Quick answer: Lively charges no monthly maintenance fee, no minimum balance fee, and no account-opening fee on individual or family HSAs, which puts it at the same price point as Fidelity and well below most bank-run HSA providers. The only cost you can actually run into is on the investing side: the self-directed Charles Schwab Health Savings Brokerage Account is free to use, while the Guided Portfolio option carries a small annual advisory fee based on a percentage of your invested balance. If your current provider charges $2.50 to $5 a month just to hold your money, that is a fee Lively simply does not have.
What Lively Actually Charges for an Individual or Family HSA
For a standard individual or family HSA opened directly with Lively (livelyme.com), there is no monthly maintenance fee, no minimum balance requirement, and no fee to open the account. You get a debit card, the mobile app, and the ability to transfer money in and out, all included. Compare that to a lot of older HSA custodians that still bill $2.50 to $5 a month just for the privilege of holding your own money, and the math is not close.
Your cash balance sits in FDIC-insured accounts through Lively’s partner banks, so you are not taking on extra risk to get the free structure. There is no catch tied to balance size either. It makes no difference if you are sitting on $200 or $20,000 in cash, the fee stays at zero.
Does Lively Really Have No Monthly Fees?
Yes, for the cash portion of the account, Lively has no monthly fees, period. That is what separates true no-fee HSA accounts from the ones that advertise “free” and then bury a maintenance charge in the fine print or waive it only if you keep a minimum balance. Lively does not do either of those things. The account stays free whether you contribute the full family limit or barely touch it.
Where people get confused is assuming “no monthly fee” means “no fees anywhere in the account,” which is not quite true once you start investing. The cash side is genuinely free. The investing side has its own separate fee structure, covered below, and that is worth understanding before you assume the entire account is costless in every scenario.
Is Lively a True Free HSA Account, or Just Free to Open?
Lively is a genuinely free HSA account for the cash balance, not just free to open. A lot of providers waive the account-opening fee to get you in the door and then charge ongoing maintenance fees once you are a customer. Lively’s fee structure has no monthly charge, no minimum balance rule, and no opening fee, so there is no bait-and-switch waiting for you three months in.
The one place “free” needs a footnote is investing. Opening the account and holding cash costs nothing. Choosing to invest through the guided, robo-style portfolio option adds an annual advisory fee. That is a fair trade for people who want a hands-off, professionally allocated portfolio, but it means “free” applies to the base account, not automatically to every feature you might add on top of it.
What It Costs to Invest Your Lively HSA Balance
Lively gives you two ways to invest, and they are priced very differently. The first is a self-directed Charles Schwab Health Savings Brokerage Account, where you pick your own stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds. This option carries no added Lively fee to use it. You will still pay the normal expense ratios built into whatever funds you buy (an S&P 500 index fund might run 0.03% a year, an actively managed fund could run 0.5% or more), but that is true of investing anywhere, not something Lively tacks on.
The second path is the Guided Portfolio, a robo-advisor style option that builds and rebalances a portfolio for you based on your goals and timeline. This convenience comes with an annual advisory fee charged as a percentage of your invested balance. It is the closest thing Lively has to a real “fee” in the traditional sense, and it only applies if you choose that path.
The insider move here: most people who are comfortable picking three or four low-cost index funds are better off financially in the self-directed Schwab brokerage, since it has no advisory layer on top. The guided option earns its fee for people who genuinely do not want to think about allocation at all. Neither is wrong, but know which one you are choosing and why.
Lively vs. Legacy HSA Providers: A Fees Comparison
Here is where the fees comparison gets stark. A lot of Americans still have an HSA sitting with whatever provider their employer picked years ago, and many of those are older, bank-style custodians that never updated their pricing for a market where free accounts now exist.
| Provider type | Typical monthly maintenance fee | Typical investing fee |
|---|---|---|
| Lively | $0 | $0 self-directed Schwab brokerage; advisory fee (% of balance) for Guided Portfolio |
| Fidelity HSA | $0 | $0, invests directly at Fidelity, fractional shares available |
| Typical legacy bank provider (HealthEquity, HSA Bank, Optum, WEX) | $2.50 to $5.00 | Varies, often a separate investment platform fee on top |
Run the legacy fee out over a year and $3 a month is $36, over ten years it is $360, not counting what that money could have earned if it had stayed invested instead of leaking out as a fee. That is not a rounding error, it is a real cost with nothing to show for it. For a deeper side-by-side, see our best HSA accounts compared.
