Wealthy PotIVV vs VTI: What the Other 3,000 Companies Actually Buy You
IVV holds 504 large US companies. VTI holds 3,507, essentially the entire investable US market. They charge the identical 0.03%, and the extra 3,000 companies matter far less than the count suggests. Both funds filed portfolio reports with the SEC for the same date, 30 June 2026, and we matched them security by security: 88.1% of VTI's net assets sat in the very same stocks IVV held. The other 3,027 positions were 11.7% between them. Over the decade to 30 June 2026 IVV returned 15.47% a year at NAV and VTI returned 15.04%, a gap of 0.43 percentage points that is the index difference rather than a fund difference, and that flipped in VTI's favour over one year. These are close substitutes. Pick whichever one your brokerage makes cheapest to buy, and do not own both.
Table of Contents
The Short Answer
- The fee is a tie. Both prospectuses print 0.03% total annual operating expenses and both print the identical cost example: $3 after one year, $39 after ten on a $10,000 investment.
- The overlap is 88%. Matching the two funds' 30 June 2026 SEC portfolio filings security by security, 501 of VTI's positions were also IVV positions, and they were 88.1% of VTI's net assets. S&P's own prospectus language agrees: the index covered "approximately 88% of the market capitalization of all publicly traded U.S. equity securities."
- The other 3,027 names were 11.7% of the fund. The hundred largest of them added up to 3.5%.
- Ten-year returns: IVV 15.47%, VTI 15.04% a year at NAV to 30 June 2026. Over one year VTI was ahead by 0.87 points. Two months later IVV was ahead by 0.10. The window decides the short answer.
- That gap is the index, not the fund. Over the ten years to 31 December 2025 the S&P 500 beat the CRSP US Total Market Index by 0.57 points a year and IVV beat VTI by 0.53. Almost nothing is left over for the wrappers.
- Tax efficiency is a tie too. Both funds gave up 0.47 percentage points a year to taxes on distributions over ten years, on the SEC's standard calculation in their own prospectuses.
- VTI is less concentrated. Its ten largest companies were 33.4% of the fund against IVV's 37.8%. If mega-cap concentration is what worries you, that 4.4-point difference is the real reason to prefer VTI, not the stock count.
- VTI is a share class, IVV is a fund. VTI is the exchange-traded class of a $2.3 trillion Vanguard mutual fund. IVV is a standalone iShares fund. That shows up in the plumbing, not the returns.
How Much of VTI Is Already IVV
Every comparison of these two funds says the same thing: VTI adds about 3,000 smaller companies. Almost none of them tell you how much of your money those companies actually represent. You can find out, because both funds file a complete holdings list with the SEC, and for once the two filings cover the same period end: 30 June 2026.
We pulled both Form N-PORT filings, kept the common-equity lines, and matched them on ISIN rather than CUSIP. Here is what the match produced.
| Portfolios at 30 June 2026 | Lines | Share of VTI's net assets |
|---|---|---|
| VTI positions that were also IVV positions | 501 | 88.08% |
| VTI positions IVV did not hold | 3,027 | 11.70% |
| The hundred largest of those non-index names | 100 | 3.52% |
| IVV positions VTI did not hold | 2 | 0.14% of IVV |
| IVV equity lines in total | 503 | |
| VTI equity lines in total | 3,528 |
That 88% is the whole argument. Nearly nine dollars in every ten inside VTI are invested in exactly the companies IVV already owns, in almost exactly the same proportions, because both funds weight by market value and the same handful of giants dominate both. The long tail is real, but it is a tenth of the fund.
S&P's own description, quoted in IVV's prospectus, lands on the same number from the opposite direction:
"As of March 31, 2026, the Underlying Index included approximately 88% of the market capitalization of all publicly traded U.S. equity securities."
Two completely different methods, a holdings-level match and the index provider's own coverage statistic, agree to a hundredth of a point.
One correction to a thing everyone repeats. VTI is not a strict superset of the S&P 500. At 30 June 2026 IVV held two companies that VTI did not hold at all: NXP Semiconductors NV, incorporated in the Netherlands, and Amcor plc, incorporated in Jersey. S&P will admit a company with its operational headquarters in the United States even if it is incorporated elsewhere. The total-market index Vanguard tracks will not. Together those two were 0.14% of IVV, so this is a footnote rather than a reason to choose, but "VTI contains everything IVV contains" is not literally true.
