$10,000 in DGRO ten years ago is worth about $34,400 today. That same $10,000 in SCHD? Roughly $30,400.
Four grand difference. Two “dividend ETFs.” And the SCHD vs DGRO debate barely gets mentioned compared to the usual SCHD vs VOO argument.
SCHD gets all the love on Reddit — higher yield, Schwab brand, borderline cult following. DGRO? 400+ stocks, a lower yield, zero hype. Most people scrolling r/dividends have never even considered it.
I used to think higher yield = better returns. Spent years in that camp. Turns out the ETF that pays you more today isn’t always the one that makes you richer over time. And once I saw the actual numbers — year by year, dollar by dollar — I couldn’t unsee it.
If you’ve been going back and forth between these two (or you just finished reading our SCHD vs VOO breakdown and want the dividend-vs-dividend angle), this is the comparison I wish I’d had three years ago.
SCHD vs DGRO at a Glance
| Metric | SCHD | DGRO |
|---|---|---|
| Full Name | Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF | iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF |
| Issuer | Charles Schwab | BlackRock (iShares) |
| Index Tracked | Dow Jones U.S. Dividend 100 | Morningstar US Dividend Growth |
| Inception | Oct 2011 | Jun 2014 |
| Expense Ratio | 0.06% | 0.08% |
| Dividend Yield (TTM) | 3.38% | 2.02% |
| 5-Year Dividend Growth | 10.6%/yr | 9.2%/yr |
| Holdings | ~100 | ~400 |
| Top 10 Concentration | 41.9% | 26.1% |
| 10-Year Annualized Return | ~11.8% | ~13.1% |
| Max Drawdown | -33.4% | -35.1% |
| AUM | ~$82B | ~$30B |
SCHD pays 67% more income right now. DGRO made $4,000 more over a decade. That’s the entire SCHD vs DGRO debate in two numbers.
📈 SCHD vs DGRO — Live Price Comparison
What Each ETF Actually Does With Your Money
On the surface, same deal. U.S. dividend stocks. Low fees. Quarterly payouts.
Under the hood? Completely different stock-picking logic.
SCHD wants companies that are already writing big dividend checks. The Dow Jones U.S. Dividend 100 Index screens for high current yield and at least 10 straight years of payments. It’s a “pay me now” fund — about 100 stocks, loaded with consumer staples (19.4%), financials (18.2%), and healthcare. Tech? Only 8.8% of the portfolio.
DGRO doesn’t care as much about today’s yield. The Morningstar US Dividend Growth Index looks for companies that keep raising their dividends — and have the earnings to keep doing it. Apple yielding 0.5% but hiking its dividend 7% a year? That’s a DGRO stock. The portfolio is four times wider at ~400 names, and tech takes up 17.9%.
Nine percentage points more tech. That single difference explains most of what you’re about to see in the SCHD vs DGRO performance data.
Top Holdings: Follow the Money
| SCHD Top 5 | Weight | DGRO Top 5 | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lockheed Martin (LMT) | ~4.5% | Exxon Mobil (XOM) | 3.44% |
| Texas Instruments (TXN) | ~4.3% | Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) | 3.14% |
| Chevron (CVX) | ~4.2% | JPMorgan Chase (JPM) | 2.73% |
| Pfizer (PFE) | ~4.0% | Apple (AAPL) | 2.62% |
| Cisco (CSCO) | ~3.9% | AbbVie (ABBV) | 2.58% |
SCHD’s top 10: 41.9% of the fund in ten names. Pfizer tanks, Chevron has an off year — you feel it. Both had rough stretches recently.
DGRO’s top 10 only take up 26.1%. Apple, Microsoft (2.52%), Broadcom (2.01%) — companies paying modest dividends but growing them fast, with stock prices that have been on a run. No single name can sink you.
SCHD bets on mature businesses writing fat checks. DGRO bets on companies whose checks — and share prices — are still getting bigger.
Year-by-Year Total Returns: Where It Gets Interesting
Total return = price appreciation + reinvested dividends. The only number that actually grows your net worth:
| Year | SCHD | DGRO | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | +20.88% | +21.66% | DGRO |
| 2018 | -5.58% | -2.32% | DGRO |
| 2019 | +27.29% | +28.35% | DGRO |
| 2020 | +15.04% | +12.18% | SCHD |
| 2021 | +35.61% | +26.65% | SCHD 🔥 |
| 2022 | -3.26% | -7.91% | SCHD 🛡️ |
| 2023 | +4.55% | +10.47% | DGRO |
| 2024 | +11.66% | +16.62% | DGRO |
2021 was SCHD’s year. Value ripped. +35.61% — one of the best calendar years any dividend ETF has ever posted. Then 2022 hit, and SCHD barely flinched: down 3.26% while DGRO lost nearly 8%. If you were retired and living off dividends, that mattered.
