Terms of use

Last reviewed 2026-09-15

This is not investment advice

PlainIndex is a reference site. Nothing here is personalized investment, tax, or legal advice, and nothing here accounts for your situation, because the site knows nothing about it. The scores rank funds on published, measurable attributes. They do not predict returns, and a higher composite does not mean a fund will perform better than a lower one.

David Rediger is not a registered investment adviser, a broker-dealer, or a licensed tax professional. Decisions about your own money are yours, and are worth discussing with someone who is qualified and who knows your circumstances.

What the scores are

Each composite is a weighted average of sub-scores derived from cost, liquidity, concentration, and tax treatment, computed by a formula published in full on the methodology page. The weights and thresholds are editorial choices. Reasonable people would pick differently, and a different set of choices would reorder the tables. The formula is published precisely so you can judge whether its choices match yours rather than taking the ranking on faith.

Limits of the data

• Holdings come from SEC Form N-PORT, which publishes on a 60-day lag and only for the third month of each quarter. A holdings table here can be months behind the portfolio it describes.
• Prices, assets under management, and yields come from a public market-data feed that is occasionally wrong or stale. Figures are for reference, not for trading or for tax reporting.
• Fund providers change expense ratios, indexes, and even tickers. Confirm anything that matters against the fund's own prospectus.
• Past performance shown in the backtester is historical simulation, not a forecast, and excludes trading costs, bid-ask spreads, and taxes.

No warranty

The site is provided as is, without warranty of any kind. It may be inaccurate, incomplete, or unavailable. To the fullest extent the law allows, we accept no liability for any loss arising from use of, or reliance on, anything published here. If a number contradicts the methodology, that is a bug we want reported at [email protected].

Using the content

Quote or cite the site freely with a link back. Do not republish the scored dataset wholesale or scrape the site at a rate that degrades it for other readers. The underlying regulatory filings are public and free at their source, and the methodology page explains how to reproduce any score from them.

Affiliate links

Some brokerage links may pay a referral commission. No score, ranking, or placement on this site is influenced by that, and no fund issuer pays for coverage. The funding disclosure spells this out.