On the other side, VTI's largest holding that IVV does not own was Space Exploration Technologies Corp, at 0.14% of the fund. The rest of the top of that list is familiar mid-cap growth: Snowflake, Bloom Energy, Cloudflare, Astera Labs, Rocket Lab, Cheniere Energy.
IVV vs VTI Side by Side
| IVV | VTI | |
|---|---|---|
| Full name | iShares Core S&P 500 ETF | Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF |
| Issuer | BlackRock Fund Advisors | The Vanguard Group, through Vanguard Capital Management |
| Index | S&P 500 | Morningstar US Total Market Index (called the CRSP US Total Market Index until July 2026) |
| Expense ratio | 0.03% | 0.03% |
| Prospectus cost on $10,000, 10 years | $39 | $39 |
| Holdings | 504 (28 Sep 2026) | 3,507 (31 Aug 2026) |
| Net assets | $883,775,582,984 (28 Sep 2026) | ETF share class $690.1bn; whole fund $2.3 trillion (31 Aug 2026) |
| Legal form | Standalone fund, a single-class series of iShares Trust | A share class, the exchange-traded class of a seven-class Vanguard mutual fund |
| Replication | Representative sampling; may not hold every component | Sampling the target index |
| 30-day median bid-ask spread | 0.01% (28 Sep 2026) | 0.005% (28 Sep 2026) |
| 30-day SEC yield | 0.94% (31 Aug 2026) | 1.01% (31 Aug 2026) |
| Portfolio turnover | 3% (year to 31 Mar 2026) | 3% (year to 31 Dec 2025) |
| Inception | 15 May 2000 | 24 May 2001 |
| Exchange | NYSE Arca | NYSE Arca |
| Distributions | Quarterly | Quarterly |
| CUSIP | 464287200 | 922908769 |
A note on the name. Morningstar acquired the Center for Research in Security Prices, and Vanguard renamed ten funds and their target indexes effective 29 July 2026. VTI is now the Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF and its index is the Morningstar US Total Market Index. The ticker, the CUSIP, the objective, the methodology and the fee are all unchanged. Prospectuses dated April 2026 still say CRSP because they predate the change, which is why you will see both names in circulation. We cover it in more depth in VTI vs VOO.
Where the Two Funds Do Diverge
If the overlap is 88%, what is genuinely different? Concentration. Adding a long tail of smaller companies has to dilute the top, and it does, measurably. Both numbers below come from the same pair of 30 June 2026 SEC filings, with multiple share classes of the same company added together.
| Share of the fund held in its largest companies | IVV | VTI | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ten largest | 37.83% | 33.44% | 4.39 |
| 25 largest | 51.75% | 45.55% | 6.20 |
| 50 largest | 63.42% | 55.84% | 7.58 |
| 100 largest | 75.39% | 66.49% | 8.90 |
| Distinct companies held | 500 | 3,477 |
The top ten are the same ten companies in the same order in both funds, only at lower weights in VTI: NVIDIA 7.51% in IVV against 6.36% in VTI, Apple 6.58% against 5.87%, Microsoft 4.29% against 3.83%.
So the honest way to describe VTI is not "more diversified because it holds seven times as many stocks". It is the same portfolio with the mega-caps dialled down by about four points and the difference spread across three thousand small positions. If your worry is that the S&P 500's top ten have grown to more than a third of it, VTI reduces that to a third minus four points. It does not solve it. Nothing cap-weighted does. An equal-weight fund is the tool for that problem.
What the Difference Has Been Worth
Three matched pairs, three different dates, each fund shown against its own stated benchmark so you can see how closely each one tracks.
| Annualized, as of 30 June 2026 | 1 year | 3 years | 5 years | 10 years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IVV, NAV total return | 22.29% | 20.58% | 13.37% | 15.47% |
| S&P 500, IVV's benchmark | 22.32 | 20.59 | 13.40 | 15.50 |
| VTI, NAV total return | 23.16% | 20.43% | 12.24% | 15.04% |
| Spliced Total Stock Market Index, VTI's benchmark | 23.16 | 20.42 | 12.25 | 15.04 |
| IVV minus VTI | -0.87 | +0.15 | +1.13 | +0.43 |
Now the same comparison two months later, from the same two sources.
| Annualized, as of 31 August 2026 | 1 year | 3 years | 5 years | 10 years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IVV, NAV total return | 20.34% | 21.01% | 12.76% | 15.34% |
| VTI, NAV total return | 20.24% | 20.65% | 11.71% | 14.81% |
| IVV minus VTI | +0.10 | +0.36 | +1.05 | +0.53 |
Notice the one-year row. At the end of June, VTI was ahead by 0.87 percentage points. At the end of August, IVV was ahead by 0.10. Nothing changed about either fund in those two months. Anyone quoting a one-year number as evidence for either fund is quoting the calendar.
