VTI vs VOO: 82% Overlap, $1,850 Gap Revealed (2026)

The VTI vs VOO debate is the most overthought decision in index fund investing. Same issuer. Same 0.03% fee. Same top 10 holdings. An 82% overlap by weight. The only real difference? VTI holds about 3,000 extra small- and mid-cap stocks that, collectively, make up roughly 18% of the fund.

Over the past decade, that 18% has barely moved the needle. VOO returned about 14.8% annualized. VTI returned about 14.3%. On a $10,000 investment, the gap works out to around $1,850 across ten full years.

Still, VTI vs VOO generates more Reddit threads, Bogleheads posts, and YouTube videos than ETF comparisons with far bigger stakes. So rather than rehashing the same surface-level stats, we’re structuring this as a proper debate: each side makes its best case, then the evidence decides.

The Case for VTI: Own the Entire Market

VTI tracks the CRSP US Total Market Index, covering roughly 3,500 stocks spanning every market cap from Apple down to companies most investors have never heard of. Advocates make three main arguments in the VTI vs VOO debate.

Argument 1: The small-cap premium is real, just dormant. Academic finance has long documented that small-cap stocks outperform large caps over very long time horizons — the so-called “size factor.” The last 15 years have been dominated by mega-cap tech, which suppressed this effect. But market regimes rotate. When small caps eventually lead again, VTI captures that shift automatically. VOO misses it entirely.

Argument 2: VTI owns tomorrow’s blue chips today. Tesla, NVIDIA, and AMD all lived outside the S&P 500 before they became household names. VTI holders owned those companies during their early growth phase. VOO holders had to wait until the S&P committee decided to add them — often after much of the initial run-up had already happened.

Argument 3: One ticker, zero gaps. VTI is the entire U.S. stock market in a single purchase. No need to layer on a mid-cap fund, a small-cap fund, or worry about coverage holes. For investors who want maximum simplicity with no asterisks, VTI is the cleaner choice.

There’s also a minor tax efficiency edge. VTI has lower portfolio turnover because stocks aren’t forced out the way they are when a company drops from the S&P 500. In taxable accounts, this means slightly fewer capital gains events — though Vanguard’s “heartbeat” mechanism already makes both funds extremely tax-efficient in practice.

The Case for VOO: The S&P 500 Quality Filter

VOO tracks the S&P 500, and inclusion isn’t automatic. A company needs positive earnings, sufficient market cap, adequate liquidity, and a U.S. domicile. That’s a quality screen baked directly into the index. The VOO side of the VTI vs VOO debate has been winning for a reason.

Argument 1: You skip the bottom of the barrel. VTI’s extra 3,000 stocks include unprofitable micro-caps, pre-revenue companies, and firms on the verge of delisting. These stocks add “diversification” in name, but they’ve been a net drag on returns for over a decade. VOO filters them out by design. For a deeper look at what’s inside, see our VOO ETF Review.

Argument 2: The scoreboard speaks. VOO has outperformed VTI in 8 of the last 10 calendar years. Not by much, usually less than 1 percentage point, but consistently. As long as large-cap stocks remain the market’s engine, VOO carries a structural edge in this matchup.

Argument 3: The benchmark advantage. When CNBC says “the market was up 1% today,” they mean the S&P 500. Owning VOO means your portfolio tracks the number everyone else references. That’s not just convenient; it removes the mental friction of comparing your returns to an index you don’t actually own.

Argument 4: Modularity. Some investors prefer VOO as a large-cap core, then add a dedicated small-cap value fund like AVUV for targeted factor exposure. This approach gives more control than VTI’s market-cap-weighted allocation, where small caps only account for about 10% of the portfolio. Too little to make a real difference, but enough to slightly dilute large-cap returns.

The Evidence: How VTI vs VOO Actually Performed

Arguments are useful, but the data settles it. First, a quick side-by-side for reference, then the tables and charts that explain why this gap barely matters.

Both funds are running on the same engine. The top 10 holdings, all mega-cap tech and financials, account for roughly 35% of each portfolio. Apple alone carries more weight than VTI’s entire micro-cap allocation. The difference between VTI and VOO isn’t what they own at the top; it’s what VTI adds at the bottom.

The charts tell the story. VTI’s extra 3,000 stocks occupy just 18% of the portfolio by weight, split between mid-caps (~12%) and small/micro-caps (~6%). Apple alone outweighs the entire small-cap slice. When 82% of both funds are identical, annual returns can only diverge by fractions of a percent.

Year-by-Year Returns: VTI vs VOO

Total return including dividends. Source: Yahoo Finance, Vanguard.

VOO won 8 of the last 10 calendar years. VTI’s two wins came in 2016 and 2020, both years when small caps staged sharp recoveries. The biggest single-year gap was 2021, where VOO led by about 3 percentage points as mega-cap tech pulled away from the rest of the market. In 2023, the VTI vs VOO gap narrowed to just 0.29%. The pattern is clear: in any environment where large caps lead, VOO has a slight mathematical edge. When small caps rally, VTI picks up the slack, but those windows have been rare over the past decade.

Fees? Identical. Both charge 0.03% — that’s $3 per year on $10,000. Dividend yield? Virtually identical at ~1.1%. Unlike the VOO vs SPY comparison where fees create a clear winner, or the QQQ vs VOO comparison where risk profiles differ dramatically, VTI vs VOO is about as close to a coin flip as two ETFs can get.

📈 VTI vs VOO — Live Price Comparison

When VTI Makes More Sense Than VOO

Despite VOO’s recent winning streak, there are specific situations where VTI is the stronger pick. Taxable brokerage accounts benefit the most. VTI’s lower turnover means fewer taxable distributions, and fewer reconstitution events compared to the S&P 500’s periodic reshuffling. The savings are small on an annual basis, but they compound over decades in a taxable account.

VTI also suits investors who want one-and-done simplicity. A single VTI position with no additional funds to manage eliminates any temptation to tinker. For someone building a three-fund portfolio (U.S. stocks, international stocks, bonds), VTI is the cleaner domestic equity slot because it already includes every U.S. market cap segment.

Long time horizons also favor VTI. If you’re 25 and won’t touch this money for 30+ years, the small-cap premium has more time to materialize. Market regimes that suppress small caps don’t last forever. The 2000–2010 decade saw small-cap value beat large-cap growth by wide margins. VTI gives you passive exposure to that rotation without any rebalancing.

VTI vs VOO: Pick One and Move On

After reviewing both sides of this debate, the verdict is anticlimactic, and that’s the point. VTI and VOO are close enough that the choice between them will never be the variable that determines your financial outcome. Your savings rate, your consistency, and your ability to stay invested through downturns will compound far more wealth than the 0.5% annual gap between these two funds.

I hold VOO because I like benchmarking against the S&P 500 and keeping the option to add targeted small-cap exposure separately. But if I’d chosen VTI instead, my account balance today would look almost exactly the same.

Pick whichever one makes more sense to you, automate your contributions, and redirect the energy you’d spend on this debate toward earning more, saving more, or doing literally anything else. Pairing either fund with an income-oriented position like SCHD is worth far more of your research time than VTI vs VOO ever was.

Common Questions About VTI and VOO