Direct indexing fees: cost and minimums compared across every published platform.
The same strategy is sold at 0.09% and at 1.700%, depending entirely on who sells it to you. Fourteen published rates in one table, four of them transcribed from Form ADV filings that no comparison site quotes.
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In short
Direct indexing fees run from 0.09% to 1.700% a year of assets. The cheapest published rates are Wealthfront S&P 500 Direct and Frec Classic, both 0.09%, with minimums of $5,000 and $20,000. Fidelity Managed FidFolios and Schwab Personalized Indexing charge 0.40%, with minimums of $5,000 invested and $100,000. Through an adviser the manager rate is 0.20% at Vanguard Personalized Indexing and 0.35% at Parametric, Aperio and Goldman Sachs TACS, but the adviser and platform fees stack on top and are usually larger than the manager fee. The outlier is Goldman Sachs Private Wealth, which prices the same TACS strategy at 1.700% on the first $10 million. The two rates buyers most often weigh against each other are taken apart in our Frec vs Schwab Personalized Indexing fee comparison. For reference, an S&P 500 ETF costs 0.03% to 0.10%.
Last updated August 2026
Direct indexing fees compared
Every published direct indexing fee, cheapest first
Sorted by the rate the manager charges, with the channel that rate belongs to. Read the channel column first, because it decides which rows you can actually buy.
| Platform or strategy | Channel | Minimum | Published annual fee | What the rate buys | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wealthfront S&P 500 Direct | Open it yourself | $5,000 | 0.09% | S&P 500, held as individual stocks, daily harvesting | wealthfront.com, 08/26/2026 |
| Frec Classic, S&P 500 | Open it yourself | $20,000 | 0.09% | 25 index strategies at 0.09% to 0.35%, adjust up to 25 stocks | frec.com, 08/26/2026 |
| Wealthfront Nasdaq-100 Direct | Open it yourself | $5,000 | 0.12% | Nasdaq-100 as individual stocks | wealthfront.com, 08/13/2026 |
| Wealthfront US Direct Indexing | Open it yourself | $100,000 | 0.25% | Broad US market inside an Automated Investing Account | wealthfront.com, 08/26/2026 |
| Fidelity Managed FidFolios, index | Open it yourself | $5,000 invested | 0.40% | 5 index strategies, exclude up to 5 stocks or 2 industries | fidelity.com, 08/10/2026 |
| Schwab Personalized Indexing | Open it yourself | $100,000 | 0.40%, then 0.35% over $2M | 6 strategies, no S&P 500 option, wash sales watched in-account only | schwab.com, 08/26/2026 |
| Fidelity Managed FidFolios, active | Open it yourself | $5,000 invested | 0.70% | 3 actively managed strategies, not indexing | fidelity.com, 08/10/2026 |
| Frec Long Short | Open it yourself | $100,000 to $500,000 | 0.50% to 1.30% plus 0.23% to 0.86% financing | Extension strategies that keep generating losses | frec.com, 08/13/2026 |
| Vanguard Personalized Indexing | Through an adviser | $250,000 preferred | 0.20% on the first tier | Sub-advisory rate to the RIA, falling to 0.15% above $50M | Form ADV, 07/22/2026 |
| Goldman Sachs TACS, distributor | Through an adviser | None filed | 0.35% | Flat, no breakpoints and no minimum annual fee | Form ADV, 05/22/2026 |
| Parametric Custom Core, US equity | Through an adviser | $250,000 | 0.35% | Any standard or custom benchmark; $25,000 via Select UMA | Form ADV, 03/31/2026 |
| Aperio, US domestic benchmark | Through an adviser | None filed | 0.35% | Priced on the benchmark, not the balance; 0.40% foreign | Form ADV, 03/31/2026 |
| Goldman Sachs TACS, GS Private Wealth | Through an adviser | None filed | 1.700% on the first $10M | All-in advisory including the wealth advisor, not manager-only | Form ADV, 05/22/2026 |
| S&P 500 ETF, for reference | Open it yourself | One share | 0.03% to 0.10% | The thing direct indexing has to beat after tax | Issuer prospectuses |
Three things fall out of that table immediately. The cheapest direct indexing available to an ordinary US investor costs the same as a mainstream S&P 500 ETF, which is a genuinely new development and the reason the category stopped being a private wealth product. The mid-tier at 0.40% is where the household brands sit, and Schwab says on its own site that "ETFs and mutual funds are typically less expensive than a direct indexing separately managed account", which is an unusually candid thing for a provider to publish. And the adviser channel barely competes on price at all: Vanguard 0.20%, Goldman 0.35% through distributors, Parametric 35 bps, Aperio 0.35%, a 15 basis point band across the four managers that dominate the market.
