VOO and QQQ are not two flavors of the same fund. VOO is the S&P 500, about 500 large U.S. companies across every sector of the economy. QQQ is the Nasdaq-100, roughly 100 companies that list on one stock exchange, with no banks at all and a very heavy lean toward technology. Most of the "VOO vs QQQ" fights online are really arguments about whether the last ten years will repeat, and nobody, including us, knows that.
So this article does not tell you which one to buy. We build MarketCast, a stock market app for TVs, and we spend our days staring at index and ETF prices, not managing anyone's money. What we can do is lay out what is actually inside each fund, what each one costs, and how differently they have behaved, with every number taken from Vanguard or Invesco and dated. This is not investment advice. If you are deciding what to do with real money, talk to a licensed advisor or read each fund's prospectus.
VOO vs QQQ at a Glance
| VOO | QQQ | |
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Vanguard S&P 500 ETF | Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1 |
| Index | S&P 500 | Nasdaq-100 |
| Launched | September 7, 2010 | March 10, 1999 |
| Expense ratio | 0.03% | 0.18% |
| Holdings | 505 stocks (Sep 30, 2026) | 102 holdings (Oct 29, 2026) |
| Top ten as a share of the fund | 40.6% (Sep 30, 2026) | About 46.4% (Oct 29, 2026) |
| Tech weighting | 39.7% Information Technology (GICS, Sep 30, 2026) | 68.0% Technology (ICB, Sep 30, 2026) |
| 2022 calendar year | S&P 500 index: down 18.11% | QQQ: down 32.51% |
Sources: the Vanguard VOO fact sheet (data as of September 30, 2026) and the Invesco QQQ fund page (dates as marked). The 2022 figures come from QQQ's 2023 prospectus and Vanguard's 500 Index Fund materials. We checked all of them on October 31, 2026.
What Is the Difference Between the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq-100?
The S&P 500 is, in Vanguard's words, made of 500 leading companies in leading industries of the U.S. economy. It does not care which exchange a stock trades on. Banks, insurers, oil companies, utilities and railroads all make the cut if they are big enough and meet the index rules. VOO owns all of them in proportion to their size, which is why it holds slightly more than 500 stocks: a few companies have more than one share class.
The Nasdaq-100 has two filters the S&P 500 does not. First, a company has to be listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Second, it has to be a nonfinancial company, so there are no banks, brokers or insurers in QQQ at all. Invesco describes the index as 100 of the largest domestic and international nonfinancial companies on Nasdaq, rebalanced quarterly and reconstituted once a year. Because the filter is "where are you listed" rather than "what do you do", the list can surprise you: Walmart sits in QQQ's top fifteen today because it now lists on Nasdaq, and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) shows up in QQQ's top ten at 2.67%.
One 2026 detail: Invesco notes that the Nasdaq-100 changed its weighting and maintenance methodology effective May 1, 2026, so performance after that date reflects the new rules.
Expense Ratio: VOO 0.03% vs QQQ 0.18%
This is the easiest difference to understand. VOO charges 0.03% a year, which is $3 on every $10,000 invested. QQQ charges 0.18%, or $18 on every $10,000. Neither number is large, and both are far below the 0.41% average Vanguard lists for S&P 500 index funds, but QQQ costs six times as much as VOO to hold.
Invesco also runs a second fund on the same index, QQQM, launched October 13, 2020, with a 0.15% expense ratio. QQQ is the one with the giant trading volume (Invesco calls it the second most traded ETF in the U.S. by average daily volume, as of March 31, 2026), which matters more to traders than to people who buy and hold. That is the same trade-off we described between VOO and SPY in our article on why investors like VOO.
Concentration: How Much of Each Fund Is Big Tech?
Both funds are weighted by company size, so both are top heavy. The difference is how top heavy, and in what.
VOO's ten largest holdings on September 30, 2026 were NVIDIA (8.4%), Apple (7.4%), Microsoft (5.8%), Alphabet (5.5%), Amazon (3.7%), Broadcom (2.5%), Meta (2.4%), Micron (1.8%), Tesla (1.5%) and AMD (1.5%), together 40.6% of the fund.
QQQ's ten largest on October 29, 2026 were NVIDIA (8.08%), Apple (7.99%), Microsoft (6.17%), Micron (4.57%), Amazon (4.12%), AMD (4.00%), Tesla (3.32%), Meta (2.91%), SpaceX (2.67%) and Alphabet's class A shares (2.61%). That adds up to about 46.4%, and it undercounts Alphabet, whose class C shares sit just outside the top ten at 2.45%.