The ten-year row is the stable one, and both dates put IVV about half a point a year ahead. Here is why that is not an argument for IVV, from the two prospectuses, which print the SEC's standard table for the periods ended 31 December 2025.
| Average annual total return to 31 Dec 2025 | 1 year | 5 years | 10 years |
|---|---|---|---|
| IVV, before taxes | 17.85% | 14.39% | 14.78% |
| VTI ETF Shares, before taxes | 17.14% | 13.08% | 14.25% |
| IVV minus VTI | +0.71 | +1.31 | +0.53 |
| S&P 500 (in IVV's filing) | 17.88 | 14.42 | 14.82 |
| CRSP US Total Market Index (in VTI's filing) | 17.15 | 13.08 | 14.25 |
| Index minus index | +0.73 | +1.34 | +0.57 |
| IVV, after taxes on distributions | 17.48 | 14.00 | 14.31 |
| VTI, after taxes on distributions | 16.79 | 12.69 | 13.78 |
| Tax drag, IVV | 0.37 | 0.39 | 0.47 |
| Tax drag, VTI | 0.35 | 0.39 | 0.47 |
Two things fall out of that table.
First, the gap between the funds is the gap between the indexes. The S&P 500 beat the total-market index by 0.57 points a year over ten years; IVV beat VTI by 0.53. Whatever you are seeing, you are seeing large caps outrunning small and mid caps over one particular decade, not one manager outrunning another. Both funds tracked their own index to within about 0.03 points a year.
Second, tax efficiency is a dead heat. Both funds gave up 0.47 percentage points a year to taxes on distributions over ten years. VTI yields a little more, 1.01% against 0.94%, and the difference is too small to show up. There is no taxable-account reason to prefer either one.
For scale, what the ten-year gap compounds to:
| Hypothetical $10,000 held for 10 years | Ending value |
|---|---|
| At VTI's 10-year NAV return (15.04%) | $40,597 |
| At IVV's 10-year NAV return (15.47%) | $42,140 |
| Difference | about $1,543 |
This is educational information, not personalized investment advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results, all investing carries the risk of loss, and the figures above are backward-looking arithmetic rather than a projection. Verify current figures with each issuer and consider speaking with a licensed advisor before acting.
Want to run the same maths on your own contribution schedule? Use the compound interest calculator.
Two Different Kinds of Fund
The funds look symmetrical on a fact sheet. Legally they are built differently, and it is worth knowing which one you own.
IVV is a standalone fund with one share class. It is a series of iShares Trust, and BlackRock charges a unitary fee: the advisory agreement says BFA "will pay all operating expenses of the Fund" apart from the management fee, interest, taxes, portfolio transaction costs, distribution fees and litigation. What you see on the fee table is what you pay, and it does not drift with the fund's own administrative costs.
VTI is a share class, not a fund. Its prospectus opens by saying so: "Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, an exchange-traded share class of Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund." That fund also has Investor, Admiral, Institutional, Institutional Plus and Institutional Select classes, all owning one shared portfolio. At the end of 2025 the whole fund held $2,056.6bn and the ETF class was $570.9bn of it, about 28%.
Three practical consequences of that structure:
- You can convert into it. Vanguard's fee table lists a "Transaction Fee on Conversion to ETF Shares" of none. If you hold VTSAX in a taxable account at Vanguard you can convert to VTI without selling. There is no equivalent path into IVV. See VTSAX vs VTI.
- The fund's realized gains are shared. Redemptions in kind through the ETF class help wash capital gains out of the whole fund, which is part of why the mutual fund classes have been tax-efficient too.
- Reported figures mix levels. Vanguard publishes net assets for the fund and for the class; BlackRock has only one number to publish. That is why the size row in the table above needs two figures on the Vanguard side.
Neither structure is better for a buy-and-hold investor. They just are not the same object, and comparisons that put "$2.3 trillion" next to "$884 billion" are comparing a fund with a share class.