Betterment is missing from the table on purpose. As of a check on August 23, 2026, betterment.com/pricing contained zero occurrences of the phrase "direct index", so there is no retail direct indexing fee to quote. Betterment charges 0.25% or $5 a month for Digital and 0.65% for Premium, and its tax loss harvesting operates at the ETF level rather than on individual stocks. That is a different product, and pretending otherwise would put a wrong number in a comparison table.
Direct indexing cost by channel
The same Goldman strategy costs 0.200% or 1.700%, depending on the door you walk through
This is the most useful thing on the page, and it is not in any review. Goldman Sachs Asset Management files two separate Form ADV Part 2A brochures, both dated May 22, 2026, and prices the identical Tax Advantaged Core Strategies product differently in each.
Through Merrill Lynch
0.200%
The strategy fee on the Merrill Lynch Investment Advisory Program profile for TACS S&P 500, with a $250,000 managed strategy minimum.
Through third-party distributors
0.35%
Filed flat in Appendix A of the main brochure, with no breakpoints and no minimum annual fee, unlike every other equity strategy in the same appendix.
Through GS Private Wealth
1.700%
The first $10 million tier in the separate private wealth brochure, falling to 1.100% from $10M to $25M and 0.750% above $500M.
The fair caveat, and Goldman states it plainly: the 1.700% is an all-in advisory fee, not a manager-only rate. The private wealth brochure says Wealth Advisors "will provide on-going client services with respect to assets of PWM clients managed by GSAMLP and will receive a portion of the fee charged by GSAMLP". So you are buying a relationship, not just an optimizer. But that is exactly the point of putting the three numbers side by side. What varies eight and a half times over is not the portfolio construction, it is the distribution.
The practical takeaway when you are shopping: ask what the manager rate is and ask what the platform and adviser add, as two separate questions. If your adviser quotes you a single blended number, that number contains a manager fee you can look up yourself in the manager's own SEC filing. Doing so is the cheapest negotiating leverage available in this category, and almost nobody does it.
What the direct indexing fee does not include
A 0.35% manager can arrive on your statement as 1.2%
1. The manager fee
What the table above lists. 0.09% to 0.40% retail, 0.20% to 0.35% for adviser-channel managers. This is the layer everyone quotes and the smallest one in the adviser channel.
2. The platform fee
Morgan Stanley's Select UMA profiles disclose a "0.50% maximum quarterly (2.0% maximum annual) MS Advisory Fee" plus an SMA manager fee of 0% to 0.1875% per quarter. Wrap programs work the same way.
3. Your adviser
Billed separately in most arrangements. This is usually the largest single line and it is the one the manager's fee schedule tells you nothing about.
4. The extras
Vanguard files index licensing fees of 0.010% to 0.0275%. Aperio notes a minimum annual fee that can raise the effective rate on small accounts. Frec's long/short strategies add 0.23% to 0.86% of financing cost.
None of that applies if you open a self-service account. At Wealthfront or Frec the published rate is the rate, there is no adviser layer, and the comparison against an ETF expense ratio is close to apples to apples. That structural difference matters more than any single basis-point comparison in the table, because it is the difference between paying 0.09% and paying something north of 1%.
Direct indexing minimums
What it takes to get in the door, by size
Fractional shares changed this category more than any fee cut did. Owning 500 individual stocks used to require enough money to buy at least one share of the most expensive one. It now requires $5,000.
| Minimum | What opens at this level | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| $5,000 | Wealthfront S&P 500 Direct, Wealthfront Nasdaq-100 Direct, Fidelity Managed FidFolios | The genuine retail entry point. Fractional shares make a 500-stock basket possible at this size. |
| $20,000 | Frec Classic, S&P 500 and most large-cap strategies | Small-cap and total-market strategies step up to $50,000. |
| $100,000 | Schwab Personalized Indexing, Wealthfront US Direct Indexing, Frec Long Short, Frec Diversify | Where the SMA-style products and the extension strategies begin. |
| $250,000 | Parametric Custom Core, Vanguard Personalized Indexing preferred minimum, Aperio via Morgan Stanley Select UMA | Adviser channel. You cannot open any of these yourself. |
| $1,000,000 | Vanguard Personalized Indexing through a TAMP | Filed as a higher minimum for the turnkey asset management channel specifically. |
| $10,000,000 | Vanguard Personalized Indexing direct client relationship | Waivable at VPIM discretion. Direct clients pay 0.27% on the first tier, more than advisers pay. |
Two minimums in the table deserve a warning label. Aperio files no firm-wide dollar minimum at all: its brochure says only that a minimum "varies among Wrap Programs", so the widely repeated $1 million figure is a program minimum somebody quoted once, not Aperio's number. And Vanguard Personalized Indexing has three different minimums depending on how you reach it, with the direct relationship requiring $10 million and costing more per year than the adviser route. If you want the full breakdown, the Vanguard direct indexing fees and minimums page has every filed tier, and the Aperio direct indexing fees page explains why the schedule was so hard to read.
