VOO vs SPY: Dividend/Income Calculator Comparison
VOO (Vanguard S&P 500 ETF) and SPY (SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust) track the same S&P 500 index, so this page runs both through one shared scenario to compare what actually differs — expense ratio, legal structure, and how each handles its incoming dividends.
VOO
SPY
Set one scenario below — the same contribution, horizon, and account run through both funds, so the numbers are comparable rather than pulled from two separate defaults. Each result is a range, not a single figure: forward growth is an editorial preset assumption, not a prediction.
Account & tax treatment ›
Base-scenario path for each fund at your horizon. After-tax reflects the taxable account — qualified-dividend tax as paid, plus capital-gains tax if you sell — and reads as a dash inside an IRA or Roth. NAV erosion shows a dash for both, since neither writes options or returns principal to manufacture its yield; the live differences are the fee and SPY's trust structure.
| Fund | Annual income | Portfolio value | After-tax (if sold) | Yield on cost | NAV erosion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VOO | — | — | — | — | — |
Which one fits whom
These two funds hold the same 500 stocks in the same weights, so the decision is not about what you own — it is about the wrapper around it. If you are a long-term buy-and-hold investor putting money in and leaving it, VOO charges 0.03% against SPY's 0.0945% for identical exposure, and that fee gap is close to the only thing separating their long-run returns. If instead you trade actively, write options, or need to move size in and out quickly, SPY's deeper order book and more active options market are worth the higher fee — advantages a buy-and-hold holder never uses. Neither is better in the abstract: the calculator above runs both through your scenario so you can see the fee drag on your own numbers, and decide whether liquidity you may never use is worth paying for.
The fee gap on the same index
Because VOO and SPY track the identical S&P 500, the expense ratio is not a footnote here — it is much of the story. VOO and its peers charge 0.03%; SPY charges 0.0945%, roughly three times as much, and that difference comes off price growth every single year. On a small balance over a few years it is trivial; stretch the horizon slider out to 30 or 40 years and the drag grows with the balance it is charged against, because a percentage fee bites a larger dollar amount as the account compounds. The projection subtracts each fund's expense ratio rather than ignoring it, so the terminal bands you see already reflect the gap — set the same inputs on both and the difference in the value line is, almost entirely, the fee.
Why SPY behaves a little differently
The one structural difference worth knowing is the legal wrapper. SPY is a unit investment trust, the format State Street used when it launched the fund in 1993, while VOO uses the registered-investment-company structure. A unit investment trust must hold the index exactly and cannot reinvest incoming dividends inside the fund or lend its securities to earn back costs, so SPY's dividends sit as cash between the ex-date and the quarterly payment — a small drag in a rising market that VOO's structure does not carry. It is a second-order effect next to the headline fee, but it points the same direction: for a pure buy-and-hold holder, SPY's older structure works slightly against total return. Both still pay a small, almost-entirely-qualified dividend near 1.0%–1.1%, taxed the same way.
Tracking, yield, and the honest bottom line
On the thing many people assume separates S&P 500 funds — tracking — there is very little daylight: both own the same names in the same market-cap weights and follow the index closely, and both pass through whatever those 500 companies pay, which is why the yields land near 1.1% for VOO and 1.0% for SPY rather than at any targeted level. The real, durable differences are the fee and the trust structure, both of which lean toward VOO for a long holder, while SPY's liquidity leans toward active use. That is a trade-off, not a verdict — run your horizon and contribution through each and read the value line, since the income line is nearly identical. For the full single-fund detail, see the VOO dividend calculator and the SPY dividend calculator.
Compare & go deeper
- VOO dividend calculator
The single-fund projection with year-by-year breakdown and yield-on-cost.
- SPY dividend calculator
The single-fund projection under the same honest after-tax engine.
- Qualified vs ordinary dividends
Why the tax character of a distribution changes the after-tax number.
- All ticker dividend calculators
The full set across income, dividend-growth, and broad funds.
Assumptions & sources ›
| Assumption | VOO | SPY | Source · asOf |
|---|---|---|---|
| Distribution yield | 1.1% | 1.0% | investor.vanguard.com · VOO asOf 2026-06 · SPY asOf 2026-07-02 |
| Dividend-per-share growth | ~5.0%/yr | ~5.0%/yr | Per-fund distribution history · VOO asOf 2026-06 · SPY asOf 2026-07-02 |
| Expense ratio | 0.03% | 0.09% | investor.vanguard.com · VOO asOf 2026-06 · SPY asOf 2026-07-02 |
| Forward price growth | 6.0%/yr | 6.0%/yr | Illustrative editorial preset — you can change the horizon and the plan, not this rate |
| Dividend character | Qualified dividends | Qualified dividends | How the taxable-account column is computed |
| Scenario band | low / base / high | Illustrative low/base/high scenario, not a probabilistic forecast | |
- VOO — investor.vanguard.com asOf 2026-06 · retrieved 2026-07-06
- SPY — ssga.com asOf 2026-07-02 · retrieved 2026-07-06
Illustrative model, not investment advice. Dividend growth is applied to the per-share distribution and the expense ratio is dragged off price growth. These inputs are what the projection runs on; the projected figures above depend on the contribution and horizon you enter, so they are computed in your browser rather than baked into the page.