Hidden HSA Fees Most Providers Don’t Advertise
Beyond the obvious monthly maintenance charge, plenty of HSA providers have a second layer of fees that only shows up once you try to do something specific with the account. These are the ones that catch people off guard.
| Fee type | Where it commonly shows up |
|---|---|
| Account closure or transfer-out fee | Charged by the provider you are leaving, often $20 to $25, when you move funds elsewhere |
| Paper statement fee | Small monthly charge if you opt out of electronic statements |
| Excess contribution correction fee | Some custodians bill you to process the paperwork after you over-contribute |
| Investment platform fee | A separate fee layered on top of fund expense ratios once your balance is invested |
| Inactivity fee | Charged on some legacy accounts if the balance sits untouched for a long period |
Lively does not charge an account-opening fee, a monthly maintenance fee, or a minimum balance fee, which removes most of this list before it can apply to you. If you are unsure what your current provider charges on any of these fronts, the honest answer is to pull up your actual fee schedule and check the current numbers, since providers do change their pricing.
Is Lively the Cheapest HSA Account Available?
Lively is one of the two cheapest HSA accounts on the market for a straightforward reason: it and Fidelity are the main providers charging nothing at all for the base account. Fidelity invests directly in Fidelity funds with fractional shares, which is convenient if you already bank there. Lively wins on a few specific things instead of trying to beat Fidelity on price, since the price is already tied.
- Lively is built only for HSAs (and FSAs/HRAs for employers), so the app and support are not an afterthought bolted onto a giant brokerage.
- The Schwab brokerage option gives you a full self-directed investing platform, not a narrower fund lineup.
- The Guided Portfolio exists for people who want professional allocation without picking funds themselves, something Fidelity’s HSA does not offer in the same way.
- Lively’s transfer process for moving money in from an old, fee-charging provider is built to be simple, which matters more than it sounds like once you have actually filled out a trustee-to-trustee transfer form for a legacy account.
Morningstar has repeatedly ranked Lively among the top HSA providers for spenders, which lines up with the fee structure: if you mostly use your HSA to pay for medical expenses as they happen rather than invest it long-term, Lively removes the friction and the cost from that side of the equation.
What Employer-Sponsored Lively Accounts Cost You
If your HSA came through your employer and Lively administers it, your side of the account still carries no monthly fee, no minimum balance rule, and no opening fee, the same as if you had opened it yourself. Employers who use Lively for their HSA, FSA, or HRA program typically cover the administrative cost on their end, not by passing a per-employee fee onto your balance.
Here is the detail that catches people after they leave a job: with a lot of legacy HSA providers, once you leave the employer, the account can flip from “employer covers the fee” to “you now pay it,” and a small monthly charge starts quietly bleeding your balance without an obvious notification. Since Lively does not charge a maintenance fee to begin with, there is nothing that switches on when the paycheck stops. This is one of the real, practical reasons people move an old employer HSA into a no-fee provider even years after leaving that job. If that describes your situation, our guide to moving an HSA away from a fee-charging provider walks through the trustee-to-trustee process.
What It Costs to Close or Transfer a Lively HSA
Moving money into Lively from another provider does not cost you anything on Lively’s end. The friction, if there is any, comes from your old provider, which may charge an account closure or outbound transfer fee in the $20 to $25 range, something worth checking on your existing statement before you initiate the move.
The paperwork detail worth knowing: a trustee-to-trustee transfer, where the two custodians move the money directly between themselves, is cleaner than a 60-day rollover, where the funds pass through your hands first. A trustee-to-trustee transfer does not count against the one-rollover-per-12-months rule that applies to HSAs, and it avoids the risk of missing the 60-day window and owing tax and a 20% penalty on the whole balance. When you request the move, ask specifically for a trustee-to-trustee transfer, not a “rollover,” even though people use the words loosely in conversation.
The Real Dollar Cost of “Small” Monthly Fees Over Time
A $3.50 monthly fee sounds trivial until you run the actual numbers against what that money could have done inside a triple tax-advantaged account instead. Over 20 years, $3.50 a month is $840 paid directly out in fees, and that ignores the growth those dollars would have generated if they had stayed invested rather than being siphoned off every month.
