Guide · US Value
Best US large-cap value ETFs
A value ETF holds the half (roughly) of the large-cap universe that scores cheap on the index vendor's chosen ratios — price-to-book, price-to-earnings, price-to-sales, dividend yield, or some weighted blend. In practice this means heavy weights in financials, energy, healthcare, and consumer staples: Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan, Exxon Mobil, and Johnson & Johnson sit at or near the top of most funds in the category. Value is the other half of the original growth/value style split, and a value fund is a deliberate departure from market-cap weighting — its returns will diverge from a total-market fund, in both directions, sometimes for years at a stretch.
How the scoring ranks these funds
Cost and liquidity drive most of the ordering. The plain index-screened funds (VTV, SCHV, IUSV, VONV, SPYV) run 3-6 bps and dominate the top of the table; the funds with deeper or more systematic value screens (VLUE, DFLV, PRF, RPV) cost 15-35 bps and run smaller, and the composite reflects both. VLUE additionally concentrates much harder — top-10 weight north of 40%, roughly double the index-screened funds. The single highest score in the category belongs to VOE, Vanguard's mid-cap value fund — it earns the spot on the lowest top-10 concentration in the table and a 5 bp fee, but it covers a different slice of the market than the large-cap funds this guide is about.
See the methodology for the full formula behind each sub-score.
Top picks
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94
composite / 100
Vanguard's large-cap value fund and the category's reference point — $250B in AUM, roughly three times the next-largest fund in the category (IWD). 3 bps; tracks the CRSP US Large Cap Value Index, which scores value on a five-ratio blend (book, forward earnings, historical earnings, dividends, sales relative to price) with banding rules that hold turnover down.
- Expense
- 0.030%
- AUM
- $254.46B
- Issuer
- Vanguard
- Detail
- VTV page →
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94
composite / 100
Schwab's large-cap value fund. 4 bps; tracks the Dow Jones U.S. Large-Cap Value Total Stock Market Index. Holds a broader list than VTV (556 names vs 320) with a near-identical top of the book — Berkshire, JPMorgan, Exxon. The standard tax-loss-harvesting partner for VTV — similar exposure, different index family.
- Expense
- 0.040%
- AUM
- $15.93B
- Issuer
- Schwab
- Detail
- SCHV page →
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93
composite / 100
Vanguard's Russell 1000 Value fund. 6 bps. Russell's methodology splits borderline stocks proportionally between its value and growth indexes rather than assigning them whole, so VONV carries 872 names — the broadest holdings list in the category — including partial weights in stocks other vendors classify as growth. IWD tracks the same index at 18 bps.
- Expense
- 0.060%
- AUM
- $21.46B
- Issuer
- Vanguard
- Detail
- VONV page →
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93
composite / 100
State Street's S&P 500 Value fund. 4 bps. Same index as IVE (18 bps) and VOOV (7 bps) — SPYV is the cheap share of that trio. S&P's style scoring reassigns stocks annually, which is why SPYV's current top holdings are Apple and Amazon rather than Berkshire: names migrate between the value and growth indexes as their ratios move.
- Expense
- 0.040%
- AUM
- $35.30B
- Issuer
- State Street
- Detail
- SPYV page →
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84
composite / 100
iShares' MSCI USA Value Factor ETF — a factor fund, not a style-box fund. 15 bps; ~150 holdings; top-10 weight north of 40%, roughly double the index-screened funds. Its MSCI Enhanced Value index selects the cheapest names within each sector (sector-neutral), which produces a much deeper value tilt and a very different list — Micron, Cisco, Intel, GM at the top instead of Berkshire and JPMorgan.
- Expense
- 0.15%
- AUM
- $10.58B
- Issuer
- iShares
- Detail
- VLUE page →
Also in the category
Other funds in the same category, ranked by composite score.
A value fund is a tilt, not a core
A total-market fund already holds every name in these funds at market weight. A value fund overweights the cheap half and drops the expensive half, which is a directional position on value-vs-growth relative performance. Growth won decisively over the post-2010 period; value won over earlier multi-decade windows. The tracking difference against the broad market is not an error — it is the entire point of the product — and it runs in both directions. The practical question a value tilt poses is whether it will still be in the portfolio after five or ten years of trailing a total-market fund.
Index vendors disagree about what "value" means
CRSP (VTV) blends five ratios with banding to limit turnover. Russell (VONV, IWD) leans on book-to-price plus growth forecasts and splits borderline names fractionally between value and growth. S&P (SPYV, IVE, VOOV) rescores annually and lets megacaps migrate between styles — which is how Apple and Amazon currently sit at the top of an S&P value fund while Berkshire tops the CRSP and Dow Jones versions. MSCI's Enhanced Value index (VLUE) screens within sectors and concentrates hard. These are materially different holdings lists carrying the same word on the label; the compare pages for any pair show the overlap directly.
Index-screened value vs factor value
The 3-6 bp funds hold roughly half the large-cap universe with a mild tilt. The factor and systematic funds — VLUE (15 bps), DFLV (21 bps), PRF (34 bps), RPV (35 bps) — hold fewer names, tilt harder, and charge more for it. RPV's "pure value" methodology, for example, weights by value score rather than market cap. The composite scores these funds lower on cost and liquidity — and, for VLUE specifically, concentration — which is accurate as far as it goes; what the score does not capture is that a deeper tilt is the product these funds are built around. A mild tilt at 3 bps and a deep tilt at 35 bps are different exposures, not better and worse versions of the same one.
Distributions run higher than the broad market
Cheap-on-ratios screening selects toward dividend payers, so the category's TTM yields cluster around 1.4-1.9% — RPV, the deepest tilt, sits at 2.3% — against roughly 1.0% for a total-market fund like VTI. That is a modest but persistent tax-efficiency haircut in a taxable account, and it shows up in the tax sub-score. Separately, the value tilt most often discussed on the Bogleheads forum is small-cap value rather than large — a different category with its own funds (AVUV, IJS); the Golden Butterfly portfolio page covers the standard implementation of that slice.
Guide. Picks come from the live PlainIndex composite for this category; editorial commentary on each pick is hand-written. Re-pulled with every catalog refresh.
PlainIndex publishes data and editorial commentary — nothing here is personalized investment advice. Read the methodology for how the scores referenced here are computed.