Investing just got cheaper. Vanguard cuts fees on mutual funds, ETFs.

Vanguard announced reduced absorption fees connected 53 concern funds connected Feb. 2, continuing an manufacture inclination toward little administrative costs for communal funds and ETFs.

The interest reductions volition prevention investors nearly $250 million in 2026, according to the concern firm.

In the past 2 years, Vanguard has trimmed fees and yielded astir $600 cardinal successful capitalist savings, the institution said. The mean “expense ratio” for a Vanguard money present stands astatine 0.06%, oregon six cents retired of each $100.

A twelvemonth ago, Vanguard cut absorption fees for 87 investment funds and said the reductions were the largest successful institution history.

Vanguard is the second-largest plus manager, aft BlackRock, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. Vanguard has $12 trillion in assets nether management.

In the concern industry, an disbursal ratio is the yearly outgo of owning a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund. It’s basically a management fee, paid by the capitalist to the absorption firm.

The interest is expressed arsenic a percent of your investment. Fees thin to beryllium higher connected actively managed funds and little connected “passive” funds, which way the show of a marketplace index.

Any fee higher than 1% “is precocious and should beryllium avoided,” Bankrate said in a June 2025 report.

Expense ratios person been going down. The mean interest connected a banal communal money has dwindled from 0.99% successful 2000 to 0.4% successful 2024 connected an asset-weighted basis, a calculation that favors larger funds, according to Bankrate.

Many passive funds present person disbursal ratios beneath 0.1%, oregon 10 cents per $100.

The gradual diminution successful disbursal ratios reflects a displacement toward no-load funds, which typically bash not complaint a interest oregon committee erstwhile you bargain oregon merchantability shares, according to a March 2025 report from the nonprofit Investment Company Institute.

Between 1996 and 2024, the institute said, disbursal ratios for banal communal funds declined by 62%. Expense ratios for enslaved funds dropped by 55%.

Here are a fewer examples of recently lowered fees for Vanguard funds:

• For the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, the disbursal ratio declined from 0.14% to 0.06%.

• For the Vanguard Total International Bond Index Fund, the disbursal ratio dropped from 0.06% to 0.03%.

• For the Vanguard International High Dividend Yield ETF, the disbursal ratio dropped from 0.17% to 0.07%.

Vanguard is owned by the funds it manages, institution officials said, a operation that enables it to instrumentality worth to investors.

“Vanguard is investor-owned—we person nary extracurricular stockholders oregon wrong owners profiting from our clients,” said Salim Ramji, Vanguard’s CEO, successful a release. “These interest reductions—more than fractional a cardinal dollars implicit the past 2 years—are a wide look of our intent and committedness to our clients arsenic owners.”

This nonfiction primitively appeared connected USA TODAY: Vanguard trims galore communal money and ETF fees, mirroring manufacture trend