Online wills compared: who is actually any good

In the spring of 2025 I sat down at my kitchen table and made six wills using six different online services. Same person, same family, same assets: me. I wanted to know which platforms produce a will I would trust to send my widow into probate court with, and which ones produce a document a clerk would laugh at.

The honest results: two services I would happily recommend, two more that are fine for simple estates, and two that I will not link to here. I want this site to be useful, not paid.

For context: I am married, two kids, a paid-off house in Ohio, a 401(k), no business, no second marriage, no special-needs dependent. The straightforward case. If your situation is messier, skip to the bottom; there’s a section on when none of these are right for you.

What “good” means for an online will

Five things, in order of importance.

1. Your will is valid in your state. Witness rules vary. Some states require notarisation. The platform must walk you through your state’s specific rules, not a generic version.
2. You can update it without paying again. Life events (marriage, divorce, new kid, moving states) should not require buying a fresh will.
3. It includes the financial power of attorney and the healthcare directive in the same package. A will alone is half the work.
4. The output is reviewable. You can read it before you sign. It is not legalese theatre.
5. A real human can answer one question if you have one. Even via email.

A platform that does all five is worth $79–$200. A platform that does three is worth $0.

The two I would recommend

Trust & Will. trustandwill.com

Founded 2017, San Diego based. Their will-only product runs $159 in 2026; the will + financial POA + healthcare directive bundle runs $199. They were recommended to me by an estate attorney in Cincinnati who said: “I can’t compete on price for simple wills. They are good. I refer simple cases to them.”

What I liked: state-specific witness instructions printed on the cover page, including notarisation if your state requires it. A real human in customer support who answered an email in under four hours. The output document was clean, readable, and matched what my friend’s lawyer drafted for $850 a month earlier.

What I did not like: the upsell to a revocable living trust ($499) was visible on every screen. For most people in most states, the trust is unnecessary. The “do you want to add a trust?” question is asked three times during the flow.

Pricing as of January 2026: Will-only $159. Estate plan bundle (will + POA + directive + transfer-on-death deed where applicable) $199. Trust bundle $499.

FreeWill. freewill.com

Founded 2017 by Stanford grads, originally a charity-fundraising platform that has grown into a more general estate planning tool. The basic will is, as advertised, free.

What I liked: actually free for the will itself. Walks you through the document carefully. Specific state pages handle the witness and notary nuances. Includes the healthcare directive at no charge.

What I did not like: the financial power of attorney is paid ($59/year), and the funding model leans on charitable bequests (you are nudged toward leaving a percentage to charity). The nudge is gentle and disclosed but it is there.

If you are in a financially tight spot, FreeWill is a perfectly acceptable choice. The will itself is real, valid, and lawyer-reviewed. I would not let the charity nudges put me off; you can leave 0% if that is what you want.

Pricing: Will free. Healthcare directive free. Financial POA $59/year.

The two that are fine for simple estates

LegalZoom. legalzoom.com

The original. Founded 2001. Has done over a million wills.

The product is fine. The pricing is opaque; they push you towards subscriptions. A standalone will is $89 last I checked, but the upsell to “Legal Plus” at $349/year is constant. If you can resist the subscription pitch, the will itself is competently produced.

I would not pick LegalZoom over Trust & Will at the same price point. If you already have a LegalZoom subscription for business reasons, fine.

Quicken WillMaker / Nolo. nolo.com

Software-based, downloadable. $109 for the year. Updates with state-law changes.

This is the one your accountant friend used in 2008 and it has been quietly updated ever since. It is text-heavy, no shiny design, but the output is solid and the documentation is the most thorough of any of these. If you want to read 200 pages of context before drafting, this is your pick.

Less good if you want hand-holding. More than fine if you want a deep, legalistic tool.

The two I will not link to

I will not name them. They were either:

• Producing wills with state-specific errors (e.g. naming “subscribing witnesses” when the state requires “attesting witnesses”, which a probate clerk in some states will reject), or
• Pushing aggressive subscriptions where cancelling required calling a phone number that opened at 9am Eastern.

If a platform you are considering is not listed above, it does not mean it is bad. It just means I have not tested it. Email me (hello@lovingplan.com) and I will look.

When you should not use any of these

If any of the following is true for you, hire an estate attorney instead. The cost is $400–$1,500. The clarity is worth it.

• You own real estate in more than one state.
• You have a blended family: second marriage, stepchildren, children from a previous relationship.
• You have a child with a disability who will need care after you are gone (this triggers special-needs trust planning, which online tools do not handle well).
• You own a business, even a small LLC.
• Your estate is large enough to be subject to federal or state estate tax (federal: over $13.61m in 2024; state: lower, especially in MA, OR, WA, MN, NY).
• You want anything more complicated than “spouse first, then kids equally”.
• You live in Louisiana (Louisiana inheritance law is unique and most online tools do not handle it correctly).

The way to find a good attorney: your state bar’s lawyer referral service ($25–$45 for a 30-minute consultation, usually credited if you hire), or the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel for board-certified specialists.

What to do this weekend

If your situation is simple:

1. Pick Trust & Will or FreeWill.
2. Block 90 minutes one evening.
3. Have ready: driver’s license, list of accounts (where, not balances), full names and addresses of beneficiaries, the names of two witnesses you can ask later.
4. Sign it. Witness it. Notarise if your state requires.
5. Tell your executor where the original is.
6. Put a calendar reminder for two years from now to read it again.

That is the whole project.

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What this guide gets wrong

I tested six services in spring 2025. Pricing and feature sets change quarterly in this market. By the time you read this, prices may be $20 different and one of the recommendations may have been acquired or shut down. Verify on the platform’s own pricing page before you decide.

I am not a lawyer. I am a writer who has been an executor twice. The opinions above are mine, based on the documents the platforms produced for my situation. A real estate attorney would offer different and better-informed opinions for genuinely complex estates. For a simple estate the gap between a $159 online will and a $1,500 attorney-drafted will is, in my view, mostly the price.

If you find a factual error in this guide, please email me. I update it twice a year.