VOO vs VTI: The DCA Backtest
The identical plan — $100 on the first trading day of each month — run on both assets over their shared history (Sep 2010 → Oct 2026, $19,400 invested each). Every number below is computed from real daily closes; nothing is annualized away or cherry-picked.
Verdict on this window: $19,400 invested into VOO grew to $72,786, versus $69,320 in VTI. Different start dates shuffle this result — the rolling analysis below shows how often.
The same $100/month, side by side
Both positions month by month across the shared window: the dashed line is cash paid in ($19,400 total), the two curves are what VOO and VTI were worth along the way. Where the curves separate is where the decade's story lives.
Does the winner depend on when you started?
One full-window result can mislead — maybe the winner just had a better final year. So we ran the head-to-head across EVERY possible 5-year start month in the shared history:
Side-by-side numbers
Data through Oct 2026, refreshed daily.
What actually separates VOO and VTI
This is the internet's favorite index-fund debate, and the honest answer is that it barely matters: VTI holds the entire US market, but the S&P 500 inside it is so dominant by weight that the two funds are ~99% correlated. The overlay above shows it — the curves spend the decade glued together, and the win-rate table is closer to a coin flip than a verdict. Both charge 0.03%.
The real decision is behavioral, not statistical: pick the one your broker automates cleanly and never look back. If the small/mid-cap tail one day outruns the mega caps, VTI captures it automatically; if it doesn't, you lost nothing. Flipping between them — and realizing taxes on the switch — is the only way to actually lose this comparison.
FAQ
On the shared window measured here, VOO finished ahead (VOO: +275% vs VTI: +257% on identical monthly buys). "Better" is window-dependent — the rolling head-to-head above tells you how stable that verdict was. Past performance doesn't predict the future; this page tells you what happened, not what will.
Yes, and if the pair is highly correlated the blend will behave like either one alone — check how similar the two curves above are before assuming a split adds diversification. Our portfolio calculator lets you backtest any weighting of the two on the same real data.
Real dividend- and split-adjusted daily closes for VOO and VTI, compared strictly over their shared history (Sep 2010 → Oct 2026), refreshed daily and validated for gaps and staleness. Fees, spreads and taxes are not modelled — see the methodology page.
Run the plan on a real exchange
Five exchanges where DCA — and tokenized stocks & ETFs — actually work, each with a real discount. Pick one, copy the code, trade cheaper.
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