Vanguard Quantum Computing ETF Alternatives Ranked by Fee

Vanguard does not offer a quantum computing ETF. The closest Vanguard fund, the Vanguard Information Technology ETF (VGT) at 0.09%, held 0.19% in IonQ, Rigetti, D-Wave and Quantum Computing Inc combined on August 31, 2026. The dedicated quantum funds cost four to eight times as much: Corgi's CQTM charges 0.35%, Defiance's QTUM 0.40%, WisdomTree's WQTM 0.45%, Amplify's XQBT 0.49% and Defiance's QTUP 0.77%. The share of each fund that is actually in quantum companies runs from about 12% to nearly 100%, and that matters more than the fee.

People look for a Vanguard quantum computing ETF for a sensible reason. They want a cheap, plain way to own the theme from a fund family they already use. Vanguard's site has a quote page for Defiance's QTUM, which you can buy in a Vanguard brokerage account, and nothing of its own. Fidelity, Schwab and iShares have no US quantum ETF either. So the choice is between a cheap broad fund with a trace of quantum in it, a specialist fund that costs more, or a basket you put together yourself.

Every fee, holding and rule below comes from the issuer's fund page, its holdings file or its SEC filings, read on September 30, 2026. We make index construction and backtesting software; we do not sell funds or give investment advice.

Vanguard quantum computing ETF alternatives ranked by fee

The last column is our own sum of each fund's published weights in the fourteen US-listed companies whose main business is quantum computing or quantum security: IonQ, Quantinuum, D-Wave, Rigetti, Infleqtion, IQM, Quantum Computing Inc, Xanadu, Pasqal, Horizon Quantum, SEALSQ, BTQ, Arqit and Quantum eMotion. Holdings dates are September 29 or 30 for CQTM, QTUM, CHPX and QTUP, August 26 for WQTM (top ten only), August 19 for XQBT and August 31 for VGT.

Does Vanguard have a quantum computing ETF?

No. Vanguard has no ETF or mutual fund dedicated to quantum computing, and no filing for one appears in SEC records. The only quantum pages on vanguard.com are a brokerage quote page for the Defiance Quantum ETF and a research article about work with IBM. The nearest Vanguard product is VGT, a broad technology index fund.

VGT does hold the older pure plays, because they sit in the technology sector. On August 31, 2026 it held IonQ at 0.07%, Rigetti at 0.05%, D-Wave at 0.05% and Quantum Computing Inc at 0.02%. Put $10,000 into VGT and about $19 of it is in those four companies. The rest is NVIDIA (17.7%), Apple (15.8%), Microsoft (11.5%) and 300 other technology stocks. Calling that quantum exposure is true only in the narrowest sense.

Which Vanguard ETF holds the most quantum computing stocks?

By weight, the small-cap funds do, because most quantum companies are still small. Vanguard's small-cap growth ETF (VBK) held 0.58% in listed quantum pure plays on August 31, 2026 and its Russell 2000 ETF (VTWO) held 0.46%. VGT held 0.19%, the total market fund (VTI) 0.04%, and the S&P 500 fund (VOO) none.

None of these is a way to invest in quantum computing. They are worth knowing for the opposite reason: if you already own a total market or small-cap index fund, you hold a sliver of these companies, and anything you add is on top of that.

Which quantum computing ETF has the lowest expense ratio?

The Corgi Quantum Computing ETF (CQTM) has the lowest expense ratio of the dedicated US quantum funds at 0.35%. The Defiance Quantum ETF (QTUM) is next at 0.40%, then WisdomTree's WQTM at 0.45%, Amplify's XQBT at 0.49% and Defiance's QTUP at 0.77%. CQTM is also small, with $15.6 million in assets on September 29, 2026, against $5.63 billion in QTUM.

The fee alone hides how different these funds are, so it helps to ask what you pay for each dollar that ends up in a quantum company. Divide the expense ratio by the pure play share and the ranking changes.

