Comparison

Lively vs. Fidelity HSA: Which Provider Is Right for You?

Most people choose an HSA provider the same way they choose a bank: they look at the fees, see $0, and stop there. Lively and Fidelity are both free to open, both offer full brokerage investing, and both carry strong third-party ratings. But $0 fees and investing access don’t tell you which platform will actually work better for your life.

Your HSA is what you use at the pharmacy, at the orthodontist, when an unexpected bill arrives. The right answer depends entirely on how you use it. This guide breaks down exactly where Lively and Fidelity differ.

Covers individual health savings accounts only. Rates, fees, and features last verified September 3, 2026. 

Lively vs. Fidelity: At-a-glance comparison

The categories below reflect the five decisions that carry the most weight when choosing an HSA provider: fees, investing, everyday spending tools, claims processing, and support. All data has been verified against current provider documentation as of September 3, 2026 and covers individual HSA accounts only. Use the table as a quick reference, then read the sections below for the full picture on what each difference actually means.

Fees & Access

Investing

Everyday HSA tools

Claims processing

Support & experience

Best for

*Lively offers two investment tracks: a $3,000 cash buffer and invest everything above it for $0, or pay $24/year to invest your full balance from dollar one. See Fees and Pricing for details.

The numbers in the table tell you what each provider offers. The sections that follow go deeper: what each difference means in practice, which distinctions carry the most weight depending on how you use your HSA, and where one provider has a clear advantage. Start with fees and pricing below, where the most common comparison questions get answered first.

Fees and pricing

Most HSA fee comparisons start and end at the monthly fee. That's worth knowing, but it's not where the meaningful differences are. Both Lively and Fidelity charge $0 per month to hold your account, putting them well ahead of legacy administrators like HealthEquity and HSA Bank, which charge $2.50 to $3.75 per month just for basic account maintenance. Where the two providers actually diverge on fees is in how they structure investment access and guided portfolio management, and understanding that difference is what this section covers.

Monthly and basic account fees

Monthly maintenance fees, account opening fees, and closing fees are charges some HSA providers apply simply for holding your account, regardless of how actively you use it. They're worth understanding because they're the most common hidden cost new HSA holders encounter when switching providers.

Both providers charge $0 per month, $0 to open, and $0 to close. If you're currently paying a monthly maintenance fee with another provider, switching to Lively immediately saves you $30 to $45 per year, and that money stays in your HSA growing tax-free instead.

The more relevant fee question for most HSA investors is what it costs to access the brokerage platform.

Investment access fees

An investment access fee is a charge some HSA providers apply when you want to invest your balance through a brokerage platform.

This is the fee that comes up most often in HSA comparisons, so it's worth addressing directly. Fidelity offers brokerage access with no minimum cash balance and no annual fee. Lively offers two distinct tracks depending on how you prefer to manage your cash: invest everything above a $3,000 cash buffer for $0, or pay a flat $24 per year (about $2 a month) to invest your balance from dollar one with no cash requirement.

Here's the context that usually gets left out of feature comparisons. The $3,000 cash threshold isn't arbitrary: most high-deductible health plans carry deductibles between $1,700 and $3,400. If you invest 100% of your HSA cash and face an unexpected medical bill, covering it means either paying out of pocket or manually selling investments, waiting for trades to settle, and moving cash back over. Maintaining a cash buffer acts as a practical liquidity shield, keeping health spending money immediately accessible via your debit card without disrupting your long-term investment strategy.

Which track makes sense depends entirely on your financial goals. If your priority is deploying every available dollar into the market from day one without holding cash, the $24 annual option gives you full market exposure. If you prefer keeping cash on hand for near-term medical needs, the $3,000 buffer track delivers full brokerage investing for $0.

Investing your HSA

Many people assume Fidelity has the investing edge simply because it's a larger brokerage. In practice, the asset universe available through Lively's Schwab integration is functionally identical to Fidelity's own platform: stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, bonds, and fractional shares, all at the same institutional quality. The real question isn't which one offers better investments. It's which platform is built around the way you actually use your HSA.

Self-directed investing: Schwab vs. Fidelity brokerage

Self-directed investing means you choose and manage your own funds through a brokerage window, with no advisory fee. It's the default investing path for most active HSA users who want full control over their portfolio.

Lively uses Charles Schwab for brokerage investing. Fidelity uses their own platform. The investment universes are functionally identical: stocks, ETFs, mutual funds from providers like Vanguard, and Treasury bonds are available through both. Choosing Lively over Fidelity does not cost you any investment quality or selection.

Investment minimums and access fees are covered in detail in the Fees and pricing section above.

