How the iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF and Vanguard’s VIG Compare

DGRO and VIG are two of the biggest dividend growth ETFs in the US, and their long-term results are almost identical. From the start of 2015 to the end of 2025, $10,000 grew to about $33,960 in DGRO and about $33,560 in VIG, a gap of less than 0.2 percentage points a year.

The difference lies in how they get there. VIG, the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF, demands 10 straight years of dividend increases and leans more heavily into technology. DGRO, the iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF, needs only five years, adds a payout safety screen, and pays a higher yield.

This guide explains how each fund picks its stocks, what they own, and how their costs, yields and dividend growth compare. It also shows how they have performed year by year and over rolling five-year periods, how much cash income each actually paid on a $10,000 investment, how each behaved in up and down markets, which has really grown its dividend faster, and what the fee gap is worth over 30 years.

Start Here: Learn With FRC

Financial Regulation Courses (FRC) has no stake in which fund you choose. FRC sells no investments and earns no commission, so this comparison focuses on how each fund works and what that means for an investor.

FRC’s ETF Investing for Beginners course explains how dividend ETFs like DGRO and VIG work. ETF Investing Strategies covers dividend growth and income approaches in depth, and Advanced ETF Investing goes further into building a portfolio.

FRC’s programs and memberships are open to everyone. FRC’s year-by-year histories of DGRO and VIG tell each fund’s full story, crash by crash.

DGRO vs VIG at a Glance

Both funds exclude real estate investment trusts, pay dividends quarterly and screen out the very highest yielders. The differences lie in how strict their rules are and how much weight each company gets.

A Brief History of Both Funds

VIG launched on April 21, 2006, making it eight years older than DGRO. For most of its life it tracked an index of companies with at least 10 straight years of dividend increases, and in September 2021 it switched to the S&P U.S. Dividend Growers Index, which added a rule excluding the highest-yielding companies.

DGRO followed in June 2014 as part of BlackRock’s iShares Core range of low-cost funds. It was designed to combine dividend growth with dividend sustainability, using a shorter growth requirement and a payout ratio screen.

VIG is the larger of the two by a wide margin, with about $116 billion in assets against DGRO’s $45 billion. In February 2026, Vanguard cut VIG’s expense ratio from 0.05% to 0.04%.

How DGRO Picks Its Stocks

DGRO tracks the Morningstar US Dividend Growth Index. A company qualifies if it has raised its dividend for at least five years without interruption.

Two screens then remove riskier payers. A company’s dividend must be less than 75% of its expected earnings, and the highest-yielding 10% of eligible stocks are excluded.

The remaining companies are weighted by the total dollars of dividends they pay, with caps on any single holding. The index is rebuilt every December and rebalanced each quarter.

How VIG Picks Its Stocks

VIG tracks the S&P U.S. Dividend Growers Index. A company must have raised its dividend every year for at least 10 consecutive years, twice DGRO’s requirement.

The index then removes the highest yielders more aggressively than DGRO does. A stock in the top 25% of eligible companies by yield cannot be added, and an existing holding in the top 15% is dropped.

Holdings are weighted by company size, with each capped at 4% at the annual rebalance. Because of that, the largest companies, such as Microsoft and Apple, carry more weight in VIG than in DGRO.

The Key Differences in Plain Terms

DGRO is more inclusive. Its five-year rule lets in companies earlier in their dividend-raising careers, and its narrower yield exclusion keeps more higher-yielding companies in the fund.

VIG is stricter and leans larger. Its 10-year rule keeps only companies with long records, and its wider yield exclusion removes more of the higher payers, which pushes the fund towards large, lower-yielding growth companies.

The weighting matters too. DGRO gives the biggest weights to the companies paying the most cash, while VIG gives them to the largest companies by size, which is why VIG holds more technology.

