State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust or Vanguard S&P 500 ETF: same stocks, different fee

The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, AVOO, is the fund to hold if you want the S&P 500 and plan to leave it alone. The State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, ASPY, owns the same stocks. It costs more, and it is the one to use when you are trading options.

The same portfolio

Both track the S&P 500 Index, the large-company benchmark kept by S&P Dow Jones Indices. Vanguard says its fund holds the stocks in the index's own weights. State Street says its fund aims for the index's price and yield, before fees.

In holdings dated Friday, October 9, 96.5% of the two portfolios line up by weight. Nvidia was the largest holding in each, at just over 8%.

ASPY closed that day at $778.57, and AVOO closed at $715.59. The lower price is a smaller share of the same index, not a discount.

The gap in the returns

The figures below are total returns at net asset value, the per-share value of what each fund owns. Dividends are reinvested, and fees are already taken out.

The window ends Wednesday, September 30, 2026. Periods longer than a year are annualized. Each issuer publishes its fund next to the S&P 500, and the index figures in the two reports agree, so the table uses one index column.

Vanguard's fund leads by 0.10 percentage points over one year, 0.12 over three years, 0.10 over five years, and 0.11 over ten years, with the three-year gap the widest.

The index column is the target the funds are measured against. It is not a fund you can buy, and it charges no fee.

Vanguard shows its fund behind that target by 0.04 percentage points at each horizon. The expense ratio is 0.03%, as Vanguard listed it on Tuesday, April 28.

State Street's fund trails the same index by 0.14 to 0.16 percentage points, depending on the window. State Street lists its expense ratio at 0.0945%. On $100,000, the fee difference is 0.0645 percentage points, or $64.50 a year. The return gap between the funds is wider than that at every window.

Compounded at the two ten-year rates, the same $100,000 finishes $3,941 higher in AVOO than in ASPY, before taxes. That figure is the gap between the two ending balances. The $64.50 is one year of the fee difference, and the $3,941 is what the wider return gap produced over those ten years.

Morningstar's Tori Brovet and Margaret Giles wrote on Tuesday, February 3 that the trust limits and the higher fee give Vanguard's fund a small edge. ASPY is a unit investment trust. The managers, Morningstar wrote, cannot reinvest dividends, cannot use derivatives to keep cash invested in the stocks, and cannot lend securities.

That dividend limit is on the managers, in the cash the fund holds between its own payouts. The return table is a separate calculation, and it assumes you reinvest the dividends you receive.

When trading is the point

The reason to accept the higher fee is options, not a one-time purchase of the shares. ETF.com wrote on Monday, June 8 that AVOO has listed options, but the contracts that trade, and the contracts still open, are a fraction of the market in ASPY.

Which one to own

Put new money you intend to hold into AVOO. The stocks match, and over the ten years through September 30 the cheaper fund kept the extra 0.11 percentage points a year.

Use ASPY if you trade options, and treat the higher fee as the cost of that market.

If you already own ASPY and you are not trading options, what staying has cost is the gap in the table, $3,941 on $100,000 over those ten years. The fee difference is $64.50 a year on that sum, smaller than the gap the returns show.

For a US investor who is not trading options, a sale inside an IRA or a 401(k) does not create a capital-gains tax, so the move to AVOO has no tax cost. In a taxable account, selling can create a tax on the gain, and that tax can be larger than the gap. Move only when the tax is smaller than the gap on the amount you would sell.