What the platforms feel like

With Lively, the main view shows a split-balance snapshot: your cash balance on the left, your investment balance on the right, so you always know exactly what's liquid for healthcare expenses versus what's growing. An auto-investment toggle sweeps any contribution above your cash threshold directly into the market without manual intervention. Performance is displayed as a clean trend line filtered by timeframe, not a wall of tickers.

With Fidelity, your HSA sits inside a full financial platform alongside your 401(k), IRA, and brokerage accounts. Fidelity offers recurring automatic investments in stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds, but its self-directed HSA has no dedicated auto-investment toggle that sweeps all new contributions across your portfolio the way Lively's does, and recurring buys must be set up per security. New contributions stay in cash until you invest them or a scheduled recurring buy executes. Fidelity's platform includes FZROX, their zero expense ratio Total Market Index Fund. For people primarily managing healthcare expenses day to day, navigating a full investment platform to reach HSA functions adds steps that Lively's health-first design eliminates.

Guided investing

Guided investing means an automated service builds and manages your portfolio for you based on a risk profile you select. You choose how aggressive or conservative you want to be, and the platform handles the rest with no need to pick individual funds. According to the 2025 Devenir Midyear HSA Report, only about 10% of HSA account holders actively invest their balances. For those who do, choosing the right investment structure matters significantly over time.

You can also skip the $24 fee entirely by choosing Lively's guided investing option, powered by Devenir. Devenir specializes exclusively in HSA investment management, building portfolios with funds from Vanguard and BlackRock, with automated rebalancing and healthcare spending timelines factored into the model. The advisory fee is 0.50% annually on invested assets (plus underlying fund expense ratios averaging 0.23%), with no separate brokerage access fee. On a $10,000 balance, that's $50 per year in advisory fees.

Devenir offers three risk profiles: Conservative, for members who may need funds available for near-term medical expenses; Moderate, a balanced approach for mid-term growth; and Aggressive, for members using their HSA primarily as a long-term investment vehicle. Each profile includes automated rebalancing so the portfolio stays aligned with your chosen strategy as markets shift.

Lively's Expense Scout tool identifies overlooked reimbursements members may be eligible to claim tax-free, helping surface forgotten out-of-pocket medical expenses to offset account costs.

Cash interest rates

Most HSA comparisons treat cash yield as the headline number, but cash yield only applies to uninvested balance. On an average $1,700 cash buffer matching an individual HDHP deductible, Fidelity's core money market position (FDRXX) earns roughly $57 per year (3.37% APY).

Lively offers two paths for uninvested cash: standard FDIC-insured HSA cash (earning 0.02%–0.12% APY) or HSA Boost, an opt-in, non-FDIC-insured program earning 0.15% to 1.06% APY depending on balance. On a $1,700 buffer, HSA Boost earns $3 per year (0.15% APY), making the cash-yield difference roughly $54 per year. Members holding standard FDIC-insured cash earn closer to $1 to $2 per year.

The rate comparison (as of September 3, 2026)

Lively's HSA Boost earns 0.15% to 1.06% APY depending on your balance, activated with one click in the Lively app. HSA Boost funds are not FDIC-insured, are not a deposit, and may lose value. Lively's standard account earns 0.02% to 0.12% APY depending on your balance and is FDIC-insured up to $250,000 through Lively's FDIC-member banking partners.

Before drawing conclusions from those numbers, there's an important piece of context. Lively offers Expense Scout to help identify overlooked medical expenses for tax-free reimbursement. On a $1,700 emergency buffer, Fidelity's FDRXX earns about $57 per year and Lively HSA Boost earns about $3. The cash-yield difference is roughly $54 per year at that balance level.

Here's how that plays out for two common types of HSA users:

Scenario 1: Building to $3,000 (new or early HSA users)

Scenario 2: Deliberate large cash holder ($10,000+ in cash)

*Lively HSA Boost APY ranges from 0.15% to 1.06% depending on account balance. On a $1,700 cash balance, Tier 1 applies (0.15% APY = ~$3/yr).

Cash yield carries more weight in specific situations: you're deliberately keeping a large cash balance because you prefer guaranteed returns over market risk, you're approaching or in retirement and want lower-volatility options, or you're building toward a planned medical procedure and want to earn while you wait.

For members actively managing healthcare expenses today while building long-term savings, Lively's platform delivers more real-dollar value than any cash interest rate difference.

Everyday HSA tools: Where Lively stands apart

This is the section most HSA comparisons skip. But for the 90% of account holders who use their HSA for regular medical spending, these tools matter more than anything else.