What DGRO Owns

At the end of September 2026, DGRO’s top 10 holdings were Microsoft, Apple, ExxonMobil, AbbVie, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, Broadcom, Procter & Gamble, Philip Morris and Home Depot. Together they made up about 27% of the fund, with no single company above about 3.2%.

Technology, financials and healthcare each made up a little under a fifth of the fund, with consumer staples close behind at about 13%. That gives DGRO a broader spread across sectors than VIG.

What VIG Owns

At the end of September 2026, VIG’s top 10 holdings were Microsoft, Apple, Broadcom, Eli Lilly, JPMorgan Chase, ExxonMobil, Johnson & Johnson, Visa, Walmart and AbbVie. Together they made up about 34.5% of the fund, with Microsoft and Apple each close to 5%.

Technology was VIG’s largest sector at about 27%, followed by financials at about 19% and healthcare at about 18.5%. Consumer staples made up about 9%, less than in DGRO.

Sector Weights Side by Side

The biggest single difference is technology, where VIG holds almost nine percentage points more. DGRO makes up for it with more consumer staples and a wider spread across smaller sectors such as energy and utilities.

How Much They Overlap

DGRO and VIG overlap far more than most pairs of dividend funds. Eight of their top 15 holdings are the same, including Microsoft, Apple, Broadcom, JPMorgan Chase, ExxonMobil, Johnson & Johnson and AbbVie.

Those eight shared names alone account for roughly a fifth of each fund’s weight, and many smaller holdings appear in both. That shared core is why their returns have been so close. The differences come from the edges: VIG’s heavier technology weighting and DGRO’s larger stakes in consumer staples and higher-yielding companies such as Philip Morris.

The Cost

VIG charges an expense ratio of 0.04%, half DGRO’s 0.08%. On a $100,000 investment, that is $40 a year for VIG and $80 for DGRO.

The gap is small in dollars, but it is real and permanent. As an illustration, if both funds earned the same 8% a year before costs, $100,000 would grow to about $984,100 in 30 years at DGRO’s fee and about $995,100 at VIG’s, a difference of about $11,000 from the fee alone.

So far, DGRO’s slightly stronger returns have more than covered its higher cost. But the fee gap is the one difference between the two funds that is guaranteed to continue.

Dividend Yield

DGRO’s recent yield of about 1.9% is higher than VIG’s of about 1.5%. On a $10,000 investment, that is roughly $190 a year from DGRO, against about $150 from VIG.

The gap comes from their designs. VIG excludes a much wider band of high yielders and gives more weight to low-yielding technology giants, while DGRO keeps more higher-yielding companies and weights by dividends paid.

Dividend Growth

Both funds have strong records of rising payouts. From 2015 to 2025, DGRO’s dividend per share grew about 8.4% a year, roughly 2.2 times over, while VIG’s grew about 6.9% a year, roughly doubling.

Neither fund cut its annual dividend over that period. Both kept raising payouts through the 2020 recession and the 2022 bear market, an example of compound interest working on income.

The answer to which fund grows its dividend faster depends on the period you measure, which is why articles on this question often disagree.

Over the full decade, DGRO grew its payout faster. Over the last five years, VIG did, helped by strong increases in 2021 and 2022, so both claims you may read elsewhere are true for the period they use.

Performance Year by Year

All figures are total returns with dividends reinvested. Over 11 full calendar years, DGRO led in seven and VIG in four, but the gaps were usually small.

On average, the two funds’ annual results differed by only about 2 percentage points. That is about half the gap between DGRO and SCHD, a reflection of how much the two funds have in common.

Over the 10 calendar years from 2016 to 2025, both returned about 13.1% a year, almost exactly level. Over the five years from 2021 to 2025, DGRO returned about 11.7% a year against VIG’s 11.3%, and DGRO has pulled further ahead in 2026.

The Scorecard: 2015 to 2025

These figures cover the 11 full calendar years when both funds were running, so the comparison is like for like. DGRO edges VIG on most measures, but by very little, and both trailed the S&P 500, where the same $10,000 grew to about $39,950, or about 13.4% a year.

