Best Magnificent 7 ETF Ranked by Fee With MAGS vs QQQ

The best Magnificent 7 ETF depends on what you want from the seven. For the seven and nothing else, the only US fund is the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF (MAGS) at 0.30% a year, equal weight. For the seven at their natural size, Vanguard's VUG is the cheapest way in: it held 56.7% of its assets in the same companies on August 31, 2026 for 0.03%. QQQ, the fund most people compare MAGS against, is the most expensive way to buy them per dollar: $4.81 a year for every $1,000 of Mag 7 you end up holding, against $3.00 for MAGS and $0.53 for VUG.

The question usually comes from someone who already believes in the seven, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta and Tesla, and wants a clean way to own more of them. MAGS is the obvious answer because it carries the name. It is not the only answer, and on cost it is not the best one, because several broad funds already hold more than half their money in the same seven companies for a tenth of the fee.

Every weight below comes from the issuer's holdings file and every fee from the issuer's fund page, with dates next to each number because both move. We make index construction and backtesting software; we do not sell funds or give investment advice.

Best Magnificent 7 ETF ranked by cost per $1,000 of the seven

A fee on its own tells you little here, because the funds hold very different amounts of the seven. So the ranking divides each expense ratio by the fund's Mag 7 share. The result is what you pay each year for every $1,000 of Magnificent 7 stock the fund holds on your behalf. The broad funds also hand you other stocks for the same fee, which the last column notes.

Two results surprise people. The cheapest route to the seven is a plain Vanguard growth fund, and the dearest is QQQ, the fund most often recommended as the Mag 7 proxy. QQQ is a fine fund. It is just a Nasdaq-100 fund, and almost two thirds of what its 0.18% buys is Broadcom, Costco, Netflix and ninety odd other companies.

MAGS vs QQQ for Magnificent 7 exposure

MAGS vs QQQ is really a question of how much of your money you want in seven companies. MAGS puts all of it there, about 14.3% in each, reset every quarter. QQQ put 37.44% there on October 2, 2026, weighted by size: Nvidia 8.42%, Apple 7.27%, Microsoft 5.74%, Alphabet 5.82% across its two share classes, Amazon 4.05%, Meta 3.23% and Tesla 2.91%.

On $100,000, MAGS costs $300 a year and QQQ $180, since Invesco cut QQQ to 0.18% when it converted the trust to an open end fund in December 2025. To get the same $100,000 of Mag 7 through QQQ you would need about $267,000 in it, costing $481 a year. If what you actually want is the Nasdaq-100 with the seven as its core, QQQ is the right fund and the comparison is moot. If you want the seven themselves, MAGS gets you there with less money and a lower total fee.

The weighting is the bigger difference. In QQQ Tesla is 2.91% and Nvidia 8.42%, so Nvidia matters almost three times as much. In MAGS they matter equally. Over any given year that can swing the result by a wide margin either way, and it is the first thing worth testing before you choose.

MAGS vs VUG and MGK, the cheap way to hold the seven by size

If you are happy with the seven at their natural size and do not mind owning other growth stocks next to them, VUG and MGK are hard to beat. VUG held 56.70% in the seven on August 31, 2026 for 0.03%, and MGK 59.29% for 0.05%. Their leaders are the same as the S&P 500's, Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft, just at roughly double the weight, so they behave like a concentrated version of the index rather than like MAGS.

SPYG is the State Street equivalent at 0.04%, with 51.32% in the seven on October 2, 2026. Its weights differ from VUG's because S&P splits companies between growth and value by its own scores, which gave SPYG 10.31% Microsoft but only 6.53% Apple. Small rule differences like that are why two growth funds with similar names can hold quite different Mag 7 mixes.

Does Vanguard have a Magnificent 7 ETF?

No. Vanguard has no fund that holds only the seven. Its closest substitutes are MGK (59.29% Mag 7, 0.05%) and VUG (56.70%, 0.03%), both on August 31, 2026 holdings. Both weight the seven by market value, so they lean on Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft and give Tesla about 3%.

Are the leveraged Magnificent 7 ETFs worth it?

For a long term holder, almost never. Roundhill's MAGX and Direxion's QQQU aim for twice the daily return of a Magnificent 7 basket and charge about 0.95% and 0.98% a year. Because they reset leverage every day, their returns over months drift away from twice the basket, sometimes badly in choppy markets. They are trading tools for a day or a week, and both issuers say so in their prospectuses.

What MAGS holds through swaps, and why it matters

On October 5, 2026, MAGS listed about $5.6 billion in assets, and only about 38% of its exposure to the seven was held as shares. The rest came through total return swaps with banks, labeled GS and ML in its holdings list, backed by Treasury bills that made up 37.2% of the fund. Roundhill says it uses the swaps to keep the fund compliant with the diversification tests for regulated investment companies, which a seven stock, equal weight fund cannot meet with shares alone.

For most holders this changes little. The swaps are collateralized and the structure is disclosed. But it does mean part of your return depends on bank counterparties, and that the fund is not a simple bag of seven stocks. An investor holding the same seven in a brokerage account has none of that, and has no fund fee either.

When building your own Magnificent 7 index beats every fund

Every fund above makes the weighting decision for you. If you want something none of them sells, the seven without Tesla, an equal weight basket with Nvidia capped at 20%, or the seven plus Broadcom, the only way to get it is to hold the shares yourself. Seven positions is a small basket: a few trades to set it up and a rebalance once or twice a year. In a taxable account it also lets you sell one loser for a tax loss while keeping the other six, which no Mag 7 fund can pass through to you.

That is the job our Magnificent 7 index builder is for. You add the seven, set equal, market cap or your own weights, backtest the basket against the S&P 500 over the same dates, and add MAGS as a one line index next to it so you see exactly what the fund's equal weighting did. Before you commit to a weighting on conviction, it is worth taking an hour to pull a research summary on each of the seven, because an equal weight basket gives the smallest company the same say as the largest. And if you would rather hold the market with fewer of them, the S&P 500 without Magnificent 7 ETF comparison covers the other direction.

Does switching from QQQ to MAGS trigger taxes?

Yes, in a taxable account. Selling QQQ to buy MAGS realizes any gain on the QQQ shares, taxed at long term rates if you held them more than a year. In an IRA or 401(k) the switch has no tax effect. If you have a large gain, compare the tax bill with the fee you would save, using a capital gains tax calculator, before you move; a few basis points a year rarely justifies paying a 15% or 20% tax today.

How to choose

Want the Nasdaq-100 with the seven at its core: QQQ. Want the seven at their natural size at the lowest cost: VUG or MGK. Want the seven, equally, in one ticker, in an IRA: MAGS. Want weights no fund sells, or stock level tax losses in a taxable account: build the basket yourself, test it first, and buy the shares at your own broker. To spread weight evenly across a wider list, the equal weight index builder handles the rebalancing schedule for you.

Sources: MAGS fee, equal weight target, quarterly rebalance and swap rationale from roundhillinvestments.com, holdings and assets as listed October 5, 2026. VUG, MGK, MGC and VOO from Vanguard, August 31, 2026. SPY (October 1), SPYG and XLK (October 2) from State Street's daily holdings files and ssga.com. QQQ holdings October 2, 2026; fee from Invesco's December 2025 conversion announcement. MAGX and QQQU fees from their issuers. The fee per $1,000 column is our own arithmetic. Holdings and fees change; check the fund page before you buy. Not investment advice.