Put another way: if you contribute the 2026 family HSA limit of $8,750 and invest it, growth on that balance compounds tax-free. Every dollar diverted to a monthly fee is a dollar that never gets the chance to compound. Combine that with the tax side of an HSA: a $4,400 self-only contribution at a 24% marginal federal rate saves you $1,056 in income tax alone, and if it runs through payroll as a pre-tax deduction, it also skips the 7.65% FICA tax, saving roughly $336 more. None of that changes based on which provider you use, but a fee-free provider means more of the growth and more of the tax savings actually stays in your account instead of leaking out. This is not tax advice specific to your situation, so confirm the details with a tax professional, but the arithmetic on the fee side is straightforward.
The no-fee way to stop paying for your own HSA
Lively is the HSA provider we point readers to: no monthly fees on individual accounts, no minimums, and your balance can be invested through a Schwab brokerage account or a hands-off guided portfolio. Opening an account takes about 5 minutes online. Here is our full Lively HSA review.
How to Check What You’re Currently Paying
Pull up your current HSA’s fee schedule, usually a PDF linked from the account settings or disclosures page, and look for three line items specifically: monthly maintenance fee, investment or brokerage fee, and account closure fee. Those three cover the bulk of what people unknowingly pay. If you cannot find the fee schedule, call the provider directly and ask them to send it, since not every provider makes it easy to locate online, which is itself a signal about how they want you to shop around.
If your current provider charges anything on that list and you have a qualifying HDHP, there is nothing stopping you from opening a Lively account and transferring the balance over. The transfer takes a few weeks but your old account’s fees stop accruing once the balance is out.
Stop a fee-charging HSA before it costs you another dollar
Lively is the HSA provider we point readers to: no monthly fees on individual accounts, no minimums, and your balance can be invested through a Schwab brokerage account or a hands-off guided portfolio. Opening an account takes about 5 minutes online. Here is our full Lively HSA review.
FAQ
Does Lively charge a monthly fee for individual HSAs?
No. Lively does not charge a monthly maintenance fee, a minimum balance fee, or an account-opening fee on individual or family HSAs. The cash portion of the account is free regardless of balance size.
What does Lively charge to invest my HSA?
The self-directed Charles Schwab Health Savings Brokerage Account has no added Lively fee, though you still pay normal fund expense ratios. The Guided Portfolio option charges an annual advisory fee based on a percentage of your invested balance.
Is there a fee to transfer my HSA into Lively?
Lively does not charge to receive a transfer. Your old provider may charge an outbound transfer or account closure fee, often $20 to $25, so check that provider’s current fee schedule before you initiate the move.
Are Fidelity and Lively equally cheap?
Both charge no monthly fee and no minimum balance on the base HSA, making them the two cheapest mainstream options. Lively differentiates on its HSA-only focus, the Schwab brokerage option, the Guided Portfolio, and its employer FSA/HRA suite, while Fidelity invests directly in Fidelity funds with fractional shares.
What happens to fees if I leave the employer that set up my HSA?
With many legacy providers, a fee that the employer previously covered can switch to being charged directly to you once you leave the job. Since Lively has no monthly maintenance fee, there is no dormant fee waiting to activate after your employment ends.
Can I lose money to fees just by holding cash in my HSA?
Not with Lively. Cash balances carry no monthly fee and are FDIC-insured through Lively’s partner banks. The only way fees apply is if you choose the Guided Portfolio investing option, which carries its own advisory fee.
Is a trustee-to-trustee transfer better than a rollover for avoiding fees or penalties?
Yes. A trustee-to-trustee transfer moves funds directly between custodians, does not count against the one-rollover-per-12-months rule, and avoids the risk of missing the 60-day rollover window, which would trigger income tax and a 20% penalty if you are under 65.
Does Lively charge extra once my balance gets large?
No. The no-fee structure on the cash side does not change based on balance size. A Guided Portfolio advisory fee, if you choose that option, is percentage-based, so it scales with your invested balance, but the base account fee stays at zero regardless of how much you hold.
What are hidden HSA fees I should ask about before switching providers?
Ask specifically about monthly maintenance fees, minimum balance requirements, investment platform fees on top of fund expense ratios, paper statement fees, and account closure or transfer-out fees. These are the charges that typically do not show up until you read the full fee schedule.
Do self-employed people pay different HSA fees at Lively?
No, the fee structure is the same. Self-employed HSA holders open the account the same way as anyone with a qualifying HDHP and pay no monthly fee, though they deduct contributions on their tax return instead of through payroll, which saves income tax but not FICA tax.
