Market Intelligence
ETF Cost Watch
A small, hand-curated comparison of well-known, broad-market ETFs by expense ratio, objective, benchmark, and structure — reviewed periodically by a human reading each fund's own prospectus or fact sheet, never a live feed.
Not live data, not a recommendation
Expense ratios and figures on this page are reviewed as of the date shown (2026-10-31) and are not a live feed — manually reviewed periodically — not a live feed. see docs/data-sources.md. This tool does not recommend purchasing any ETF; it is an educational comparison only, intended to show how fund costs and structures differ, not to tell you which fund to buy.
What an expense ratio is
An expense ratio is the fund’s own annual operating cost, expressed as a percentage of your investment and deducted automatically from the fund’s assets — you never see a separate bill, but you pay it every year you hold the fund, in good years and bad. Among the 8 funds compared here, the lowest expense ratio is 0.03% (VOO) and the highest is 0.0945% (SPY) — a difference that looks tiny on paper but is not tiny over decades.
A seemingly small percentage-point difference compounds: a fee is deducted every year, which means it also reduces the base that future growth compounds on, year after year, for as long as the money stays invested. The Planning Studio’s own Investment Fees Calculator lets you plug in any two expense ratios from this page (or any others) and your own horizon and contribution amounts to see the actual projected dollar gap — fee drag is a real, calculable cost, not an abstraction.
What “comparable” means
Two funds are only meaningfully comparable on cost when they track the same, or nearly the same, benchmark and exposure — otherwise a lower expense ratio on a fund with completely different holdings isn’t really a “cheaper version” of anything, it’s just a different bet. This page only groups funds together when their stated benchmark and exposure genuinely justify the comparison:
- U.S. large-cap / S&P 500 exposure: VOO, SPY
- U.S. total stock market exposure: VTI
- U.S. total/aggregate bond market exposure: BND, AGG
- International (ex-US) developed + emerging equity exposure: VXUS
- U.S. small-cap equity exposure: VB, IJR
It also follows that owning two funds that both track the same or heavily overlapping benchmark (for example VOO and SPY, which both track the S&P 500 Index) does not meaningfully diversify a portfolio the way owning, say, a stock fund and a bond fund does — the overlapping holdings move together, so holding both mostly just means paying two expense ratios instead of one for the same underlying exposure.
The comparison
Every figure below is traceable to the specific, dated page it was read from — click any source citation to see it directly.
| Fund | Issuer | Expense ratio | Benchmark | Structure | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
VOO Vanguard S&P 500 ETF Seeks to track the performance of the S&P 500 Index, which measures the investment return of large-capitalization U.S. stocks. | Vanguard | 0.03% per year | S&P 500 Index | ETF | SEC EDGAR — Vanguard S&P 500 ETF Summary Prospectus, dated April 29, 2025 Checked 2026-10-31 |
SPY SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust Seeks to provide investment results that, before expenses, correspond generally to the price and yield performance of the S&P 500 Index. | State Street Global Advisors | 0.0945% per year | S&P 500 Index | Unit Investment Trust (UIT) — not a conventional open-end ETF; see limitations. | SEC EDGAR — SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust Prospectus, dated January 27, 2025 Checked 2026-10-31 |
VTI Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF Seeks to track the performance of a benchmark index that measures the investment return of the overall U.S. stock market — large-, mid-, small-, and micro-cap stocks. | Vanguard | 0.03% per year | CRSP US Total Market Index (shown by Vanguard as the Morningstar US Total Market Index as of this fact sheet's date, following an index-provider transition) | ETF | Vanguard issuer fact sheet, "as of September 30, 2026" Checked 2026-10-31 |
BND Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF Seeks to track the performance of a broad, market-weighted bond index — a diversified exposure to U.S. investment-grade taxable bonds (government, corporate, and international dollar-denominated), excluding inflation-protected and tax-exempt bonds. | Vanguard | 0.03% per year | Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Float Adjusted Index | ETF | Vanguard issuer fact sheet, "as of September 30, 2026" Checked 2026-10-31 |
AGG iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF Seeks to track an index composed of U.S. investment-grade bonds, offering broad exposure to the total U.S. bond market for income and diversification. | BlackRock (iShares) | 0.03% per year | Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index | ETF | iShares (BlackRock) issuer product page, accessed October 31, 2026, "Fees as stated in the prospectus" Checked 2026-10-31 |
VXUS Vanguard Total International Stock ETF Seeks to track the performance of a benchmark index that measures the investment return of stocks issued by companies located in developed and emerging markets, excluding the United States. | Vanguard | 0.05% per year | FTSE Global All Cap ex US Index | ETF | Vanguard issuer fact sheet, "as of September 30, 2026" Checked 2026-10-31 |
VB Vanguard Small-Cap ETF Seeks to track the performance of a benchmark index that measures the investment return of small-capitalization U.S. stocks. | Vanguard | 0.03% per year | Morningstar US Small Cap Index (ticker CRSPSCT) | ETF | Vanguard issuer product page, accessed October 31, 2026, "Expense ratio as of 04/28/2026: 0.03%" Checked 2026-10-31 |
IJR iShares Core S&P Small-Cap ETF Seeks to track an index composed of small-cap U.S. stocks, offering exposure to the growth potential of small-capitalization companies. | BlackRock (iShares) | 0.06% per year | S&P SmallCap 600 Index | ETF | iShares (BlackRock) issuer product page, accessed October 31, 2026, "Fees as stated in the prospectus" Checked 2026-10-31 |
Limitations
This dataset is manually reviewed, not automatically refreshed — an issuer could change a fund’s expense ratio or benchmark after the date shown here, and this page would not reflect that change until it is next reviewed. Expense ratio is only one of several real costs of owning a fund (bid/ask spread, trading commissions if any, and tax treatment also matter) and is not itself a measure of a fund’s quality, risk, or expected return. SPY is structured as a unit investment trust rather than a conventional open-end ETF, which carries some operational differences (e.g. it cannot reinvest dividends internally) not captured by the expense-ratio figure alone. Nothing on this page is investment advice, and no fund listed here is being recommended for purchase.