Notice the overlap. Nine of QQQ's top ten names are also in VOO's top ten. If you own both funds, you own NVIDIA, Apple and Microsoft twice. Adding QQQ to VOO mostly turns up the weight on companies VOO already owns.
On sectors, Vanguard puts VOO at 39.7% Information Technology. Invesco puts QQQ at 68.0% Technology (both as of September 30, 2026), with Consumer Discretionary next at 15.1%. Those two numbers come from different classification systems (Vanguard uses GICS, Invesco uses ICB), so they are not a perfect apples to apples match. The direction is not in doubt, though: VOO is a tech-heavy market fund, and QQQ is closer to a tech fund with some retailers, drug makers and utilities attached. Invesco itself labels QQQ non-diversified.
Volatility: What the Bad Years Looked Like
Concentration cuts both ways, and the down years show it. In calendar 2022, QQQ lost 32.51% according to its own prospectus. The S&P 500 index lost 18.11% that year, and the share classes of Vanguard's 500 Index Fund (VOO is its ETF share class) landed between 18.13% and 18.23% down. QQQ's worst single quarter in that prospectus was the second quarter of 2022, at a 22.33% loss in three months.
The longer memory is the dot-com bust. QQQ launched in March 1999, almost exactly at the top of the tech bubble, and by October 2002 its price had fallen by roughly 80%. Anyone who bought at the peak waited many years just to get back to even. The S&P 500 fell hard in that stretch too, but nowhere near as far.
For a recent, plain volatility number, Vanguard lists VOO's three-year standard deviation at 12.43% as of September 30, 2026. Invesco does not publish the same figure for QQQ, so we will not guess at one.
Here is where watching both helps. If you hold either fund, add VOO and QQQ to a list in MarketCast and leave the Stream running on your TV. On days when chip and software stocks sell off, you will usually see QQQ fall harder than VOO, and on big tech rallies the reverse. Seeing that play out a few times explains the difference between the two funds better than any table.
VOO vs QQQ Returns: What History Shows and What It Doesn't
QQQ has had a remarkable run, and the numbers are not close:
Ten years. Invesco reports QQQ's NAV return over the ten years to June 30, 2026 at 22.06% a year, against 15.48% a year for the S&P 500. In dollars, Invesco's calculator says $10,000 in QQQ ten years earlier would have been worth $73,464. Vanguard reports VOO's ten-year return to September 30, 2026 at 15.29% a year.
This year. Through September 30, 2026, QQQ was up 20.85% at NAV and VOO was up 12.72%.
Since 1999. From QQQ's launch on March 10, 1999 to June 30, 2026, Invesco puts QQQ's cumulative return at 1,612.91% and the S&P 500's at 857.01%. That window includes the dot-com crash, which makes it a fairer test than the last ten years alone.
Two caveats. First, a lot of QQQ's lead comes from a handful of giant companies having an extraordinary decade, and concentration is exactly what made 2022 and 2000 to 2002 so painful. Second, past performance tells you what happened, not what will happen. Invesco's own QQQ site even adds a line that high, double-digit returns are highly unusual and cannot be sustained.
Is QQQ Riskier Than VOO?
By the measures above, QQQ has swung harder in both directions: bigger gains in good tech years, bigger losses in bad ones, and a much heavier bet on one sector and a few names. VOO spreads across five times as many companies and every sector, financials included, at a sixth of the cost. Whether either profile fits you depends on things we do not know about you, like your timeline, the rest of your portfolio and how you would feel watching a 33% drop. That is a conversation for you and an advisor, not for a TV app's blog.
If you are weighing VOO against other broad Vanguard funds instead, our sibling article on VOO vs VTI covers the S&P 500 against the total U.S. stock market. If you are new to all of this, start with our getting started with investing page.
Track VOO, QQQ and the S&P 500 on Your TV
These numbers move every trading day, and the easiest place to keep an eye on them is the biggest screen in the house. MarketCast is free on Fire TV, Google TV and Android TV, and Apple TV. Put VOO, QQQ and your own stocks in a list, then turn on the Stream: your stocks, the major indexes, the day's movers and headlines cycling full screen on their own, with a ticker tape along the bottom. The free version shows delayed prices and is supported by commercials; Premium is the real-time data package, with real-time prices and no commercials. Our guide to watching your portfolio on TV shows the setup, and if the quote on your TV ever looks a little different from your brokerage app, we explain why stock prices differ between apps.
Once more, because it matters: this article explains how two funds differ. It is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold either one.