DGRO vs XUDV

DGROAiShares Core Dividend Growth ETF

XUDVBFranklin US Dividend Booster Index ETF

In short

DGRO BlackRock's dividend-growth screen casts a wider net than most: five straight years of raises rather than ten, plus a payout-ratio cap that filters out stretched payers. About 400 US dividend raisers, large through small cap, for 0.08% a year.

XUDV Most dividend funds rank stocks by yield and buy the top of the list. XUDV's index is built by an optimizer instead, using risk models and dividend forecasts to assemble about 100 US stocks as one portfolio, at 0.09% a year.

Stated mandate

DGRO The fund seeks to follow an index of U.S. equities whose dividends have grown consistently.

XUDV The Fund intends to track its underlying index and generally maintain diversification in approximately the same proportion as that index.

Why people hold it

• DGRO Costs 0.08% a year, a small fraction of the typical fee among US dividend-screen ETFs.
• The screen has teeth: a qualified dividend, five years of uninterrupted dividend growth, a payout ratio under 75%, and the top decile of yielders cut before the other tests run.ishares.com
• Roughly 400 names across large, mid and small caps, weighted by the dividend dollars each company pays rather than by market cap.ishares.comcib.barclays
• Tracks the Morningstar US Dividend Growth Index about as tightly as this group gets, and it's an actively traded, multi-billion-dollar fund that has run since 2014.

• XUDV 0.09% a year against a 0.39% median for US dividend-screen funds. Index-giant pricing on a strategy that only launched in 2025.businesswire.com
• The index is built by New Frontier's optimizer, which uses commercial risk models and dividend forecasts to shape the whole portfolio rather than ranking stocks one by one on yield.businesswire.com
• Tracking has stayed tight to the index since launch, and payouts come quarterly.

Worth knowing

• DGRO Chopping the highest-yielding decile is deliberate: this is built around payout growth and dividend durability, not the fattest current yield on the shelf.ishares.com
• Only dividend payers qualify, so some of the market's biggest non-paying growth companies sit outside the portfolio by rule.ishares.com
• Income arrives quarterly, not monthly, and this is plain US stock exposure: no buffer, no hedge, full equity risk.

• XUDV Thinly traded with a small asset base, so spreads can run wider than on the household names in this category.
• The category giants are cheaper still (VIG 0.04%, SCHD 0.06%, DGRO 0.08%) and carry far longer records than a fund that opened in January 2025.
• The optimizer is proprietary, so the selection logic is less transparent than a published yield screen you can follow line by line.businesswire.com

Full DGRO profile⁠

Full XUDV profile⁠