SPDW vs VEA: Which ETF Is Better in 2026?

The Verdict

SPDW and VEA are close to the same fund wearing different labels. Both sit in the International Developed category and their daily returns move almost identically, so this is not really a question of which fund is better — it is a question of which one is cheaper to own and easier to trade in your account. Everything below is about finding the small, structural edges, because the investment exposure is a wash.

On ETFValuer's overall model — which blends return, risk-adjusted performance, cost, drawdown, size and volatility — VEA scores higher: 80.0 (Grade B+) versus 78.7 for SPDW. That doesn't make SPDW a bad fund; it means VEA currently edges it out on this specific mix of factors. Read the metric-by-metric breakdown below before deciding which matters more for your own portfolio.

Head-to-Head: Every Metric

Bold marks the better value in each row. "Better" is directional only (e.g. lower cost, higher return) — it isn't a recommendation by itself. See the full methodology.

Cost

On cost, the two are essentially tied — SPDW charges 0.03% a year versus VEA's 0.03%. A difference this small (about $0.00 a year on a $10,000 position) isn't a reason to choose one fund over the other. That matters more than usual here: when two funds track the same exposure this closely, fee is normally the whole argument — and with the fees this close, there is no argument left. Liquidity and whichever one trades commission-free in your account become the tiebreaker.

Performance & Risk

Over the trailing 3 years, SPDW returned +61.07% versus +60.71% for VEA — a gap of about 0.4 percentage points. On risk, VEA has held up better historically, with a shallower max drawdown (-13.45% vs. -13.53%). SPDW currently has the better risk-adjusted return (Sharpe ratio of 1.04 vs. 1.03), meaning it delivered more return per unit of volatility taken on. Read that gap sceptically: for funds tracking near-identical exposure, a 0.4-point difference over three years is mostly noise from fee drag and timing, not evidence that one manager is better than the other.

How Closely Do They Track Each Other?

Over the last 3.0 years of daily returns (752 shared trading days), SPDW and VEA show a near-perfect correlation of 0.998 — functionally interchangeable. At this level the two funds are, for practical purposes, the same investment. Owning both adds no diversification whatsoever — the decision should come down entirely to cost, spread and which one your broker handles better.

Correlation alone understates how far these can drift. Across every rolling 12-month window in the period, SPDW finished as much as +0.7 points ahead of VEA at the best extreme and -0.8 points at the worst — a 1.6-point spread between the best and worst year of relative performance. Two funds can correlate tightly day to day and still deliver very different outcomes over any single year you happen to hold them.

Calculated from daily total returns over the trailing 3-year window, recomputed every day this site refreshes. Correlation of 1.00 means the two funds moved in lockstep; 0.00 means their daily moves were unrelated.

Holdings Overlap

SPDW and VEA hold 9 of the same companies among their top 10 positions. Those shared names make up 10.1% of SPDW and 10.4% of VEA. That's heavy duplication — owning both largely doubles down on the same companies rather than spreading risk. Most investors should pick one.

Compares the top 10 reported holdings from each fund's most recent SEC N-PORT-P filing, so it understates total overlap — funds tracking similar indexes overlap far more deeply than the top 10 alone can show. Search any company across all tracked funds with the Stock Overlap tool.

Which One Should You Pick?

Whichever you pick, holding both at full weight is usually the wrong answer — see the overlap and correlation sections above.

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