Lively has built features specifically to automate the tedious parts of active HSA use. Fidelity has no direct equivalent for several of them. Where Fidelity does offer a comparable tool, the depth and integration are more limited.

Expense Scout: Finding money you forgot to claim

Most people miss more HSA-eligible purchases than they realize. Items like bandages, blood pressure monitors, contact lens solution, sunscreen (SPF 15+), heating pads, wrist braces, and thermometers are all IRS-qualified medical expenses. However, when paid for using a standard credit card without submitting a receipt, those tax savings remain unclaimed.

Lively's Expense Scout solves this by scanning linked bank and credit card accounts in the background to detect past transactions matching qualified medical spending patterns. When a potential match is identified, it surfaces the item within the Lively dashboard and prompts the user to upload a receipt for tax-free reimbursement.

How it works in practice

If you purchased a $40 wrist brace on Amazon six months ago using a standard Visa card, Expense Scout identifies the purchase as potential HSA spending and alerts you: “We found a $40 medical purchase from October. Upload the receipt to claim reimbursement.” Uploading the saved digital receipt prompts Lively to issue a $40 tax-free reimbursement directly to your account.

According to Lively's 2026 HSA Spend Report, Amazon HSA spending grew 123% year-over-year, illustrating how frequently qualified items are purchased through retail channels without being claimed. Expense Scout operates continuously in the background to surface these overlooked purchases so active spenders can claim their full tax savings effortlessly.

Fidelity Receipt Storage Comparison

Fidelity supports basic receipt storage through Fidelity.com and the Fidelity Health® app. While users can upload images of receipts for future reference, the platform functions strictly as a document repository. It does not automatically link receipts to specific account transactions, nor does it track whether an expense has been claimed or remains unclaimed. As a result, account holders must manually track their reimbursements over time.

While Expense Scout surfaces forgotten past purchases, Claim Sync automates current filings as they happen.

Claim Sync: One-tap claim submission

Submitting traditional HSA reimbursements is time-consuming. After a medical visit, account holders typically wait for an Explanation of Benefits (EOB), download the document, log into their HSA portal, manually type in provider details, dates, and amounts, and attach proof of service. For families with frequent medical care, this process takes 5 to 10 minutes per claim, dozens of times a year.

Claim Sync removes this manual effort by integrating directly with health insurance plans to import EOB data automatically following a medical service. When a new claim is detected, Lively generates a pre-filled reimbursement request and notifies the user: “We found a $125 claim from your March 18 dental visit. Tap to approve and submit for reimbursement.” The user reviews the details, taps approve, and files the claim without manual data entry.

Claim Sync connects with over 95% of major health insurance carriers, including UnitedHealthcare, Anthem, Aetna, Cigna, and most Blue Cross Blue Shield networks. In contrast, Fidelity requires manual claim submissions, where users type in service dates, providers, and amounts by hand.

Reimbursable Bank: The save-now, reimburse-later strategy

IRS rules permit HSA account holders to reimburse themselves for qualified medical expenses from any prior year, provided the expenses occurred after the HSA was established. Because there is no expiration date on reimbursements, users can pay for current healthcare costs out-of-pocket, keep their HSA funds invested to grow tax-free, and execute tax-free withdrawals years later.

How the strategy works

If you pay $2,500 for a dental procedure in 2026 using a credit card, you can store the receipt in Lively's Reimbursable Bank tagged as “not yet claimed.” The $2,500 remains invested in your HSA. In 2030, if an unexpected expense arises, you can select that stored 2026 receipt, submit it for reimbursement, and receive $2,500 tax-free from your HSA — having allowed the underlying cash to compound for four years.

Reimbursable Bank is purpose-built to organize receipts by year, merchant, and category while tracking their status as “claimed” or “unclaimed.” This structure makes multi-year tax strategies practical.

For members managing multiple employee benefit accounts alongside an HSA, Smart Stacked Card extends this automation across every debit card transaction.

Smart Stacked Card: One card for all your benefits

If your employer offers additional benefits through Lively alongside your HSA, including FSA, HRA, lifestyle, or commuter benefits, the Smart Stacked Card consolidates all of them onto a single Visa debit card with one login.

The card is programmed with a priority order designed to protect your most time-sensitive funds. When you swipe, it pulls from FSA or HRA funds first, since those expire at year-end. Your HSA funds are drawn last, keeping them invested and growing as long as possible.

At retailers like CVS, Target, and Walmart, the card uses an Inventory Information Approval System to identify individual items at the point of sale. If you buy bandages and a soda in the same transaction, it automatically charges the eligible items to your benefits account and prompts a second payment for the soda only. Because the system confirms eligibility at purchase, you rarely need to upload a receipt afterward.

