Take VTI over VOO unless you already own the rest of the market
Both charge 0.03%, and about a tenth of the total-market fund, by weight, sits in companies the S&P 500 does not hold.
Key takeaways
Take Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF, VTI, formerly the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, if you want one fund for U.S. stocks. It is the S&P 500 plus the rest of the market, and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, VOO, charges the same fee for the S&P 500 alone. Take VOO only if that rest already sits in another fund you own.
They charge 0.03%. That is Vanguard's expense ratio as of April 28, 2026.
Counting each shared stock at the smaller of its two weights, the two funds overlap by 89.1%, and almost all of VOO's money is in stocks VTI also holds. The other 10.9% of VTI is companies that VOO does not hold.
That comparison uses holdings files that carry no portfolio date. The holding counts and the returns below are Vanguard's as of Sept. 30, 2026.
The extra tenth is the rest of the market
As of Sept. 30, 2026, Vanguard reported 3,519 holdings in its total-market ETF and 505 in its S&P 500 ETF. VTI tracks the Morningstar US Total Market Index, which Vanguard says represents approximately 100% of investable companies in the U.S. equity market. VOO tracks the S&P 500.
Until July 28, 2026, that index was the CRSP US Total Market Index, from the Center for Research in Security Prices. Morningstar said:
"The rebrand affects naming only. Index methodologies will remain unchanged."
As of Sept. 30, the ten largest holdings were 36.1% of VTI and 40.6% of VOO. Nvidia, the largest in both, was 7.1% of VTI and 8.4% of VOO.
The four largest companies sit heavier in VOO
- VTI
- VOO
- NVDA
- VTI 7.1%
- VOO 8.4%
- AAPL
- VTI 6.6%
- VOO 7.4%
- MSFT
- VTI 5.2%
- VOO 5.8%
- Alphabet
- VTI 4.9%
- VOO 5.5%
Vanguard reported $689.2 billion in VTI and $1,032.3 billion in VOO as of Sept. 30.
The five-year gap is between the indexes
VTI launched on May 24, 2001, and VOO on Sept. 7, 2010. Vanguard reports both on windows out to 10 years, the longest of those published comparisons.
These are average annual returns on net asset value through Sept. 30, 2026, from the same fact sheets. Net asset value is the value of the stocks each fund owns.
Vanguard also reports the return from the share price. On every window below, that return was no more than 0.08 percentage point from the net asset value return.
VOO leads on every row, and the widest gap is the five-year one, 1.19 percentage points a year.
Over those five years, VTI returned the same 12.56% a year as the Morningstar US Total Market Index. The S&P 500 returned 13.79%, and VOO returned 13.75%.
VOO trailed the S&P 500 by 0.04 percentage point a year on every window in the table.
The lead belongs to the indexes, not to a difference in how the funds are run. It is a record of what they did, not a forecast, and not a reason to leave the rest of the market out.
Holding both buys the S&P 500 again
Do not hold both and call it diversification. The stocks in VOO are already the bulk of VTI. The second fund buys the S&P 500 again, and only that extra tenth is new.
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