Compare Super Fund Fees, and What They Cost by Retirement
A percentage tells you nothing until you know what it compounds into. OneSuper and HOSTPLUS Superannuation Fund hold almost the same mix of growth assets, so they are modelled at the same return, and fees alone leave A$134,760 between them after thirty years on a A$50,000 balance with A$7,500 going in a year. Every figure here is APRA's, as at 2026-06-30.
Built and checked byTimothy Hirou GaschereauFigures verified at the source on
Which option are you in?
Your super balance
A$50,000
what you hold today
Your salary, before tax
A$62,500
A$7,500 of super a year, at the 12% rate
Years to go
Growth follows the risk taken
A fund's assumed return comes from the share of growth assets APRA publishes for it, through one rule fitted to all 236 products that report both. Two funds holding the same share get the same assumed return whatever their past, so the ranking is still about cost rather than a forecast. Contributions are reduced by the 15% contributions tax before they land.
On this plan, fees alone separate the cheapest and dearest by
A$260,742
Vanguard Super ends on A$900,610 and Russell Investments Master Trust on A$1,755,750, after 30 years at the same gross return. Those are 30-years-from-now dollars: A$429,359 and A$837,041 in today's money at 2.5% inflation.
The cheapest fund is not automatically the best one. At 2026-06-30, the best five-year net investment return here belongs to First Super at 9.24%, and it sits 32 of 34 on fees, neither cheapest nor dearest. Price does not predict return in either direction. Fees are the part you can know in advance; returns are not.
Vanguard Super
CheapestVanguard MySuper · lifecycle, 36 stages · 60%-75% growth · 44,870 members
What it costs you
Cheapest †
vs the cheapest, 30 yrs
Fee rate
0.49%
at A$50,000
3yr return
8.47%
net investment, past
Ends with
A$900,610
after 30 yrs
The Bendigo Superannuation Plan
Bendigo MySuper · lifecycle, 3 stages · 60%-75% growth · 8,820 members
What it costs you
+A$9,188 †
vs the cheapest, 30 yrs
Fee rate
0.62% to 0.64%
at A$50,000
5yr return
5.68%
net investment, past
Ends with
A$970,039
after 30 yrs
Local Authorities Superannuation Fund
Vision MySuper · 75%-90% growth · 65,190 members
What it costs you
+A$53,625
vs the cheapest, 30 yrs
Fee rate
0.61%
at A$50,000
5yr return
6.94%
net investment, past
Ends with
A$1,235,113
after 30 yrs
Unisuper
MySuper Offering · 75%-90% growth · 412,910 members
What it costs you
+A$62,638
vs the cheapest, 30 yrs
Fee rate
0.68%
at A$50,000
5yr return
7.07%
net investment, past
Ends with
A$1,231,014
after 30 yrs
AustralianSuper
AustralianSuper MySuper · 60%-75% growth · 3,187,900 members
What it costs you
+A$68,275
vs the cheapest, 30 yrs
Fee rate
0.69%
at A$50,000
5yr return
6.54%
net investment, past
Ends with
A$1,122,894
after 30 yrs
Australian Meat Industry Superannuation Trust
MySuper · 60%-75% growth · 61,670 members
What it costs you
+A$74,681
vs the cheapest, 30 yrs
Fee rate
0.88%
at A$50,000
5yr return
6.29%
net investment, past
Ends with
A$971,467
after 30 yrs
Smart Future Trust
smartMonday PRIME - MySuper · lifecycle, 41 stages · 60%-75% growth · 32,000 members
What it costs you
+A$76,959 †
vs the cheapest, 30 yrs
Fee rate
0.71% to 0.75%
at A$50,000
5yr return
6.00%
net investment, past
Ends with
A$1,157,862
after 30 yrs
Australian Retirement Trust
Lifecycle Investment Strategy · lifecycle, 17 stages · 75%-90% growth · 1,472,450 members
What it costs you
+A$77,190 †
vs the cheapest, 30 yrs
Fee rate
0.64% to 0.73%
at A$50,000
5yr return
7.10%
net investment, past
Ends with
A$1,216,220
after 30 yrs
equipsuper
Equip Super and Catholic Super - MySuper members · 60%-75% growth · 94,250 members
What it costs you
+A$93,336
vs the cheapest, 30 yrs
Fee rate
0.82%
at A$50,000
5yr return
6.80%
net investment, past
Ends with
A$1,049,612
after 30 yrs
Retail Employees Superannuation Trust
MySuper · 75%-90% growth · 1,993,890 members
What it costs you
+A$100,122
vs the cheapest, 30 yrs
Fee rate
0.81%
at A$50,000
5yr return
6.94%