Every transaction appears in your Lively app with a record of exactly which account was used, giving you a unified view of spending across all your benefit accounts in one place.

How efficiently those tools process your reimbursements comes down to claims handling.

Bottom line on tools: Expense Scout, Claim Sync, Reimbursable Bank, and Smart Stacked Card are built for people who use their HSA actively. Together they can surface hundreds of dollars in forgotten expenses, save hours of manual claim entry, support a long-term tax strategy, and simplify multi-benefit management into a single card. Completing similar tasks through Fidelity generally requires more manual steps.

Claims processing

Claims processing is how your HSA provider reviews and approves reimbursement requests for qualified medical expenses.

Once a claim is submitted through Claim Sync, it's processed by Lively's Smart Claim Submission. The AI extracts the relevant details, cross-references your plan rules, and approves properly submitted, eligible claims at a 99%+ rate. Any submission that needs a second look goes to a human reviewer within two business days rather than being automatically denied.

For families with frequent or varied medical expenses, that matters. Some HSA providers use automated systems that reject gray-area claims without human review. Lively's approach means fewer rejected submissions and less time spent on appeals.

Fidelity uses standard automated claims processing.

Behind the tools and claims experience is the support team available when something needs a second look.

Customer service and support

When something goes wrong with your HSA, the quality of support can matter a lot. Lively and Fidelity take very different approaches, and the right one depends on when and how you typically need help.

Lively's support

Lively has US-based HSA specialists available by phone Monday through Friday, 6am to 6pm Pacific. Every representative focuses exclusively on HSAs and health benefits. They're not generalists switching between retirement accounts and credit card questions. They know HSA rules in depth.

Lively publishes its support metrics. Average phone response time: under 30 seconds. Customer satisfaction: 95%+. Lively's AI agent resolves 92% of member issues on its own, without needing human escalation. Those numbers reflect what a specialist-only team and a purpose-built AI can deliver.

Outside of business hours, Lively's Agentic AI handles requests directly. It doesn't just answer questions. It completes tasks. You can tell it “order me a replacement card” and it processes the request immediately. You can ask “why was my CVS purchase declined?” and it explains the specific reason based on your account and plan rules. It can update dependent information, process receipt uploads, and handle common account actions, all without hold times or phone trees.

The AI has persistent memory, meaning it remembers your account details between sessions. It works via voice, text, or image upload, and it operates in 240+ languages including Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese.

Fidelity's AI handles navigation and documentation. It helps you find forms, check balances, and access research tools. For action-based requests, it typically points you to the phone line.

Fidelity's support

Fidelity offers 24/7 human phone support every day of the year. Their representatives handle all Fidelity products, including retirement accounts, brokerage, credit cards, and HSAs.

Bottom line on support: Lively's HSA-specialist team and purpose-built AI deliver faster resolution on most everyday requests, with an average phone response time under 30 seconds and 95%+ customer satisfaction. Fidelity offers 24/7 human phone support every day of the year, including holidays. If guaranteed round-the-clock human availability is your priority, Fidelity's model covers that.

Who should choose Lively vs. Fidelity?

The right HSA provider depends on one thing: how healthcare spending fits into your financial life right now. Find yourself below.

If healthcare is a regular part of your monthly budget: Choose Lively

You pay copays, prescriptions, and dental bills as they come. Your HSA isn't something you check once a year. It's part of how you manage money month to month. What you need is a platform that works reliably, gets your money back to you quickly, and doesn't add complexity to an already full life.

• Smart Claim Submission processes claims in about 2.5 minutes with a 99%+ approval rate for properly submitted, eligible claims. Fidelity's manual process takes 1–3 business days for cash reimbursements.

• If something goes wrong at checkout or in your account, you reach an HSA specialist in under 30 seconds — not a general brokerage support line.

• Expense Scout automatically surfaces qualified purchases you paid with a regular card and forgot about.

• If your employer offers FSA, HRA, or commuter benefits alongside your HSA, Smart Stacked Card routes every transaction to the right account automatically.

If you know your HSA could be working harder, but life keeps getting in the way: Choose Lively

You understand the tax advantages. You've meant to file those claims. The receipts are somewhere. Between work, family, and everything else, it just hasn't happened. That's not a personal failing. It's what happens when a financial tool requires more manual effort than anyone actually has time for.

• Claim Sync connects directly to your insurer and pulls in your EOB data automatically. You tap to approve.

• Expense Scout works in the background scanning your linked accounts for purchases you forgot to claim.