Rolling Returns: A Different Winner

Counting calendar years makes DGRO look like the steadier winner. Rolling periods tell a different story.

VIG led in five of the seven five-year periods, and in five of the nine three-year periods, even though DGRO led in more individual years. DGRO’s overall lead comes from a handful of strong single years, such as 2016, 2021 and 2022, rather than from consistently beating VIG over longer stretches.

The lesson is that the winner depends heavily on the start and end dates chosen. Over almost any multi-year holding period, the two funds have finished within about one percentage point a year of each other.

How Each Fund Behaved in Up and Down Markets

Both funds behaved almost identically against the market. In the S&P 500’s down years, each lost roughly half as much as the index, and in its strongest years, each captured roughly 80% of its gain.

That is the core trade-off of dividend growth investing, shown in numbers. Both funds have given up some of the market’s upside in exchange for noticeably smaller losses when stocks fall.

Which Fund Led in Which Kind of Market

The pattern is clear. When the largest technology companies lead, VIG tends to edge ahead, and when value, energy or defensive stocks lead, DGRO usually does.

If You Had Taken the Dividends as Cash

Many dividend investors spend their income rather than reinvesting it. The table below shows what $10,000 invested in each fund at the start of 2015 would have paid out in cash each year, with no dividends reinvested.

DGRO paid more income in every year, and the gap widened over time. Over the 11 years, the DGRO investor collected about $4,210 in cash, against about $3,430 from VIG, and by 2025 was earning about 5.5% a year on the original $10,000, against about 4.4% for VIG.

The share prices balanced it out. By the end of 2025, the VIG shares were worth about $27,080 and the DGRO shares about $26,170, so the two investors finished almost level in total, at about $30,510 for VIG and $30,380 for DGRO, counting both the shares and the cash collected.

In other words, the two funds reached the same place by different routes. DGRO delivered more of its return as spendable income, while VIG delivered slightly more through a rising share price.

Bear Markets and Crashes

In the 2020 COVID crash, DGRO fell about 35.1% from its February peak and VIG about 31.7%, including dividends. VIG recovered faster too, regaining its peak by late August 2020, while DGRO’s price took until mid-November.

In the 2022 bear market, the order reversed. DGRO lost about 7.9% for the year and VIG about 9.8%, as VIG’s heavier technology weighting hurt it while interest rates rose.

In late 2018, the two fell almost exactly the same amount, with price declines of about 17.6% for DGRO and about 18.1% for VIG. Both recovered by April 2019.

Both funds have fallen less than the S&P 500 in most downturns since 2014.

Volatility and Risk

VIG is often described as the steadier of the two, but recent data does not show that.

DGRO was slightly less volatile and fell slightly less over all three periods. The two are close, but DGRO’s broader spread of sectors has made it slightly less volatile recently, while VIG’s heavier technology weighting has added a little more movement.

Over longer periods, the picture depends on the crash. VIG fell less in 2020, while DGRO fell less in 2022. FRC’s guide to growth stocks vs value stocks explains why different styles lead in different markets.

Common Questions About DGRO and VIG

Is DGRO or VIG better over the long run? Neither has a clear edge. From 2015 to 2025, they returned about 11.8% and 11.6% a year, and over the 10 years from 2016 to 2025 they finished almost exactly level. DGRO led in more calendar years, but VIG led in five of the seven rolling five-year periods.

Which has grown its dividend faster? It depends on the period. DGRO did over the decade from 2015 to 2025, about 8.4% a year against 6.9%, but VIG did over the five years from 2020 to 2025, about 9.1% a year against 7.1%.

Is VIG a good long-term hold? Its record is long and steady. Since its launch in 2006, it has returned about 10.3% a year, fell far less than the S&P 500 in 2008 and 2022, and cut its annual dividend only twice, in 2009 and in 2013. Past results do not guarantee future returns, and FRC’s VIG performance history covers every year in detail.