Is the direct indexing fee worth it
What the fee has to earn back, according to the published research
Every direct indexing fee is a bet that harvested tax losses will exceed the extra cost over an index fund. Here is what the people who published actual numbers found, with the period each one covers.
| Source | Stated annual benefit | Period and conditions |
|---|---|---|
| Wealthfront whitepaper | 0.18% to 0.44% a year of account value | Backtest, Feb 4 2015 to Dec 31 2025, US stocks portion, marginal rates of 18% to 44% |
| Vanguard Personalized Indexing | Up to 1% to 2% or more annually | Simulation published 2022, data as of Sept 2021, and only for clients who regularly realize large capital gains |
| J.P. Morgan Asset Management | About 30 bps of additional tax alpha | From scanning daily rather than monthly. 16 scenarios, 2018 to 2021 |
| Elm Wealth | No annual figure given | Finds sector-ETF harvesting captures roughly 70% of what full direct indexing can generate, and that fees "can completely eliminate" the benefit |
The range is wide because the conditions are doing the work. Vanguard's higher figure is explicitly for clients who "regularly realize large capital gains", and that is the whole game. A harvested loss offsets a realized gain. If you have no realized gains, the loss goes against ordinary income at a maximum of $3,000 a year, or $1,500 married filing separately, with the excess carried forward under IRS Topic 409. On a $200,000 account, the difference between the Wealthfront and Vanguard estimates is roughly $360 versus $2,000 a year of benefit, against a fee difference of a few hundred dollars. The fee is rarely what decides this. Your tax situation is.
There is a second cost nobody quotes as a percentage. Harvesting drives your average cost basis down, so it builds a contingent tax liability you will pay when you eventually sell. Goldman puts it flatly in its own brochure: if the account is liquidated, "the client will generally face immediate taxes on these realized gains", and "if the strategy fails to meet these tax-aware objectives, the after-tax result could be worse than if the client had not enrolled in the strategy at all". Read the fee as the price of deferral, not the price of a discount. The direct indexing tax loss harvesting page covers how the deferral eventually runs out. Which providers harvest automatically and which leave it to a portfolio manager's discretion is set out on the tax loss harvesting software comparison.
Direct indexing cost questions
What people ask when they are comparing direct indexing fees
Are there any direct indexing apps that charge less than 0.25% AUM?
Yes, several. Wealthfront S&P 500 Direct and Frec Classic both charge 0.09% a year, Wealthfront Nasdaq-100 Direct charges 0.12%, and most of Frec's 25 index strategies sit between 0.09% and 0.27%. All are self-service, so there is no adviser fee stacked on top. Below 0.25% you are choosing between exactly two firms.
What is the cheapest way to do 100 percent direct indexing without traditional RIA fees?
Open a self-service account. Wealthfront S&P 500 Direct at 0.09% with a $5,000 minimum and Frec Classic at 0.09% with a $20,000 minimum are the two cheapest ways to hold an index as individual stocks with automated harvesting, and neither requires an adviser relationship. The adviser-channel managers are 0.20% to 0.35% before your adviser adds their own fee on top.
Is Frec the cheapest direct indexing platform at 9 bps?
It is tied, not alone. Frec charges 0.09% for its S&P 500 strategy and Wealthfront charges the same 0.09% for S&P 500 Direct. The difference is elsewhere: Frec offers 25 index strategies and lets you adjust up to 25 stocks and 5 sectors, while Wealthfront offers one S&P 500 strategy at a $5,000 minimum rather than Frec's $20,000.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Wealthfront direct indexing?
