Closet index funds · 2026 edition

Closet Index Funds: The 2026 List, Ranked by Active Share

Data as of June 30, 2026 to August 31, 2026 holdings (filed July 20, 2026 to October 29, 2026)

On holdings filed for periods June 30, 2026 to August 31, 2026, 34 of the 91 actively managed US equity funds this registry can classify are closet index funds: their portfolios match between 41% and 94% of the index each one is measured against — 55% at the median — while their filed fees run from 7.5× to 186× what the cheapest index fund tracking that same index charges.

Two groups sit beside that count rather than inside it. 77 actively managed funds cannot be classified at all, and 12 funds that call themselves index funds also charge more than the cheapest tracker of their own index. Both are counted below.

This page publishes no combined asset or annual-fee total. The filings this registry reads report holdings and expense ratios, not fund net assets, so no combined asset or annual-fee total can be computed from them. A dollar figure would be an estimate rather than a measurement, so none appears here.

The 2026 list, ranked by active share

Lowest active share first: the fund whose portfolio differs least from the index it is measured against leads. Each fund name links to its own page, where the same figures appear with their filing sources. Fee multiple compares the fund’s filed net expense ratio with the cheapest fund in this registry tracking the same index.

How a fund gets on this list

Three measured conditions, all from filings. Active share is computed against the fund’s best-fit index from the holdings both disclose, so the comparison rests on securities that could be matched rather than on a category label. The fee is the filed net expense ratio of the primary share class. The control is the cheapest share class in this registry whose own active share is under 5% against the same index — a fund that is doing the tracking the closet indexer is largely doing anyway.

A fund is on the list when its active share is below 60% and its fee is above that control’s. The thresholds, the identifier-coverage gate and the best-fit procedure are set out in the methodology, and every fund in the registry — on this list or not — is in the registry.

The widest fee gaps

Ranked by fee multiple rather than by similarity: these funds charge the most relative to the cheapest tracker of the index they most resemble.

Closest to its index on this list is Goldman Sachs S&P 500 Premium Income ETF (GPIX), whose portfolio matches 93.8% of S&P 500 while charging 0.29% — $290 a year per $100,000 against $10 for VFFSX.

Index funds charging more than the cheapest tracker of their own index

12 funds in this registry carry an index fund’s name and an index fund’s portfolio, and still cost more than the cheapest fund tracking the same index. That is not closet indexing — none of them claims to be doing anything else — but it is the same money question, so they are listed separately and not counted in the 34 above.

What this list cannot tell you

Of 200 funds in the registry, 32 name themselves index funds and 168 are actively managed. Of those actively managed funds, 91 have every input the comparison needs and 77 do not:

• 76 have no positive-fee index fund in this registry tracking the same benchmark, so there is nothing to price them against.
• 1 have no filed net expense ratio for their primary share class yet.

The missing controls are concentrated, not scattered. These are the benchmarks with no cheap tracker anywhere in this registry, and the number of actively managed funds measured against each:

• 43 measured against the Russell 1000 Growth index.
• 29 measured against the Russell 1000 Value index.
• 4 measured against the Russell 1000 index.

One limit sits inside the list itself. Active share is computed on long common equity, so an options overlay is invisible to it: a fund that holds the index and sells contracts against it will show a low active share because the part meant to differ is not in the stock holdings at all. 5 of the 34 funds above are named as options strategies and are marked in the table. Their fee comparison still holds — they do charge more than a fund tracking the same index — but a low active share is what their strategy produces by design, not evidence that an active manager is tracking quietly. The filings report derivative positions as counts rather than in a form that says how much of the strategy they carry, so no attempt is made here to size the overlay.

Three further limits. A closet-index classification describes price and portfolio difference on one filing period, not skill and not a forecast. Active share is computed on the securities both the fund and the index proxy identified, so a fund whose holdings barely match is withheld rather than published on a fraction. And the figures move with the index chosen: a fund can sit below the line against one benchmark and above it against another.

Questions

What this edition is, and when it changes

This page is computed from the registry when it is requested, so it shows the current filings rather than a frozen copy of them. That has a consequence worth stating plainly: these numbers move. When funds file new holdings and the registry publishes a later run, the membership, the ranks and every figure above can change at this same address. Nothing here is a permanent record of what the list said today.

So the edition carries its version boundary, and a citation should carry it too. This page was computed at registry run a4f62e02-b219-4886-9f63-0e24f89a3444, methodology closet-index@3.0.0, fund set cohort-v2@2026-07-24, source event August 31, 2026. The holdings behind it cover June 30, 2026 to August 31, 2026, filed July 20, 2026 to October 29, 2026. Quoting a figure from this page means quoting it at that boundary; the immutable per-fund record for a given run lives at each fund’s own as-of page, reachable from its registry entry, and the underlying published records are in the open data.

The 2026 edition keeps this address. A later year gets its own, and this one stays where it is rather than being rewritten into next year’s list — but within the year, the figures track the filings.

The same funds plotted against fee and active share are at the closet index map, which cuts the registry differently — it compares each fund’s fee with the registry median rather than with a tracker of its own index, so its groupings and this list’s count answer different questions. Short explainers on the measures are in learn.

Computed November 1, 2026, which is when the registry gathered these filings, not what they are as of.