The best S&P 500 ETF costs 0.02%. Equal weight is a different bet
Year to date through Friday, the cheap S&P 500 funds had returned 11.8%, dividends included. Equal weight was ahead by 3.5 percentage points.
Key takeaways
Through Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, the cheap S&P 500 funds had returned 11.8%, dividends included. The one to hold is State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF, SPYM.
It charges 0.02%. etf.net grades it an A in the S&P 500 category.
iShares Core S&P 500 ETF, IVV, and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, VOO, each charge 0.03%. On a $100,000 holding, the extra is $10 a year. If you already own either fund, that is not a reason to sell.
State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF, SPY, charges 0.0945%. The extra over SPYM is about $75 a year on that same $100,000.
Use SPY to trade the index. Over the 20 sessions through Friday it traded about $29.6 billion a day, about 25 times SPYM's $1.2 billion.
SPY traded $29.6 billion a day
BNY Mellon US Large Cap Core Equity ETF, BKLC, charges nothing. It tracks the Solactive GBS United States 500 Index, a different list of large U.S. companies, not the S&P 500. A zero fee does not make it the same fund.
Total stock market ETFs
A broader fund adds the companies outside the S&P 500.
iShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF, ITOT, tracks the S&P Total Market Index and charges 0.03%. The index covers U.S. stocks of every size.
etf.net grades it an A in the total-market category. Through Friday it had also returned 11.8%, dividends included.
Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF, VTI, charges 0.03% to track the Morningstar US Total Market Index. At Sept. 30, 2026, the 10 largest stocks were 36.1% of the fund, against 40.6% in VOO.
Owning the whole market has not been a way out of those companies.
Schwab U.S. Broad Market ETF, SCHB, charges 0.03% to track the Dow Jones U.S. Broad Stock Market Index. State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 1500 Composite Stock Market ETF, SPTM, tracks the S&P Composite 1500, the step between the 500 and the whole market, also at 0.03%.
If you already hold one of these broad funds, the fee is not a reason to move.
S&P 500 equal weight
Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF, RSP, is the fund that did not tie. It holds the S&P 500's companies and gives each the same weight at each quarterly rebalance, as its prospectus dated Aug. 28, 2026, describes.
Equal weight’s largest ten are 2.7% of the fund
It charges 0.20%, which is $180 a year more than SPYM on a $100,000 holding. etf.net grades it a B in the S&P 500 category.
Through Friday its total return was 15.3%, dividends included, against 11.8% for SPYM. The gap is 3.5 percentage points.
Buy it only if you want each company to count the same. That lead, year to date, is not a reason to treat it as the default S&P 500 fund.
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