The One Place the Small Caps Pay
Index funds can lend their shares to short sellers and keep part of the fee. Large US companies are abundant and cheap to borrow, so lending them earns very little. Smaller companies are scarcer and harder to borrow, so they earn more. If that theory is right, the whole-market fund should out-earn the large-cap fund on lending. Both issuers publish the number, so we can check.
| Net securities lending income | IVV | VTI |
|---|---|---|
| Fiscal year | Ended 31 Mar 2026 | Ended 31 Dec 2025 |
| Gross lending income | $115,892,624 | not separately disclosed |
| Rebates paid to borrowers | $94,579,636 | not separately disclosed |
| Net lending income | $16,510,341 | $194,031,000 |
| Net assets at the fiscal year end | $720,543,356,321 | $2,056,589,591,000 |
| As a share of net assets | 0.0023%, about 0.23 basis points | 0.0094%, about 0.94 basis points |
| Securities on loan at the year end | not separately disclosed | $3,860,306,000, or 0.19% of net assets |
The theory holds. VTI earned about four times as much from lending, relative to its size, as IVV did: 0.94 basis points against 0.23. Put another way, lending covered roughly a third of VTI's 3-basis-point fee and under a tenth of IVV's.
Be honest about the scale, though. Not quite one basis point a year is a rounding error next to a half-point annual difference in index returns. Neither issuer attributes any part of its tracking difference to lending, and neither do we. It is the one measurable place where the small-cap tail earns its keep, and it is tiny.
Which One Fits You
If you want one US stock fund and never to think about it again, take VTI. It owns the market by definition, so it never needs a decision about whether small and mid caps deserve a place. It is slightly less top-heavy. Its published spread is narrower, 0.005% against 0.01%. If you are already a Vanguard customer or you hold VTSAX, it is the obvious answer.
If your account lives at a broker where IVV is the free or default option, take IVV. On the evidence above, you are giving up almost nothing: 88% of the same portfolio, the identical fee, the identical tax drag, and a return difference that is the index's doing and has pointed both ways.
Do not own both. Holding IVV and VTI together produces a portfolio that is nearly 100% overlapping with itself, with a slight tilt back towards large caps for no reason. Pick one.
Already hold one in a taxable account? Stay. Selling a long-held position realizes a capital gain, and there is no half-point-a-year advantage on offer to recover it. Half a point a year is what one particular decade produced, not a property of either fund. If you want the other exposure, send new contributions there instead and check your 2026 tax bracket before doing anything irreversible.
If what you actually want is more small-cap exposure, note that VTI is a weak tool for it. Everything outside the S&P 500 is 11.7% of the fund. A deliberate small-cap or extended-market holding alongside a large-cap core gives you control over that number; VTI hands you whatever the market's own proportions happen to be. That is a feature if you believe in market weights, and a limitation if you do not.
Comparing something else? Vanguard's own S&P 500 fund is the closer match to IVV, covered in IVV vs VOO, and the same large-versus-total question inside one fund family is VTI vs VOO. iShares has its own total-market fund at ITOT vs VTI, Schwab's is SCHB vs VTI, and the mutual fund twin is VTSAX vs VTI. If you are weighing a US-only core against a global one, see VT vs VTI.
Sources & Methodology
Every figure on this page was read from an issuer document, an SEC filing, or the fund's own page, not from a secondary summary or another comparison site.
- iShares Trust, Form 485BPOS filed 27 July 2026: IVV's fee table, the unitary fee language, the sampling and lending permissions, the index coverage statistic, the average annual total returns to 31 December 2025, and the securities lending income table for the year to 31 March 2026.
- Vanguard Index Funds, Form 485BPOS filed 28 April 2026: the VTI ETF Shares fee table, the share-class language, the sampling description, the conversion fee, and the average annual total returns to 31 December 2025.
- Vanguard Index Funds, Form N-CSR for the year ended 31 December 2025: the Total Stock Market Index Fund's audited Statement of Operations, including net securities lending income, and its Statement of Assets and Liabilities, including net assets by share class and securities on loan.
- IVV, Form N-PORT for the period ended 30 June 2026 and VTI, Form N-PORT for the period ended 30 June 2026: the complete holdings lists behind the overlap and concentration tables.
- iShares, IVV fund page and IVV Fact Sheet, 30 June 2026: net assets, holdings count, spread, SEC yield, and the annualized NAV and benchmark returns.
- Vanguard, VTI profile page: the current fund name and index name, net assets for the fund and the share class, holdings count, spread, SEC yield, and the quarter-end and month-end return tables.
How the overlap was computed. We took both funds' Form N-PORT filings for the same period end, kept the lines classified as common equity, and matched them on ISIN. Matching on CUSIP silently fails here: iShares reports "N/A" as the CUSIP for foreign-incorporated S&P 500 members such as Linde plc and Chubb Ltd, which understates the overlap by more than two points. Weights are each filing's own percent-of-net-assets field, summed by us. Multiple share classes of one company were combined for the concentration table only.
