Empower is now Tilt. The company rebranded in August 2025. It is the same app, the same company and the same account, so an old Empower login still works and any advance you already had carries over. The new name also ends years of people confusing it with Empower Personal Wealth, which is a completely separate investing company.
Tilt is a cash advance app. You connect a checking account, it looks at your income and spending, and it will front you money before payday without running a credit check and without charging interest or late fees on the advance itself. What it does charge is a flat monthly subscription, and that single fact decides whether this app is a good deal for you or a slow leak.
This review covers what Tilt actually costs, how much you can realistically borrow, what else comes with the membership, and the specific situations where paying for it makes sense.
Tilt reports that more than 75 percent of new subscribers qualified for an advance at signup, which is a higher approval rate than most of this category, and the 14 day trial lets you see your own number before you are charged anything.
Get started with Tilt and check your advance amount during the free trial.
What you get with Tilt
The subscription is one price for the whole set of features, not a menu you pay for individually. Here is what is actually included.
Cash advance
The core product. Tilt advances between $10 and $500 depending on what your linked account shows about your income and spending history. It is worth being blunt about that range, because the headline number is not what most people get. Tilt publishes its own figures: in the second quarter of 2026 the average offer was $98 for first time customers and $172 for everyone else. Treat $500 as the ceiling you work toward with a record of on time repayments, not the amount waiting for you on day one. There is no credit check, no interest and no late fee on the advance, and repayment is pulled automatically on the paycheck date Tilt detects from your linked account.
Standard delivery is free. Instant delivery is optional and carries a fee that scales with the size of the advance, charged separately from the subscription, so budget for it if you are the kind of person who only opens the app once the money is already needed. Tilt does not publish the express fee table on its site, so check the amount shown in the app before you confirm.
Line of credit
Tilt also offers a revolving line of credit that starts somewhere in the $200 to $400 range and can reach $1,000 over time. Unlike the advance, this one is designed to build credit history, because the repayment behavior gets reported. If your goal is a better credit file rather than just covering a gap this week, this is the more useful half of the product. It is worth weighing it against dedicated credit building apps before you commit, and if you are starting from nothing, our guide to establishing credit from scratch covers the groundwork first.
Tilt Visa credit card
You can pre-qualify without affecting your credit score, and the card is usable as soon as you are approved. Worth knowing: the $8 monthly subscription does not apply to Tilt Visa credit card holders, so if you end up using the card, the math on this whole review changes in your favor.
AutoSave, budgeting and credit monitoring
The membership includes an automatic savings tool that moves small amounts aside based on what your account can handle, spending categorization, and credit score monitoring. These are genuinely useful but they are not reasons to pay $8 a month on their own, because free apps do all three. Treat them as things that come along with the advance rather than the reason to sign up. If budgeting is your actual goal, compare against our best budgeting apps roundup first.
What Tilt actually costs
Tilt charges $8 per month. First time customers get a 14 day trial. There is no interest and no late fee on an advance, so the subscription is the real price, and the honest way to judge it is to convert that flat fee into a rate against the amount you actually borrow.
| Advance you take | Cost for the month | Rough APR equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| $100 | $8 | About 208% |
| $200 | $8 | About 104% |
| $350 | $8 | About 60% |
| $500 | $8 | About 42% |
Those figures assume one advance repaid in about two weeks. They look alarming next to a credit card, and they are, but the comparison most people are actually making is not a credit card. It is a $35 overdraft fee, and against that Tilt wins as long as you use it. Avoid a single overdraft in a month and the $8 has already paid for itself more than four times over.
The trap is the month you do not need an advance. The $8 comes out anyway. Over a year that is $96 for a service you may have used twice. If your cash flow is only occasionally tight, the subscription model works against you, and that is the single most important thing to understand before signing up.
Note also that taking more than one advance in the same month improves the math, because the $8 is a flat monthly cost rather than a per advance fee.
Pros and cons
What works
- Up to $500 is a genuinely useful amount, well above what most advance apps will front you
- No credit check, so a thin or damaged credit file does not disqualify you
- No interest and no late fees on the advance itself
- The line of credit reports your payments, so it can actually build credit history
- The subscription is waived for Tilt Visa credit card holders
- 14 day trial lets you test your real advance amount before paying anything
What does not
- The $8 is charged every month whether you borrow or not
- Instant delivery costs extra on top of the subscription
- Your first advance is usually well under $500, so the headline number is not what you get
- Repayment is auto debited on payday, which can start a cycle if the gap was structural
- Advances require a linked checking account with steady deposits
- The budgeting and savings extras are available free elsewhere
How to get an advance
The process is short and mostly automated.
