from old jobs and leave the live one alone.