Which is less volatile? Recently, DGRO, though only slightly. Over the five years to November 2026, its volatility was about 13.8% a year against about 14.2% for VIG.

Which pays more income? DGRO. Its recent yield of about 1.9% is higher than VIG’s 1.5%, and its dividend has also grown faster since 2015.

Which is cheaper? VIG, at 0.04% a year against DGRO’s 0.08%.

Which holds more technology? VIG, with about 27% in technology against about 19% for DGRO, and Microsoft and Apple each close to 5% of the fund.

How much do they overlap? A great deal. Eight of their top 15 holdings are the same, which is why their returns have tracked each other so closely.

Is there any point holding both? Less than with most pairs. Because their portfolios are so similar, a 50/50 split from 2015 to 2025 would have grown $10,000 to about $33,790, right between the two, with little extra diversification.

How Each Fund Is Taxed

Both funds exclude REITs, and most of their dividends have been qualified dividends, taxed at the lower long-term capital gains rates. Both have rarely distributed capital gains, as is typical for index ETFs.

With yields below 2%, both funds produce modest taxable income each year, which makes them relatively efficient in a taxable account. VIG’s lower yield leaves slightly more of its return as unrealized growth, which is not taxed until the shares are sold.

FRC’s guides to qualified vs non-qualified dividends and how to choose tax-efficient ETFs explain how dividend income is taxed in more detail.

Which Investors Each Fund Tends to Suit

VIG tends to appeal to investors who want the strictest dividend growth standard, the lowest cost and more exposure to the largest technology companies. Its 10-year rule and $116 billion size make it the more established of the two.

DGRO tends to appeal to investors who want a little more income, a stronger 10-year dividend growth record and a broader spread across sectors. Its payout ratio screen adds an extra check on whether each company’s dividend is affordable.

For many investors, the choice comes down to small preferences rather than big differences. The two funds have delivered almost the same result, so cost, yield and technology exposure usually decide it.

How They Compare With Other Dividend ETFs

DGRO and VIG are two of the four most popular US dividend ETFs, alongside SCHD and VYM. SCHD holds about 100 high-yielding, financially strong companies, and VYM holds the higher-yielding half of the market.

FRC’s comparisons of DGRO vs SCHD, SCHD vs VIG and VYM vs VIG cover those pairings. FRC’s VYM performance history and SCHD performance history tell their stories year by year.

Against the S&P 500, both funds have trailed over most long periods. FRC’s VOO performance history shows how the broad market performed over the same years.

Is Your Money Safe in DGRO and VIG?

Both funds are regulated investment companies overseen by the SEC, with their holdings kept by independent custodians and separate from BlackRock’s and Vanguard’s own assets. FRC’s guide to Is Vanguard Safe? explains how Vanguard is structured and regulated.

When you hold either fund at a SIPC member brokerage, your account is protected up to $500,000, including $250,000 in cash, if the brokerage fails and assets are missing. This protection does not cover market losses, such as the falls of about a third both funds suffered in 2020.

Keep Learning

The FRC dictionary is more than a dictionary. It is a library of explainer videos, written explanations and on-page quizzes, so you can open any term, such as ex-dividend or diversification, and go deeper whenever something is unclear.

FRC’s Investing for Beginners guide and its guide to dollar-cost averaging vs lump sum are natural next steps for anyone building a dividend portfolio.

The Bottom Line

DGRO and VIG have delivered almost identical long-term returns, with DGRO slightly ahead since 2015. VIG offers the lower cost, the stricter 10-year standard and more technology, while DGRO offers a higher yield, faster dividend growth over the past decade and a broader spread across sectors.

Because they overlap so heavily, most investors choose one rather than both. VIG tends to fit those who put cost and technology exposure first, and DGRO those who put income and sector balance first.