• Reimbursable Bank organizes and stores all uploaded receipts indefinitely.

• The auto-investment toggle moves contributions above your cash threshold into the market automatically.

G2 rates Lively the #1 Easiest to Use in the HSA category. That recognition exists because the platform is built to work without requiring you to work for it.

If your HSA is part of a long-term wealth strategy: Choose Lively

You've done the math. You know the triple tax advantage compounds over decades. You're treating your HSA as a stealth IRA: maxing contributions, investing the balance, paying current medical costs out of pocket, and letting it grow. The friction is that real life keeps interrupting the plan. A big dental bill. An unexpected procedure. It's hard to stay disciplined when the platform isn't built to handle both.

• Schwab through Lively provides the same institutional brokerage access as Fidelity's own platform: stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, bonds, and $0 commissions.

• Two ways to invest: maintain a $3,000 cash buffer and invest everything above it for $0, or pay $24 per year to deploy every dollar into the market from day one.

• After age 65, HSA funds can be withdrawn for any purpose without penalty, functioning like a traditional IRA. Withdrawals for qualified medical expenses remain tax-free at any age.

• Reimbursable Bank directly enables the save-now, reimburse-later strategy by securely storing receipts for years while your HSA balance grows invested tax-free.

• Devenir's guided portfolios through Lively carry a 0.50% annual advisory fee (plus an average 0.23% fund expense ratio), compared to Fidelity Go®'s 0.35% annual fee on balances of $25,000 or more.

Choose Fidelity if:

• Your 401(k), IRA, and brokerage accounts are already at Fidelity and consolidated portfolio management is your primary goal.

• You hold large uninvested cash balances and prioritize yield. Fidelity's FDRXX earns 3.37% APY (as of July 31, 2026) automatically as a money market fund with SIPC protection.

• You use your HSA primarily as a passive investment account with minimal current-year claims activity.

Either works if:

• You're a self-directed investor maintaining $3,000 or more in cash. Both providers cost $0 for investing, and the investment universes through Schwab and Fidelity Brokerage are functionally identical.

• Zero fees and full brokerage access are your only requirements. Both deliver that for individual accounts.

The bottom line

Most people don't realize how much their HSA is capable of doing for them. They set it up, use it when they need to, and the rest of the time it sits quietly in the background. But an HSA managed well surfaces forgotten money, automates the manual work, and builds real long-term value alongside institutional investing quality.

Lively was built for the way people actually live with healthcare costs: actively managing expenses today while growing savings for tomorrow. Most HSA providers are built for one or the other. Lively is built for both.

For existing Fidelity customers who want everything consolidated, or members holding large uninvested cash balances deliberately, Fidelity covers those priorities honestly.

An HSA should work as hard as you do. In an economy where every healthcare dollar matters more than it used to, the platform that actively works for you without demanding constant attention can make a meaningful difference. For most people managing active healthcare expenses alongside long-term savings, that's Lively.

All rates and features reflect September 3, 2026. Review this page and update rates quarterly.

Methodology

This comparison evaluates Lively and Fidelity based on published fee schedules, third-party awards from Forbes Advisor and G2, and HSA usage data from Lively's 2026 HSA Spend Report and the Devenir 2025 Midyear HSA Report. HDHP deductible minimums are sourced from IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-19 and IRS Publication 969. Cash yield data reflects rates as of August 10, 2026 and may change; money market fund yields are variable and not guaranteed. Fidelity features and processing details are sourced from Fidelity's published documentation as of August 10, 2026 and may change. Expense Scout recovery figures represent averages among active users; individual results vary. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. This analysis covers individual HSA account holders only, not employer-sponsored group plans. Lively is not a bank. HSA cash deposits are held at one or more FDIC-insured banks and are eligible for pass-through FDIC insurance up to $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, subject to certain conditions. *HSA card issued by Choice Financial Group, Member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa or Mastercard. Lively is not an FDIC or NCUA insured financial institution. FDIC or NCUA insurance covers the failure of the insured financial institution. Lively partners with financial institutions in order to provide its products. These financial institutions are FDIC or NCUA insured and your HSA account may be eligible for pass through insurance. Certain conditions must be satisfied for pass-through deposit insurance coverage to apply. Please contact Lively for more detailed information. Any investment products are not insured by the FDIC; not deposits or obligations of the bank or its affiliates; not guaranteed by the bank or its affiliates; and are subject to investment risk, including possible loss of principal. The Lively Benefit Access Visa® Card is issued by The Bancorp Bank, N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. and may not be used everywhere Visa debit cards are accepted.