Home/Benefits Decoder vs doing it yourself
You can absolutely do this by hand. Here is exactly what that involves, and when it is not worth paying anyone.
Yes. Nothing about this is secret arithmetic. The true cost of a plan is what you pay in premiums across the year, plus what you spend on care under that plan's rules, minus anything your employer contributes to an HSA.
Run that for every plan you are offered, at the level of care you actually expect, and you have the same answer Benefits Decoder gives you. Plenty of people do exactly this in a spreadsheet, and there is nothing wrong with it.
Finding four numbers for every plan, in a document written for insurers rather than for you: the annual premium, the deductible, the out-of-pocket maximum, and any employer HSA contribution. Then pricing your expected care against each plan's rules separately.
The finding is the slow part. Premiums are usually per pay period rather than per year, which is a multiplication people get wrong. Deductibles are often listed separately for individual and family, with an embedded individual limit inside the family one. Out-of-pocket maximums may or may not include prescriptions. Employer HSA money is frequently on a different page entirely, and it is the single most commonly missed number in the whole guide.
Quite a lot. The true cost calculator compares two plans and finds the break-even point where the high-deductible plan stops being cheaper, and the guides explain every term you will hit. None of that costs anything or requires an account.
There are also free calculators for HSA versus FSA, COBRA, the subsidy cliff, and the exact 401(k) contribution percentage that captures a full employer match.
If your employer offers only one plan, do not pay. If you are choosing between two plans and you are comfortable reading the guide, the free calculator will get you there. And if you have already done the arithmetic and trust it, you do not need a second opinion.
Saying this costs us sales, and it is still the right answer. A tool that tells everyone they need it is a tool worth ignoring.
When there are more than two plans, when the guide is long enough that finding the numbers is the hard part, when a spouse's plan is also on the table, or when you want the whole thing priced under light, medium and heavy use rather than the one year you are guessing at.
Four plans across two guides is sixteen or more numbers to find and a set of scenarios to run against each. That is an evening with a spreadsheet, and it is the case the product was built for.
It reads the guide for you, prices real-life moments rather than only totals, and shows the same comparison under light, medium and heavy use so you can see which plan wins at which level and where the answer flips.
It also decodes your 401(k) match and surfaces the benefits people forget they have, which are in the same document and almost never read.
Compare every plan in your benefits guide, or start with the free calculators.