Investing · ETFs
Best all-in-one ETFs in Canada
One ticker, a whole diversified portfolio, automatic Selling what drifted above its target weight and buying what fell below — the discipline most investors fail at manually, done inside the fund automatically. — the asset-allocation ETF is the best default investment in Canada, and a 2025 fee war just reshuffled the price order. Every fund verified at the provider; we compare structure and cost, never last year's returns.
The five families, in one line each
The category creator — biggest brand, ~30% Canada tilt, and the only retirement-income version (VRIF).
The category’s biggest fund (XEQT, $18.6B) — lighter Canada tilt, quarterly distributions, lowest published big-three MERs.
The price leader (with TD) at a 0.15% fee and 0.18% MERs — plus the clearest rebalancing promise.
The contrarian: factor/active sleeves plus a 1–3% Bitcoin allocation, at roughly double the index families’ cost.
The sleeper: cheapest published MERs in the category (0.17%) — but no 100%-equity option and small funds.
Every all-in-one ETF, every family
Pick the row that matches your risk level, then read across — and click any ticker for its full deep dive (holdings, distributions, pros and cons, who it's for). Management fees are current; published Management expense ratio — the fund's true all-in annual cost (management fee plus taxes and operating expenses), deducted from the fund automatically. Published MERs are backward-looking, so they lag recent fee cuts. lag the 2025 fee cuts (Vanguard's especially) — each family's as-of is noted above.
| Fund | Mix (equity/FI) | Mgmt fee | MER | AUM | Distributions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VEQT Vanguard | 100/0 | 0.17% | 0.24% | $13.4B | Annually · 1.26% — Distributes once a year — unusual in the category |
| VGRO Vanguard | 80/20 | 0.17% | 0.24% | $9.6B | Quarterly · 1.47% |
| VBAL Vanguard | 60/40 | 0.17% | 0.24% | $5.2B | Quarterly · 1.93% |
| VCNS Vanguard | 40/60 | 0.17% | 0.25% | $849M | Quarterly · 2.42% |
| VCIP Vanguard | 20/80 | 0.17% | 0.25% | $253M | Quarterly · 2.97% |
| VRIF Vanguard | ~30/70 actual (actively allocated) | 0.29% | 0.32% | $347M | Monthly · 3.83% — Retirement-income design: monthly distribution, reviewed periodically |
| XEQT iShares | 100/0 | 0.17% | 0.20% | $18.6B | Quarterly · 0.83% (12-mo trailing 1.51%) |
| XGRO iShares | 80/20 | 0.17% | 0.20% | $4.8B | Quarterly · 1.24% |
| XBAL iShares | 60/40 | 0.17% | 0.19% | $3.2B | Quarterly · 1.75% |
| XCNS iShares | 40/60 | 0.17% | 0.19% | $402M | Quarterly · 2.36% |
| XINC iShares | 20/80 | 0.17% | 0.19% | $123M | Quarterly · 2.96% |
| ZEQT BMO | 100% equity (actual) | 0.15% | 0.18% | $789M | Quarterly · 1.26% |
| ZGRO BMO | 81/19 actual | 0.15% | 0.18% | $740M | Quarterly · 1.30% |
| ZBAL BMO | 62/38 actual | 0.15% | 0.18% | $592M | Quarterly · 1.35% |
| ZCON BMO | 42/58 actual | 0.15% | 0.18% | $101M | Quarterly · 1.45% |
| FEQT Fidelity | 97/0 + 3% crypto | — | 0.43% | $5.0B | Annually — No wrapper fee — costs sit in the underlying funds (the MER is the real number) |
| FGRO Fidelity | 82/15 + 3% crypto | — | 0.42% | $4.7B | Annually |
| FBAL Fidelity | 59/39 + 2% crypto | — | 0.41% | $9.0B | Annually — The largest all-in-one in Canada by AUM |
| FCNS Fidelity | 40/59 + 1% crypto | — | 0.40% | $2.1B | Annually |
| TGRO TD | 90/10 target | 0.15% | 0.17% | $403M | Monthly |
| TBAL TD | 60/40 target | 0.15% | 0.17% | $343M | Monthly |
| TCON TD | 30/70 target | 0.15% | 0.17% | $123M | Monthly |
All figures from provider fact sheets and product pages, verified June 10, 2026. Mackenzie (0.17% fee) and Global X (0.18% fee, monthly distributions on HEQT) also run suites — their MERs weren’t verifiable at the source this pass, so they’re noted rather than tabled.
How to choose: risk level first, family second
The decision that drives 95% of your outcome is the Equities are stocks (growth, volatility); fixed income is bonds (stability, income). The ratio between them sets how hard your portfolio can fall — and how fast it can grow. — 100/0 if a 40% drawdown wouldn’t shake you, 80/20 for most accumulators, 60/40 approaching retirement, lighter beyond (our asset-allocation calculator gives a starting point). Only then pick a family, on three knowable details: cost (BMO/TD cheapest, the big three within a rounding error), All-in-one funds hold far more Canadian stocks (~25–30%) than Canada's ~3% share of world markets — deliberate home bias that trims currency swings and taxes, at the cost of concentration in banks and energy. (Vanguard ~30%, iShares ~25%), and distribution rhythm (VEQT annually, everyone else quarterly, Global X’s HEQT monthly). What you should not pick on: last year’s returns, which mostly measure whose tilt happened to win.