But then 2023 and 2024 happened. Tech came back hard. Apple, Broadcom, Microsoft — the names DGRO owns and SCHD mostly doesn’t. Two-year combined gap: about 11 percentage points in DGRO’s favor.
SCHD vs DGRO scoreboard since 2017: DGRO takes 5 out of 8 years. SCHD won the two years that mattered most for capital preservation. DGRO won the rest.
SCHD vs DGRO: $10K With Dividends Reinvested
Most SCHD vs DGRO comparisons show price return only. That’s lazy — and misleading. Dividends matter, especially for SCHD. So here’s what actually happened to $10,000 with every dividend reinvested back into more shares:
| Timeframe | SCHD | DGRO | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| After 3 Years | $11,680 | $14,970 | -$3,290 |
| After 5 Years | $15,860 | $18,310 | -$2,450 |
| After 10 Years | $30,400 | $34,400 | -$4,000 |
Even with SCHD’s higher dividends getting reinvested every quarter, DGRO still comes out ahead by $4,000 on $10K. The price appreciation gap is wider than the dividend income gap.
On $100K? That’s a $40,000 difference. Money you never see because it quietly compounds in the background.
“But doesn’t SCHD’s dividend reinvestment snowball faster since it pays more?”
It does snowball — SCHD reinvests 67% more dividends each quarter, buying more shares each time. But those extra shares are in a fund that’s appreciating at 11.8%, not 13.1%. The snowball is fatter but rolling on a slower hill. DGRO’s snowball is leaner but on a steeper slope, and after a decade the steeper slope wins.
SCHD vs DGRO: $100K Income Projection Over Time
Here’s where SCHD fights back. If you’re not reinvesting — you’re spending the dividends to live on — SCHD’s income stream is hard to beat.
This table assumes $100K invested, no reinvestment, and each fund’s dividend keeps growing at its 5-year historical rate (SCHD: 10.6%/yr, DGRO: 9.2%/yr):
| Year | SCHD Income | DGRO Income | SCHD Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today | $3,380 | $2,020 | +$1,360 |
| Year 3 | $4,570 | $2,630 | +$1,940 |
| Year 5 | $5,590 | $3,140 | +$2,450 |
| Year 10 | $9,240 | $4,880 | +$4,360 |
| Year 15 | $15,260 | $7,580 | +$7,680 |
| Year 20 | $25,220 | $11,770 | +$13,450 |
Read that Year 20 line. $100K in SCHD is throwing off $25,220 a year — a 25.2% yield on cost. DGRO? $11,770. That’s more than double the income from the same original investment.
This is the number that SCHD investors are buying. Not today’s yield. Not the total return comparison. The trajectory of that income stream over decades. SCHD starts higher and grows slightly faster (10.6% vs 9.2%), so the gap keeps widening year after year.
For someone in their 50s or 60s building a portfolio they plan to live off? These income projections make SCHD look like the obvious pick. For someone in their 30s who won’t touch the money for 20 years? Total return still wins — and that’s DGRO.
👇 SCHD vs DGRO Dividend Income Calculator
Plug in your own numbers. See exactly how much income each fund generates — and what happens when you reinvest vs spend the dividends.
Risk: How Bad Can It Get?
| Risk Metric | SCHD | DGRO |
|---|---|---|
| Max Drawdown | -33.4% | -35.1% |
| 1-Month Volatility | 3.80% | 2.69% |
| Sharpe Ratio (12M) | 0.94 | 1.13 |
| Correlation | 0.94 (move almost identically) | |
| 2022 Return | -3.26% | -7.91% |
This confused me at first when looking at the SCHD vs DGRO risk data. SCHD held up better in the 2022 crash, smaller max drawdown historically — sounds safer, right?
But DGRO’s daily volatility is actually lower (2.69% vs 3.80%), and its Sharpe ratio is higher (1.13 vs 0.94). More return per unit of risk. Four hundred stocks smooth out the bumps that SCHD’s concentrated 100-stock portfolio can’t avoid. When one of SCHD’s top holdings has a bad quarter — and with 42% in ten names, that quarter hits hard — DGRO barely registers it because no single stock makes up more than 3.5%.
That 0.94 correlation is worth flagging too. These two funds move almost in lockstep. Owning both doesn’t give you much you don’t already get from one of them. For real diversification alongside a dividend ETF, pair it with something that actually moves differently — QQQ for growth, or VTI for total market.
The Sector Bet You’re Making
| Sector | SCHD | DGRO |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer Staples | 19.4% | ~8% |
| Financials | 18.2% | 20.5% |
| Technology | 8.8% | 17.9% |
| Healthcare | ~15% | ~14% |
| Energy | ~10% | ~8% |
Tech is the elephant. DGRO has more than double SCHD’s tech allocation. Over the last decade, tech was the single best-performing sector in the market. Remove tech from both portfolios and the return gap probably vanishes.