This is not a claim that QTUM is overpriced. Its fee also buys the other 88% of the fund, which is companies such as Cloudflare, Palantir, AMD and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, held at close to equal weight. The point is narrower. If the reason you are buying is quantum computing, most of what QTUM charges you for is something else, and you may already own that something else in an S&P 500 or Nasdaq-100 fund.

What is the best ETF for quantum computing?

It depends on what you want the fund to hold. QTUM is the largest and oldest, trading since 2018, and is really a broad technology fund with a quantum tilt. WQTM holds about a third in pure plays and the rest in companies such as IBM, Fujitsu and Amazon. CQTM is the cheapest and mostly pure plays. QTUP is pure plays only and uses swaps.

The difference comes from one rule in each fund. QTUM's index admits any company with at least half of its revenue or operating activity in quantum computing or machine learning, then weights all 86 members equally and resets twice a year. WQTM's index scores each company for relevance and purity, gives the pure, highly relevant ones more weight and caps any stock at 15%. CQTM has no index: its manager must keep at least 80% in companies materially involved in quantum computing and quantum ready security, and on September 29 IonQ alone was 17.8% of it. XQBT is an active fund built around a ten stock Bloomberg momentum index, and at launch its largest holding was Keysight, a test equipment maker. QTUP holds eleven companies and had 17% of the fund in a money market position backing its swaps.

Three of the five launched between May and August 2026 and hold under $20 million each. Small funds can close, and they can trade with a wide gap between the bid and the ask, so look at both before buying. There are also leveraged products with quantum in the name, such as QPUX at 1.29% and IONX at 1.38%. They reset daily and are tools for short trades, which makes them a different product from the funds above.

Is it cheaper to build your own quantum basket than to buy an ETF?

Above about $15,000, yes, compared with QTUM. Fidelity Basket Portfolios charges a flat $4.99 a month, $59.88 a year, to hold 2 to 50 stocks or ETFs from $1 per position, with no expense ratio. That flat fee beats QTUP above about $7,800, XQBT above about $12,200, WQTM above about $13,300, QTUM above about $15,000 and CQTM above about $17,100. Below those balances the ETF costs less.

Schwab, Robinhood and Interactive Brokers all sell fractional shares from $1 with no commission on their standard plans, so a basket of ten or fifteen quantum stocks can also be held with no recurring fee if you are willing to place and rebalance the orders yourself.

Cost is half of the argument. The other half is that you pick the number the funds pick for you. With fourteen listed pure plays, you can hold all of them, or only the five above $3 billion in market value, and decide whether IBM, Alphabet and Honeywell belong beside them. The quantum computing stocks index builder is made for that decision: set the pure play share, choose equal or capped weights, and backtest the basket against a one-line index of QTUM before you put money in.

Two cautions apply to this theme more than most. First, these are young companies with small revenue and large losses, and several have been public for less than a year, so position size deserves more thought than the fee does. Before giving any one of them a large weight, it is worth taking the time to test a single-stock thesis against its own price history and see how deep its past falls were. Second, a basket of volatile stocks will nearly always have some positions at a loss. Owning the shares directly means each has its own cost basis, so a loser can be sold for a tax loss while the rest stays; the wash sale calculator shows how long to wait before buying it back.

Which quantum computing ETF alternative fits which investor?

Quantum computing often gets bought together with AI, and the same dilution question applies there. Our ranking of the cheapest AI ETF shows what each AI fund's fee buys, and for the general case of a themed fund against a basket you build, see thematic ETFs vs building your own basket.

How to choose

Start with the share of the fund you want in quantum companies, because that is where the funds differ by a factor of eight, while their fees differ by about two. If 10% to 15% is enough and you want a large, liquid fund, QTUM does that. If you want most of the money in quantum companies, CQTM and QTUP do, at the price of tiny funds and, in QTUP's case, swaps. If the number you want is somewhere in between, or you want to leave out the names you do not believe in, build the quantum index yourself, backtest it against QTUM and the S&P 500, and buy it at your own broker. Expense ratios and holdings change, so confirm them on the fund page before you buy.