net investment, past
Ends with
A$1,177,803
after 30 yrs
HESTA
HESTA MySuper · 60%-75% growth · 978,570 members
What it costs you
+A$100,778
vs the cheapest, 30 yrs
Fee rate
0.81%
at A$50,000
5yr return
7.21%
net investment, past
Ends with
A$1,115,232
after 30 yrs
Brighter Super Fund
Accumulation - MySuper · 75%-90% growth · 129,580 members
What it costs you
+A$112,997
vs the cheapest, 30 yrs
Fee rate
0.73%
at A$50,000
5yr return
7.16%
net investment, past
Ends with
A$1,243,343
after 30 yrs
Showing the 12 cheapest of 35 funds open to the public. Nothing is excluded for being small: the cheapest fund here is only the 29th largest.
How we make money here. Nothing, on this page. Snowball has no referral arrangement with any superannuation fund and earns nothing from anything listed below. The ranking is APRA's data run through our own arithmetic, and there is no commercial reason for any fund to appear where it does.
How to use this calculator
- 1. It changes the answer more than anything else. A fixed dollar administration fee is a large percentage of A$10,000 and a small one of A$250,000, so funds swap places as the balance moves.
- 2. Your salary before tax, not what your employer pays into super. The tool applies the 12% compulsory rate itself and shows the contribution it works out to, then takes the 15% contributions tax off that before investing it.
- 3. The gap between 0.49% and 1.31% sounds small. Over thirty years the dearest costs A$260,742 more than the cheapest in fees and the growth those fees never made, which is the only form of it worth acting on.
- 4. Past returns are shown as a dated fact, never projected. A fund is modelled on the share of growth assets it reports, not on how it has performed, so two funds at the same allocation are credited with the same return however differently they did.
Superannuation fees are quoted as a percentage of what you hold, which makes them almost impossible to weigh. 0.49% against 1.31% reads like a rounding difference. On a balance that grows for thirty years it is A$260,742, and that is the number this page exists to show you.
Everything here comes from APRA's Comprehensive Product Performance Package as at 2026-06-30: 50 MySuper products, of which 35 are open to the public and therefore comparable. A product restricted to one employer's staff is left out, because ranking something nobody can join is not a comparison.
This compares default options only, not High Growth or Indexed. MySuper is the option your money sits in if you never chose one, and it is where most Australians are. If you have actively picked High Growth, Balanced or an indexed option, your fee and your return are both different from the row for your fund below, and this page does not yet cover them. APRA publishes that data separately and we are building it next.
Why the percentage hides the number
A fee on a super balance is not like brokerage. Brokerage is a fixed amount on a transaction you choose to make. A super fee is a share of everything you own, charged every year, for as long as you hold the account. It therefore compounds twice: you pay the fee, and you also lose whatever that money would have earned for the rest of your working life.
That second part is the larger one, and it is why the table shows a final balance rather than a fee total. On the default plan, the cheapest product charges A$52,086 in fees across thirty years but costs A$107,282 off the balance it would have reached charging nothing. The fees are less than half the damage.
The cheapest fund is not the best fund
This is the part most fee comparisons leave out, including ones that rank funds for a living. At 2026-06-30, the best five-year net investment return of the 35 products here belongs to First Super at 9.24%. It charges 1.12%, which ranks it 32 of 34 on price: neither the cheapest nor the dearest, just unremarkable. Returns on this page are net investment returns, which is the only measure APRA publishes for both default and chosen options, so the same figure can be read across the whole comparison.
