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These ETFs Generate the Most Revenue

Sumit Roy

Wed, September 2, 2026 at 1:24 AM GMT+3 7 min read

Money

The cost of holding ETFs has fallen for years amid an intense fee war among issuers. Single-digit expense ratios are commonplace now, and in some cases even those look expensive, like the 0.09% charged by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY), triple what some competitors charge for the same exposure.

All this is unequivocally great news for investors, but for ETF issuers, not so much. As expense ratios drop, so do the revenues those funds generate, and in most cases, there is little issuers can do about it. Failing to lower fees can lead to hefty outflows, as cost-conscious investors and fiduciary-bound advisors gravitate to cheaper funds.

Case in point: SPY has lost a lot of assets over the years to the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) and the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV), two cheaper funds tracking the same index. VOO has since grown into the largest ETF in the world, at more than $1 trillion in AUM.

Implied Revenue

Even in a price war, the victors take hits. The cheapest ETFs may gather the most assets, but that is often more than offset by the decline in fees. On the list of the biggest ETF cash cows, only a handful of funds are ultra-cheap. Many more are expensive by ETF standards.

The table below lists the 20 ETFs with the highest implied revenue, an approximation of how much money a fund generates for its issuer, derived by multiplying assets under management by the expense ratio.

As Dave Nadig points out, it is not an exact figure. Implied revenue isn't "exactly how much each fund contributed to the P&L of the issuer. Funds have expenses to pay, and some funds have acquired expenses to contend with, which really explodes the bottom-line expense ratio," he said.

In other words, treat implied revenue as a rough topline, not profit.

QQQ the Biggest Money Maker

The biggest cash cow in the ETF business is the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ), with implied annual revenue of about $882 million. Its $490 billion asset base paired with a 0.18% expense ratio makes for a lucrative combination.

That said, most of that revenue doesn't flow to the ETF's issuer, Invesco. When QQQ converted from a unit investment trust to an open-end fund in December 2025, Invesco disclosed that of the 0.18% fee, roughly 14 basis points go toward Nasdaq-100 licensing, administration, custody and marketing, leaving about 4 basis points as net revenue to the firm.

On QQQ's asset base, that means roughly $200 million reaches Invesco.

QQQ isn't alone in this. Nearly every fund that tracks a branded index, from the S&P 500 to the Nasdaq-100, pays to license it, with a portion of the fee going to the index provider rather than the issuer.

Actively managed funds and those tracking in-house indexes avoid that cost, keeping more of what they charge.

SPY the Most Profitable of the S&P Funds

SPY isn't the largest S&P 500 fund anymore, but it remains the most profitable of them. At $810 billion in assets, it ranks second on this list with about $729 million in implied revenue, trailing only QQQ. Both VOO and IVV hold more assets than SPY, yet SPY out-earns them by a wide margin because it charges more.

VOO is now the largest ETF on the market, at more than $1 trillion, but because it charges 0.03%, it generates about $314 million, less than half of SPY's total, despite holding roughly 30% more assets. IVV, also with a 0.03% expense ratio, tells the same story at $265 million.

Other Cash Cows

Beyond the index giants, the ranking is stacked with the market's hot themes.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) is in the top 10 thanks to the AI trade. The Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM), which didn't exist a year ago, is already the 14th-biggest earner after gathering $26 billion in assets on the back of the memory-chip boom.

The iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (EWY), a backdoor way to own Korean memory makers, also makes the top 20.

Gold and silver funds are scattered across the list after a big run in the metals, with GLD at third overall at $611 million.

Options-income funds like the JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF (JEPI) also generate a lot of revenue, while some crypto funds sit just outside the top 20, including the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC) and the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT).

Traders Less Price Conscious

Traders care far less about fees than investors do. The ProShares UltraPro QQQ (TQQQ), a 3x-leveraged version of QQQ, is the fifth-biggest cash cow on the list, with $296 million in implied revenue. It has $36 billion in assets under management and charges an 0.82% fee.

Traders who use leveraged funds typically shoot for big returns, so even a 1% expense ratio usually doesn't dissuade them. Their holding periods also tend to be shorter, making the annual expense ratio less of a consideration than it is for a long-term investor.

The same applies to the plethora of single-stock leveraged ETFs that began hitting the market over the past few years and typically charge close to 1%. While they remain too small individually to reach the top of this list, they are still quite lucrative for their issuers.

The biggest, the GraniteShares 2x Long NVDA Daily ETF (NVDL), ranks around 144th, with roughly $41 million in implied revenue on $4 billion in AUM.

Cloning the Cash Cow

Some issuers have tried to protect their cash cows while still taking part in the fee war, particularly those who launched funds early, before there was any competition.

Rather than cut the fee on a profitable legacy fund and give up the revenue, these issuers have often launched cheaper versions alongside them. The expensive original holds on to investors who won't sell, typically because they don't want to get hit with big capital gains taxes, while the low-cost version competes for new money.

The pattern appears throughout the list. State Street has kept GLD at 0.40% while offering the cheaper 0.10% GLDM next to it. BlackRock left EEM at 0.72% and launched the 0.09% iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (IEMG). Grayscale did the same in crypto, keeping GBTC at 1.50% while offering the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust (BTC) at 0.15% for cost-conscious buyers.

The Limits of Implied Revenue

One fund on the list that stands out is the VanEck BDC Income ETF (BIZD). It has a 9.69% expense ratio and $167 million in implied revenue.

While those are eye-popping numbers on the surface, almost none of that reaches the ETF's issuer, VanEck. The bulk of the fee is acquired fund fees, or the operating costs of the business-development companies the fund holds, which pass through to the reported expense ratio but never reach the issuer.

VanEck's own management fee is a small fraction of the headline figure, so BIZD's actual revenue is a sliver of the $167 million shown.