What we could not verify, stated rather than guessed. We did not open Morningstar's own page for the Morningstar US Total Market Index, so the index name, the July 2026 rename and the coverage language come from Vanguard and from Vanguard's SEC filings rather than from the index provider. iShares does not publish a securities-on-loan balance in the document we used, so the lending table compares income and not loan balances. The two issuers compute price-earnings and price-book ratios differently and publish them on different dates, so we have not compared valuation ratios. They also publish trading volume over different windows, so we have not compared volume. Neither issuer attributes any part of its tracking difference to cash, lending or sampling, and neither do we. Vanguard's lending figure covers the whole multi-class fund for calendar 2025 while the iShares figure covers IVV alone for the year to 31 March 2026, so that comparison is approximate.
This article is for general education and is not investment, tax or legal advice. Fund data changes daily, index returns are unmanaged and cannot be invested in directly, and past performance does not guarantee future results. All investing carries the risk of loss. Check current figures with the issuer and consider speaking with a licensed financial professional before making a decision.
FAQ: IVV vs VTI
Is IVV or VTI better?
Neither, for most people. They charge the same 0.03%, 88% of VTI's money is invested in the same companies IVV holds, and their after-tax efficiency is identical. Over the ten years to 30 June 2026 IVV returned 15.47% a year and VTI 15.04%, a difference created by large caps beating small and mid caps over that decade rather than by anything either manager did. Choose on which one your broker makes cheaper or easier to buy.
How much of VTI is the S&P 500?
88.1% of net assets at 30 June 2026, measured by matching both funds' SEC holdings filings for that date. The remaining 3,027 positions were 11.7% between them. S&P's own coverage statistic, quoted in IVV's prospectus, says the index covered "approximately 88% of the market capitalization of all publicly traded U.S. equity securities" as of 31 March 2026.
Does VTI hold everything IVV holds?
Almost. At 30 June 2026 IVV held two companies VTI did not: NXP Semiconductors NV and Amcor plc, both incorporated outside the United States and both admitted to the S&P 500 on operational grounds. Together they were 0.14% of IVV. Every other IVV holding was also in VTI.
Should I own both IVV and VTI?
No. The two portfolios overlap by 88% of VTI's weight, so holding both gives you a near-duplicate with a mild large-cap tilt and two positions to rebalance instead of one. If you want a total-market core plus a deliberate large-cap overweight, that is a decision worth making explicitly with chosen weights, not by accident.
Which has lower fees, IVV or VTI?
Neither. Both prospectuses state total annual fund operating expenses of 0.03% and both print the same example: $3 in the first year and $39 over ten years on a $10,000 investment. VTI's published 30-day median bid-ask spread is narrower, 0.005% against 0.01%, which matters only if you trade often.
Is VTI more diversified than IVV?
By holding count, obviously: 3,507 against 504. By money, modestly. VTI's ten largest companies were 33.4% of the fund against IVV's 37.8%, and its hundred largest were 66.5% against 75.4%. Both are dominated by the same mega-caps because both weight by market value.
Is IVV or VTI better in a Roth IRA?
It makes no difference. Both are equally tax-efficient, and inside a Roth neither tax treatment applies anyway. Pick the one your custodian trades free of commission, and if you already hold one, there is no cost to leaving it alone.
Why did VTI change its name?
Morningstar acquired the Center for Research in Security Prices and its CRSP indexes. Vanguard renamed ten funds and their target indexes effective 29 July 2026, so VTI is now the Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF tracking the Morningstar US Total Market Index. The ticker, the CUSIP, the objective, the methodology and the 0.03% fee are unchanged. Prospectuses dated before the change still print the old index name.
Does VTI earn more from lending its shares than IVV?
Yes, about four times as much relative to size, because smaller companies are harder to borrow. Net lending income was 0.94 basis points of net assets for VTI's year to 31 December 2025 and 0.23 basis points for IVV's year to 31 March 2026. Both figures are small enough to be swamped by a fraction of a point of index difference.
Cite This Page
Journalists, educators and bloggers are welcome to cite this comparison. Please link back so readers can reach the underlying filings.
"IVV vs VTI: What the Other 3,000 Companies Actually Buy You." Wealthy Pot, 2026. https://wealthypot.com/ivv-vs-vti/
Related comparisons: VTI vs VOO · IVV vs VOO · IVV vs SPY · ITOT vs VTI · SCHB vs VTI · VTSAX vs VTI · VT vs VTI · All ETF comparisons