ULST vs VBIL

ULSTBState Street Ultra Short Term Bond ETF

VBILAVanguard 0-3 Month Treasury Bill ETF

In short

ULST The active option in a category full of index trackers: State Street's managers hand-pick roughly 300 short, high-quality bonds to squeeze income out of cash-adjacent money, and pay it out monthly.

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

ULST ULST seeks to maximize current income while preserving capital and maintaining daily liquidity through short-duration, high-quality investments. It is actively managed and invests in securities somewhat longer-term than traditional cash vehicles.

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

• ULST Actively managed, not index-bound. The Bloomberg US Treasury Bellwether 3 Month Index is the yardstick, not the leash, so managers can shift across roughly 300 short, high-quality holdings.ssga.com
• Launched in 2013, it has run through a full rate cycle, from zero-bound years to the hiking era, with the same short-duration mandate.
• Income lands monthly, which suits the job it is built for: parking money that needs to stay liquid and still earn something.ssga.com
• It stays in its lane. The portfolio has hewed closely to the short-duration, high-quality brief in its own documents rather than drifting into longer or riskier paper.

• 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

• ULST At 0.20%, the fee sits right at the category median while several large rivals run cheaper (VUSB at 0.10%, SHV at 0.15%). Active management is what the gap buys.
• Not a money market fund. It holds paper somewhat longer than traditional cash vehicles, so the share price floats instead of pinning to a dollar.ssga.com
• Volume is moderate rather than category-leading, so bid-ask spreads carry more weight here than at the biggest ultra-short names.

• 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 ULST profile⁠

Full VBIL profile⁠