SCHD goes heavy on consumer staples instead — the Coca-Colas and Procter & Gambles of the world. Fortress companies that do fine in recessions. Terrible when everything’s ripping higher.
Do I think tech keeps winning for another decade? Maybe. AI spending is accelerating, cloud margins keep expanding, Apple hasn’t stopped printing money. But cycles exist. Value had its day in 2021-2022. It’ll have another one. If you’re sitting on SCHD when that rotation hits, you’ll look like a genius. If it takes five more years, DGRO holders keep pulling ahead. That’s the core SCHD vs DGRO gamble.
I don’t pretend to know which plays out. Nobody does.
The Fee Difference: Don’t Overthink This
SCHD: 0.06%. DGRO: 0.08%. Difference: $2 per year on $10,000.
Two dollars.
I’ve seen people agonize over this in forum threads. If you want to see what fee differences actually matter, play with our VOO vs SPY fee calculator — that gap is worth thinking about. SCHD/DGRO? Not even a rounding error.
The SCHD vs DGRO Verdict
You’re retired or close to it and need income now. You’re building a dividend portfolio that covers real expenses — rent, groceries, car payments. You want crash protection (SCHD barely flinched in 2022). And you’re okay giving up some total return for fatter quarterly checks.
You have 10+ years before you need the money. You want dividends plus growth — not one or the other. You’d rather own 400 stocks than bet on 100. And you want tech in your dividend fund without switching to QQQ.
I keep seeing this on Reddit. “Just buy SCHD and DGRO!” At 0.94 correlation, that’s buying the same fund twice with different labels. Pick one, then pair it with a broad index like VTI or VOO. Or if you’re working toward FIRE, run the numbers on how savings rate impacts your timeline first — it matters more than which dividend ETF you pick.
There’s no wrong answer in the SCHD vs DGRO debate. Both are great funds. The real risk isn’t picking the “wrong” one — it’s not investing at all.
If I’m being honest, I keep it simple. DGRO goes into the dividend sleeve right now. I’m in my 30s, two kids, long runway. I don’t need the income today — I need the $500K to become $1.2 million. That’s a compounding problem, and DGRO’s 13% annual return solves it faster. Could SCHD outperform over the next decade? Sure, if value rotates hard. But I’m not trying to optimize for the absolute best possible outcome. I’m optimizing for something I can stick with for 20+ years without second-guessing every quarterly report.
Still weighing whether SCHD fits alongside a core S&P 500 fund? Our SCHD vs VOO deep-dive breaks that down.
Key Takeaways
📊 10 years: DGRO turned $10K into $34,400. SCHD turned it into $30,400. DGRO wins by $4,000.
💰 Dividend income: SCHD pays 67% more — $3,380/yr vs $2,020/yr per $100K. On $500K, that’s $6,800/yr more in your pocket.
🛡️ Worst crash: SCHD lost 3.26% in 2022. DGRO lost 7.91%. SCHD is the sleep-at-night fund.
📈 Risk-adjusted: DGRO’s Sharpe ratio (1.13) beats SCHD’s (0.94). More return per unit of risk, thanks to 400-stock diversification.
🔀 The tech gap: DGRO holds 17.9% tech vs SCHD’s 8.8%. That single difference explains most of the return gap.
🎯 0.94 correlation in holdings. Owning both is a tech overweight, not diversification.
FAQ: SCHD vs DGRO
Is SCHD or DGRO better for retirement income?
SCHD, no contest. 3.38% yield vs 2.02%. On half a million bucks, that’s $16,900 from SCHD vs $10,100 from DGRO. If dividend checks pay your bills, SCHD does the job better.
Which has better total returns?
DGRO — about 1.3 percentage points per year over the last decade. Doesn’t sound like much until you compound it on a six-figure portfolio for ten years. Then it’s a lot.
Should I hold both?
I wouldn’t. 0.94 correlation = basically the same fund in two wrappers. Pick one, then pair it with VTI or VOO for actual diversification.
Why did SCHD underperform recently?
8.8% tech. That’s the whole story. Apple, Broadcom, and Microsoft went on a tear in 2023-2024, and SCHD was sitting on Pfizer and Chevron. Not a bad fund — wrong market for its sector mix.
Does the fee difference matter?
No. 0.06% vs 0.08%. Some fee gaps matter. This one doesn’t.
Not investment advice. Past returns don’t guarantee future results. Data from PortfoliosLab, StockAnalysis, and FinanceCharts as of early 2026. Talk to a financial advisor before making portfolio decisions.
QuantFlowLab · Data-Driven Investing Education