SCHD vs XUDV

SCHDASchwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF

XUDVBFranklin US Dividend Booster Index ETF

In short

SCHD The dividend fund that checks the balance sheet before it checks the yield. SCHD only considers companies with 10 straight years of payouts, then ranks the survivors on cash flow, return on equity and dividend growth. Quality gate first, income second, at six basis points.

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

SCHD The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the total return of the Dow Jones U.S. Dividend 100TM Index.

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

• SCHD Charges 0.06% a year, near the floor for US equity ETFs and a fraction of what the typical dividend-screen fund costs.schwabassetmanagement.com
• The rulebook is strict: 10 consecutive years of dividends to qualify, then a composite rank on cash-flow-to-total-debt, return on equity, yield and five-year dividend growth.spglobal.com
• Index rules cap any single stock at 4.5% and any sector at 25%, so one hot name cannot quietly become the whole income stream.spglobal.com
• Running since 2011 and now among the largest, most heavily traded dividend ETFs, with tracking that stays very close to its index.

• 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

• SCHD Roughly 100 names, every one a long-time dividend payer. The fast-growing non-payers that drive much of the US market are not eligible, by design.spglobal.com
• The yield and quality screens tilt it toward mature, cash-generating sectors, so it looks nothing like a total-market fund. Distributions land quarterly, not monthly.spglobal.com
• Not the absolute cheapest shelf item: VIG runs 0.04% and DIVB 0.05%, though both screen for dividends differently.

• 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 SCHD profile⁠

Full XUDV profile⁠