GXUS vs VXUS

GXUSBGoldman Sachs MarketBeta Total International Equity ETF

VXUSAVanguard Total International Stock ETF

In short

GXUS Goldman's plain-vanilla passport: one ticker for roughly 2,800 large and mid-cap companies outside the US, at 0.18% a year, about half the typical fee among its index-tracking international peers.

VXUS Everything outside the US in one ticker: roughly 8,600 stocks across developed and emerging markets, large caps down to small, for 0.05% a year. Vanguard's answer to international investing is to just own the whole thing.

Stated mandate

GXUS The Fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the performance of the Solactive GBS Global Markets ex United States Large & Mid Cap Index.

VXUS The fund uses a passive indexing strategy to track the FTSE Global All Cap ex US Index, which measures the performance of large-, mid-, and small-cap stocks in developed and emerging markets outside the United States.

Why people hold it

• GXUS Charges 0.18% a year against a 0.35% median for its international index peer group. Half price for the same job.
• Tracks the Solactive GBS Global Markets ex United States Large & Mid Cap Index about as tightly as anything in this cohort, with almost no drift from the benchmark it promises.
• Roughly 2,800 holdings, so a single trade buys the large and mid-cap slice of the world outside the US rather than a curated handful of it.
• Sits in the upper half of its international cohort on our review, and distributions land quarterly.

• VXUS 0.05% a year, a small fraction of the median fee among its international peers.
• One ticker, roughly 8,600 companies: developed and emerging markets, large caps down to small caps, weighted by market size.vanguard.com
• Tracks the FTSE Global All Cap ex US Index tightly, one of the cleanest index builds among the international funds we grade.
• Trading since 2011, well over $100 billion in assets and one of the busiest names in its category, which usually shows up as tight bid-ask spreads.

Worth knowing

• GXUS Thinly traded next to the category's household names. Spreads can widen, and limit orders are the usual tool for that.
• Cheap, but not the cheapest: VXUS runs 0.05% for a similar total-international mandate.
• Launched in 2023, so its record is short compared with ex-US index funds that have run for decades.

• VXUS No US stocks by design. This is the other half of a global portfolio, not the whole portfolio.vanguard.com
• Foreign currency moves feed straight into dollar returns, and Vanguard flags country and currency risk as especially high in emerging markets.vanguard.com
• Market-cap weighting means the largest developed markets and their megacaps steer the fund; the thousands of small names barely move it.vanguard.com

Full GXUS profile⁠

Full VXUS profile⁠