It depends which Wealthfront product you mean. S&P 500 Direct at 0.09% is already at the floor of the market, and nothing published is cheaper. Wealthfront US Direct Indexing at 0.25% inside an Automated Investing Account is a different story: Frec Classic covers similar ground at 0.09% to 0.27% and Fidelity Managed FidFolios index strategies cost 0.40%.
What is the minimum balance for direct indexing to be worth it?
The honest answer is that the balance matters less than whether you have realized capital gains to offset. Without gains, your harvested losses are capped at a $3,000 deduction against ordinary income per year under IRS Topic 409, and a 0.09% fee on $50,000 is $45 to chase a benefit worth perhaps $90 to $220 a year at the published harvesting rates. With a large realized gain in the same tax year, direct indexing pays for itself at almost any size.
How do I compare direct indexing AUM fees across Fidelity, Schwab and Frec?
On published rates, Frec is 0.09% with a $20,000 minimum, Fidelity Managed FidFolios index strategies are 0.40% with $5,000 invested, and Schwab Personalized Indexing is 0.40% falling to 0.35% above $2 million with a $100,000 minimum. Fidelity and Schwab charge more than four times what Frec does, and Schwab publicly admits an ETF is usually cheaper than its own SMA. The two are taken apart line by line in our Frec vs Schwab Personalized Indexing fee comparison.
How does an S&P 500 ETF expense ratio compare to a direct indexing fee?
A large S&P 500 ETF costs 0.03% to 0.10% a year and needs one share. The cheapest direct indexing accounts cost 0.09%, so the fee gap at the low end is close to zero, which is the whole argument for Wealthfront and Frec. At 0.40% you are paying roughly ten times the ETF and the harvested losses have to cover the difference every single year.
How does Frec make money charging only 0.09%?
Frec has said publicly that it also runs securities lending, a portfolio line of credit priced at 4.64%, a Treasury product and higher-fee long/short and Diversify strategies starting at 0.50% and 0.60%. The 0.09% index account is the entry point into a broader balance sheet, which is a common and disclosed model rather than a catch. Read the fee page and the Form ADV before assuming either way.
Where can investors compare fees, minimums and performance data across direct indexing providers?
For self-service platforms, each firm publishes its own pricing page and the numbers are directly comparable. For adviser-channel managers like Parametric, Vanguard Personalized Indexing, Aperio and Goldman Sachs, no fee appears on any marketing page: the schedules are filed in Form ADV Part 2A at the SEC, which is where the adviser-channel rows in the table above come from.
Do direct indexing fees include the adviser fee and the platform fee?
No, and this is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the category. The manager rate is one layer. On Morgan Stanley Select UMA the platform adds up to a 2.0% maximum annual advisory fee plus an SMA manager fee of 0% to 0.75%, and your own adviser bills separately. A 0.35% manager can arrive as 1.2% or more all in.
Sources
Retail fees and minimums retrieved directly from each provider on the dates shown in the table: wealthfront.com/sp500-direct and wealthfront.com/pricing (August 26, 2026), frec.com/pricing (August 26, 2026), schwab.com/personalized-indexing (August 26, 2026), fidelity.com/managed-accounts/managed-fidfolios (August 10, 2026), betterment.com/pricing (August 23, 2026). Adviser-channel fee schedules and minimums transcribed from Form ADV Part 2A firm brochures retrieved from the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure system: Parametric Portfolio Associates dated 03/31/2026; Vanguard Personalized Indexing Management, CRD 285366, brochure version 1052606 dated 07/22/2026; Aperio Group LLC, CRD 111616, brochure version 1036178 dated 03/31/2026; Goldman Sachs Asset Management LP, CRD 107738, brochure versions 1046043 and 1046044 both dated 05/22/2026. Platform fee stack and strategy minimums from Morgan Stanley Select UMA strategy profiles and the Merrill Lynch Investment Advisory Program profile for Goldman Sachs TACS S&P 500, Q2 2026. Tax alpha figures from the Wealthfront tax loss harvesting whitepaper, Vanguard Personalized Indexing published materials, J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Elm Wealth. Tax rules from IRS Topic 409 and IRC section 1091. Fee schedules change at every annual amendment and every pricing update, so verify before you sign anything. Indexes is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any provider named on this page. We are index construction and backtesting software: we do not manage money, place trades, custody assets or provide tax or investment advice.
Know what you want held before you pay anyone to hold it
Every fee in the table above buys the same basic thing: a weighted basket of individual stocks. Specify the weighting, exclude what you do not want to own, and test the construction against real market history first, so the conversation about basis points starts from a portfolio you actually chose.
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