- Download Tilt and create an account, or sign in with your old Empower credentials if you had them
- Link the checking account your pay lands in, which is how Tilt sets your limit
- Wait for your advance amount to appear, usually within minutes of linking
- Request the amount you need and pick standard delivery, which is free, or instant, which is not
- Repayment is pulled automatically on your next payday, so make sure the balance is there
If your advance comes back lower than you hoped, that is normal on a new account. It generally moves up once Tilt has seen a couple of deposit and repayment cycles. If the app will not link your bank at all, our roundup of cash advance apps that work with Chime covers the options built for neobank setups.
Is Tilt safe to use
Tilt uses bank grade encryption and connects to your account through the same aggregation layer most finance apps use, meaning it gets read access to transactions rather than your banking password. The advance itself carries no interest and no late fee, so the failure mode is not a spiraling balance the way it is with a payday loan.
The real risk is behavioral rather than technical. Because repayment is automatically debited on payday, an advance that covered this month can leave next month short, which is how people end up advancing again. That is worth naming plainly: these apps are a bridge over a one time gap, and they are a poor answer to a budget that does not balance. If that cycle already sounds familiar, the more useful read is our guide to getting out of debt.
How Tilt compares to other cash advance apps
Tilt is at the higher end for advance size. Where it loses is the flat subscription, since several competitors either charge less or make you pay only when you actually borrow. A quick sense of the field:
- EarnIn advances against hours you have already worked and runs on optional tips rather than a required subscription, which suits irregular users better
- Brigit is cheaper per month but the standard advances are smaller
- Klover offers advances with no mandatory monthly fee, though you trade attention for it by watching offers
- Current bundles advances with a spending account rather than selling them standalone
- Cleo leads with an AI budgeting assistant and puts the advance behind it
- MoneyLion pairs advances with a broader banking and investing product
For a side by side of the whole category, including the ones that do not charge a subscription at all, see our guide to the best cash advance apps:
Is Tilt worth it
It comes down to how often you will use it. If you are short most months and a $500 advance keeps you clear of overdraft fees, $8 is cheap and Tilt is one of the stronger options because of the advance ceiling and the credit building line. If your money is tight only now and then, a pay per use or tip based app will cost you less over a year.
The 14 day trial exists precisely because your real advance amount is unknowable until you link an account. Use it. Check your number, decide whether it covers the gap you actually have, and cancel before day 14 if it does not.
Check your Tilt advance amount to see your advance amount before the trial charges you anything.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Empower rebranded to Tilt in August 2025. Same company, same app and same account, so an existing Empower login still works and any advance limit you had built up carried over. The rename also separates it from Empower Personal Wealth, which is an unrelated investing company.
Advances run from $10 to $500, but the average offer is well under the ceiling. Tilt reported an average of $98 for first time customers and $172 for returning ones in the second quarter of 2026. Your limit depends on the income and spending pattern in the account you link and rises with on time repayments. You can check your amount with Tilt during the 14 day trial before paying anything.
Not for a cash advance. Approval is based on your linked bank account rather than a credit report, so a thin or poor credit file does not rule you out. Pre-qualifying for the Tilt Visa credit card does not affect your score either.
It depends entirely on how often you borrow. One avoided $35 overdraft covers the fee more than four times over, so frequent users come out ahead with Tilt. If you only need an advance occasionally, the $8 is charged in the quiet months too, and a tip based app like EarnIn will usually cost less over a year.
There is no late fee and no interest on the advance. Tilt attempts the automatic debit on your scheduled payday, and if the money is not there your bank may charge its own overdraft or returned payment fee, which is the cost worth watching. Contact Tilt support before the debit date if you know it will not clear.
Where to go next
If $500 is more than you need, $100 instant loan apps covers the smaller and usually cheaper options. If overdraft fees are the real problem, moving to one of the best free checking accounts removes them at the source. And if the shortfall keeps repeating, the durable fix is on the income side, which we cover in how to make money without a job.