Look the other way and the picture is the same. HOSTPLUS Superannuation Fund charges the most in the set at 1.31%, and returned 7.70% over five years, which is well above the middle. Price does not predict return in either direction, and anyone telling you the cheapest fund is the best one has not looked.
Both facts are true at once, and neither settles the question. Fees are known in advance and compound with certainty. Returns are not known in advance, and a five-year record is a short one. So the table credits a fund with the return its ASSET MIX implies, never with its own track record: two products holding the same share of growth assets are modelled identically whatever one did against the other. Within a risk profile that leaves fees as the thing separating them, and the return column sits beside it as a fact rather than a forecast.
What the performance test does and does not measure
The annual performance test compares a product's investment return against a benchmark built from its own asset allocation, then adds administration fees, over a multi-year lookback. Of the 49 products APRA tested at 2026-06-30, 48 passed and 1 did not.
The one that failed is Building Unions Superannuation Scheme (Queensland), with 66,480 member accounts. It is worth being precise about why, because the label on its own misleads: its administration fee is 0.19%, among the lowest of any product here. The failure is investment return, at -0.57% against its own benchmark, not a fee problem. A fund can charge very little and still fail this test, and a fund can pass it while charging a lot.
What a failure means in practice is defined in law rather than by opinion: the trustee must write to affected members, and a product that fails two consecutive years cannot accept new members. What it does not mean is that the fund is badly run or that switching is automatically the right move, neither of which this test measures.
What the returns look like once you group by risk
Published return tables mix a product holding 20% in growth assets with one holding 95% and call the winner the best performer. Grouped by APRA's own growth-asset bands, the picture is duller and more useful: the median five-year net investment return rises steadily with the risk taken, which is most of what a league table is actually measuring.
| Risk profile | Growth assets | Median 5yr return | Options with 5yr history |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | 0%-40% | 2.06% | 18 |
| Moderate | 40%-60% | 4.67% | 26 |
| Balanced | 60%-75% | 5.90% | 19 |
| Growth | 75%-90% | 7.52% | 28 |
| High growth | 90%-100% | 8.26% | 19 |
We pull that apart properly in why the best performing super funds league table misleads, which is the companion piece to this table.
Which is why the fund with the best five-year return here, First Super at 9.24%, sits 32 of 34 on fees. Price does not predict return in either direction, and the part you can know in advance is the price.
Two limits of this comparison, stated plainly
Insurance is not in here. Most MySuper accounts carry default life and disability cover, and the premium comes out of the same balance. It is a real cost and it varies enormously by fund, age and occupation, so it cannot be compared on one axis the way a fee rate can. Read your own statement for it.
And it is the usual reason not to move. Closing an account cancels the cover inside it, and cover at the new fund is written against your health today, so anything diagnosed since you joined may not be covered again at any price. A fee saving on this page does not settle that question. Start with insurance inside super versus standalone and life insurance through super, and if you are chasing old accounts rather than changing funds, that is a different job: finding and consolidating lost super.
A published rate is not a fee schedule. APRA gives each fee as a percentage of the balance at five balances, and those percentages fall as the balance rises because the underlying charge is a flat dollar amount plus a rate. HOSTPLUS Superannuation Fund charges about A$119 a year plus 0.02% on its Indexed Growth Accumulation option, which APRA publishes as 1.21% at A$10,000 and 0.07% at A$250,000. Reading either figure as the fee gets the answer badly wrong, so this tool reconstructs the schedule from all five points rather than picking one.
Lifecycle products do not have one fee. 23 of the 50 products here price by age stage, and APRA publishes neither the members in each stage nor an age that can be read from the stage names, which run from "Age 54 to 55" to "Born 1974 to 1978". Those products show a range rather than a single figure, because inventing the midpoint would be inventing precision.
Fund by fund, in detail
The table above prices every fund on one axis. These go the other way, one fund at a time: what it charges, how its default sits against the median of its own risk band, and what its own cheaper options cost. That last part is the one most comparisons leave out, and it is often the bigger number.
