AGG vs BND

iShares Core US Aggregate Bond and Vanguard Total Bond Market side by side. Fees, fund size, returns, yield and risk, all from live data. Add a third or fourth ticker to widen the comparison.

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Side-by-side comparison

Growth of $10,000 over the past 10 yearsDividends reinvested

What this shows. How $10,000 would have grown over the past ~10 years in each fund, based on its historical returns and rescaled so every fund starts at $10,000. It is backward-looking: a record of what already happened, not a forecast of future returns and not a forward projection. The dips are real drawdowns along the way; the Max drawdown row above is the single deepest peak-to-trough fall over the period (e.g. −33% means the balance fell to about $6,700 from its prior high before recovering). Dividends reinvested, before tax; representative for the built-in names and computed from actual history for any ticker you add.

Every instrument is computed live from its actual dividend-adjusted price history: price, trailing and since-inception returns, max drawdown, beta, Sharpe, a growth-of-$10k path, and dividend yield from the real distributions paid over the last 12 months. All returns are total returns (dividends and distributions reinvested), which is why a fund that pays large cash distributions (a managed-futures ETF, say) can far outrun its own price chart. Fund-only fields such as expense ratio show for ETFs. "Best" highlights the most favourable value in each row across the selected instruments (lowest fee; highest return, yield or Sharpe; smallest drawdown). Growth of $10,000 is a hypothetical illustration, before tax, and not a live execution quote, so verify numbers with your broker before trading.

About this comparison

iShares Core US Aggregate Bond (AGG) is an iShares exchange-traded fund in the Aggregate Bond category, listed in 2003. Vanguard Total Bond Market (BND) is a Vanguard exchange-traded fund in the Aggregate Bond category, listed in 2007. Both trade through the day like a share and both publish what they hold. The table on this page puts them next to each other and fills in cost, fund size, returns, yield and risk from live market data.

The two sit in the same category, Aggregate Bond, which is why their return lines tend to travel together. What separates them is cost, scale and track record: AGG has been listed since 2003, BND since 2007. Read the expense ratio, fund size and years-in-existence rows first, then check whether the return and risk rows really do diverge or only look like they might.

Frequently asked questions

Which is cheaper, AGG or BND?

The expense ratio row in the table above answers it live, and the lower figure carries a best tag. A fee is a yearly percentage of what you hold, taken out of the fund rather than billed to you, which is exactly why it is easy to shrug at over one year and hard to shrug at over thirty.

Which holds more companies, AGG or BND?

Holdings counts shift at every index rebalance, so scope is the honest answer. AGG covers the broad US investment-grade bond market, so bonds rather than shares. BND covers the broad US investment-grade bond market, so bonds rather than shares. The wider scope is the one that spreads your money across more positions.

Can I hold both AGG and BND?

Nothing stops you and plenty of people do. The question worth asking first is how much the two overlap: funds drawn from the same pool of companies leave you with one bet wearing two tickers, while funds with genuinely different scopes widen what you own. Put the pair through the portfolio backtester and the correlation tool to see which of the two you would actually be doing. General information, not advice.

Which suits a taxable account, AGG or BND?

Both are exchange-traded funds, and the structure itself is the part that usually matters: an ETF can hand appreciated shares off in kind when large holders leave, which keeps forced capital-gains distributions rarer than in a traditional mutual fund. What separates two ETFs is how much income each throws off, since dividends and option premiums are taxable in the year they land, and how often the underlying index turns over. Read the dividend yield row with that in mind and check your own tax position before acting.

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