The 2025 fee war, in four dates
August 2023: TD cuts to 0.15% and goes index. June 2025: BMO matches at 0.15%. November 2025: Vanguard cuts 0.22% → 0.17%. December 2025: BlackRock follows, 0.18% → 0.17%. The result: a category that cost ~0.25% all-in now costs 0.17%–0.20% at the index families — and most comparison content on the internet still quotes the old numbers. The trap to avoid: published MERs are backward-looking, so Vanguard’s 0.24% on its fact sheets reflects the pre-cut year. Watch fees, not stale MERs.
The retiree version: VRIF, described honestly
VRIF is Vanguard’s retirement-income all-in-one: a monthly distribution, an actively managed mix that currently sits near 30% equity / 70% fixed income, and a 0.29% fee. The internet still repeats its 2020 launch pitch of a “~4% target payout” — Vanguard’s current documents state no such target; the distribution is “reviewed periodically.” It remains a reasonable one-ticket income sleeve for a portion of a portfolio, best framed by the safe-withdrawal math and paired with the cash tiers in our retiree cash strategy rather than treated as a pension substitute.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best all-in-one ETF in Canada?
There is no single winner — and that’s the honest answer. The big families (Vanguard’s VEQT series, iShares’ XEQT series, BMO’s ZEQT series) are all excellent, diversified, automatically rebalanced portfolios within a few hundredths of a percent of each other. Pick your risk level first (100% equity down to 20/80), then choose a family on the details: BMO and TD are cheapest (0.15% fees, 0.17–0.18% MERs), iShares runs the biggest funds with a lighter Canada tilt, Vanguard has the strongest brand and the only retirement-income version (VRIF). Then stop optimizing — the differences are noise next to actually staying invested.
What do all-in-one ETFs cost?
Less than they did a year ago — a genuine fee war ran through 2025: TD cut to 0.15% (2023), BMO followed (June 2025), then Vanguard and BlackRock both cut to 0.17% (late 2025). All-in costs now run roughly 0.17%–0.25% at the index families. One trap: published MERs lag the cuts — Vanguard's fact sheets still show 0.24% from before its November 2025 cut, so compare current management fees, not stale MERs. Fidelity's suite is the outlier at 0.40%–0.43%, paying for active sleeves and a Bitcoin allocation. Against a robo (~0.4–0.7% all-in) or a mutual fund (~2%), any of these is a bargain — the MER calculator shows what the gaps compound into.
VEQT or XEQT — what’s actually different?
Three real differences, no mythology. Canada weight: VEQT holds ~30.6% Canada, XEQT ~25.3% — Vanguard tilts home harder, iShares gives you more international. Distributions: VEQT pays once a year; XEQT pays quarterly — irrelevant in a TFSA, mildly relevant for cash-flow lovers. Scale and cost: XEQT is the category giant ($18.6B) with a 0.20% published MER vs VEQT’s stale 0.24% (both fees now 0.17%). Our full VEQT vs XEQT vs ZEQT breakdown does the three-way.
Are all-in-one ETFs good for retirees?
For the accumulation-to-early-drawdown phase, a VBAL/XBAL-style 60/40 is a perfectly sane core. The retiree-specific option is VRIF — Vanguard’s retirement-income ETF that pays a monthly distribution (reviewed periodically by Vanguard; its actual mix currently sits near 30% equity / 70% fixed income). Note we don’t repeat the old “4% target” claim — Vanguard’s current documents don’t state one. A common structure: an all-in-one core plus the cash tiers from our retiree cash strategy, with RRIF minimums drawn from the cash side.
What about the Bitcoin inside Fidelity’s all-in-ones?
It’s real and it persists: FEQT carries a 3% neutral Bitcoin allocation (FGRO 3%, FBAL 2%, FCNS 1%) through Fidelity’s bitcoin ETF, with a stated guardrail that trims crypto back if it doubles past its neutral weight. The funds also use factor/active equity sleeves rather than pure index, trade on Cboe Canada rather than the TSX, and cost roughly double the index families. None of that is disqualifying — FBAL is actually the largest all-in-one in Canada — but you should be choosing the crypto sleeve deliberately, not discovering it later.
Where should I buy these, and in which account?
Any of the $0-commission brokers — Questrade, Wealthsimple, Qtrade, NBDB, Desjardins — buys every fund here free (TSX or Cboe). Account order for most people: TFSA and FHSA first (all growth tax-free), then RRSP, then non-registered — where distributions are taxed as a mix of dividend, interest and capital-gains income that each provider publishes annually in its tax tables. Asset-allocation ETFs inside a TFSA at a $0 broker is the entire couch-potato setup: see the guide.
This page is for educational purposes only and is not investment advice. Fund facts were verified at each provider's published fact sheets and product pages on June 10, 2026; management fees are current while published MERs carry each provider's stated as-of date and lag recent fee cuts. We deliberately do not compare or project returns. Distribution yields float; allocations drift between rebalances. Read the fund facts document before buying, and see our methodology.