TBIL vs VBIL

TBILAF/m US Treasury 3 Month Bill Fund

VBILAVanguard 0-3 Month Treasury Bill ETF

In short

TBIL One bond, one job: TBIL owns the newest 3-month Treasury bill and rolls into the next at each month's rebalance, so you hold the current 3-month rate, not a blend. Pays monthly. Flagship of the first single-security Treasury suite.

VBIL Vanguard's cash-parking ETF: roughly two dozen Treasury bills, none maturing more than three months out, at 0.06% a year. It landed in 2025 and undercut most of the T-bill shelf on price.

Stated mandate

TBIL The Fund seeks investment results, before fees and expenses, that generally correspond to the price and yield performance of the Bloomberg US Treasury Bellwether 3M Total Return USD Unhedged Index. It normally invests at least 80% of net assets in the index components.

VBIL VBIL seeks to track the performance of a market-weighted Treasury index with an ultra-short-term dollar-weighted average maturity, using a passive approach designed to follow the Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Bills 0-3 Months Index.

Why people hold it

• TBIL Holds one security: the most recently auctioned 3-month bill, refreshed at each month's rebalance, with that on-the-run bill written in as the fallback if the index lags an auction.fminvest.com
• Pays monthly, a faster cadence than the semi-annual coupons on the Treasury notes further out the curve.fminvest.com
• A multi-billion-dollar fund that trades actively, so getting in and out is rarely the hard part. Running since 2022 as the flagship of F/m's single-security Treasury lineup.fminvest.com

• VBIL It charges 0.06% a year, well under the 0.14% median for 0-1 year Treasury funds and under the category veteran, BIL.
• Plain passive mandate on the Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Bills 0-3 Months Index, tracked very closely. One of the tightest implementations in its peer group.vanguard.com
• Roughly two dozen bills backed by the US Treasury, every one maturing inside three months. Interest goes out monthly.
• A multi-billion-dollar fund with active daily trading, which tends to keep bid-ask costs small.

Worth knowing

• TBIL At 0.15% it costs a bit more than the typical bill ETF and several times the cheapest options, with VBIL at 0.06% and XONE at 0.03%.
• One bond means no ladder to smooth things: at each roll the whole portfolio resets to the latest auction rate, up or down.fminvest.com
• An ETF, not a money market fund. The share price floats with the market instead of being managed to a stable $1.

• VBIL The payout floats with short-term rates. Monthly income rises and falls with what bills yield, and nothing about it is fixed.
• It opened in 2025, so its live record is short next to T-bill funds that have been running for years.
• Stretching maturity gets cheaper: peer XONE targets one-year duration at 0.03%, trading lower cost for more rate sensitivity.

Full TBIL profile⁠

Full VBIL profile⁠