Guide · US Aggregate Bond
Best aggregate bond ETFs
An aggregate bond ETF owns essentially the entire US investment-grade bond market in one fund: Treasuries, agency mortgage-backed securities, investment-grade corporates, and a small slice of foreign-issuer USD bonds. Duration sits around 6 years — intermediate — which is the rough middle of the long-term-real-return distribution for fixed income.
How the scoring ranks these funds
BND, AGG, and SCHZ all track Bloomberg-Agg-family indexes and hold ~10,000 underlying bonds at near-identical sector and duration weights. The composite ranks them on cost, liquidity, and concentration; differences are small enough that the practical pick is "whatever your brokerage offers commission-free."
See the methodology for the full formula behind each sub-score.
Top picks
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86
composite / 100
Vanguard's total bond market fund. 3 basis points and the largest of the three by AUM. The default bond leg in a 3-fund portfolio.
- Expense
- 0.030%
- AUM
- $389.70B
- Issuer
- Vanguard
- Detail
- BND page →
-
86
composite / 100
iShares' core US aggregate bond fund. Same 3 basis points; tracks the Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index (BND uses the float-adjusted variant — same idea, marginal weighting differences). Standard TLH partner for BND.
- Expense
- 0.030%
- AUM
- $135.37B
- Issuer
- iShares
- Detail
- AGG page →
-
86
composite / 100
Schwab's aggregate bond fund. Also 3 basis points. Smaller AUM than BND or AGG but functionally interchangeable; useful as a third TLH partner.
- Expense
- 0.030%
- AUM
- $10.03B
- Issuer
- Schwab
- Detail
- SCHZ page →
Also in the category
Other funds scoring in this category. Same data, no editorial commentary yet.
When an aggregate fund is the wrong tool
Aggregate funds have ~30% of holdings in corporate and securitized credit, which gives up some of the diversification benefit a Treasury-only fund would provide against equity drawdowns. Investors who want bonds specifically to hedge equity risk (rather than to harvest the credit risk premium) sometimes hold a pure-Treasury fund (GOVT, VGIT) instead. The compare pages show the holdings difference directly.
Account placement
Bond fund distributions are largely taxed at ordinary-income rates, not the lower qualified-dividend rate that applies to stock funds. The standard placement rule is to hold bond funds in tax-advantaged accounts (IRA, 401k) when space allows, freeing the taxable account for stock funds whose long-term-cap-gains and qualified-dividend treatment is more efficient.
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.