- AMP Super Fund review · 0.84% at A$50,000, 6.92% over five years
- ART review · 0.70% at A$50,000, 7.10% over five years
- AustralianSuper review · 0.69% at A$50,000, 6.54% over five years
- Aware Super review · 0.84% at A$50,000, 6.68% over five years
- CareSuper review · 0.94% at A$50,000, 6.36% over five years
- Cbus review · 0.91% at A$50,000, 6.48% over five years
- HESTA review · 0.81% at A$50,000, 7.21% over five years
- Hostplus review · 1.31% at A$50,000, 7.70% over five years
- Mercer review · 0.83% at A$50,000, 7.28% over five years
- Rest review · 0.81% at A$50,000, 6.94% over five years
- UniSuper review · 0.68% at A$50,000, 7.07% over five years
- Vanguard Super review · 0.49% at A$50,000, 8.47% over three years
If you are weighing a switch rather than a number, how to compare super funds works through what to check beyond the fee, and consolidating lost super is usually worth more than switching, because a second account means a second set of fees on the same money.
FAQ
Which super fund has the lowest fees?
At 2026-06-30, of the 35 MySuper products open to the public, Vanguard Super charges the least on the default plan used here. Over thirty years its fees and the growth they never made come to A$107,282, against A$368,024 for Russell Investments Master Trust. Those are costs, not final balances: the dearest product here also holds more in growth assets, so it is modelled at a higher return and can still finish ahead despite charging more. Change the balance and the order changes, which is why the tool takes your own figures rather than publishing one list.
How much do super fees actually cost me?
More than the fees themselves, because the money taken also stops earning. On a A$50,000 balance with A$7,500 added a year over thirty years, the cheapest product here charges A$52,086 in fees but costs A$107,282 off the balance it would have reached charging nothing. The gap between the two is the return those fees never made.
Is a cheaper super fund always better?
No, and the data says so in both directions. The best five-year net investment return here belongs to First Super at 9.24%, and it ranks 32 of 34 on fees, in the middle. The dearest product in the set returned 7.70%, above the middle. Price predicts return in neither direction. Fees are what you can know in advance, which is why this tool ranks them and leaves returns beside the ranking as a fact.
What does it mean if a super fund fails the performance test?
The trustee must write to affected members, and a product that fails two consecutive years cannot accept new members. The test compares investment return against a benchmark matched to the product's own asset allocation, plus administration fees. A fund can fail it while charging some of the lowest fees in the country, so the result should be read next to the fee rate rather than on its own.
Does this cover High Growth and other investment options?
Yes. The selector above the table switches from MySuper, the default your money sits in if you never chose one, to the chosen options grouped by how much they hold in growth assets. APRA publishes 291 of them, and the five risk bands here carry the ones you can actually join, one row per fund so a single fund does not fill the screen with its own menu. Your fee and your return both differ from your fund's default row once you have chosen an option, which is the reason the selector exists.
Why are some funds missing from this comparison?
This lists MySuper products open to the public. Products restricted to one employer's staff are excluded because you cannot join them, and choice investment options are a separate APRA dataset. 50 products are in the registry and 35 meet both conditions.
Does this include insurance premiums?
No. Most MySuper accounts carry default death and disability cover, deducted from the same balance, and the premium varies by fund, age and occupation to a degree that cannot be compared on a single axis. It is a real cost that this comparison does not capture, so check it on your own statement before switching.
How current are these figures?
They are APRA's own, as at 2026-06-30, from the Comprehensive Product Performance Package published on the superannuation product performance page. APRA reissues it annually, and our registry is regenerated from that file rather than typed in, so an update is a rerun rather than a rewrite.
Related reading
How to Compare Super Funds (and Stop Leaving Money on the Table)
How to compare super funds in Australia using fees, net returns, insurance, and the free YourSuper tool, plus how to switch without losing your cover.
How Much Super Should You Have? Average Balances by Age in Australia
Real average super balances by age from ASFA and the ATO, the Retirement Standard targets, the gender super gap, and what actually helps.
How to Find and Consolidate Lost Super
Real ATO figures on lost and unclaimed super, why it goes missing, how to find it through myGov, and the insurance check to do before consolidating.
Where these numbers come from
Every rate and threshold in this calculator was read off the official page, not copied from another calculator. Check them yourself, they change.
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Disclaimer
General information only, not personal financial advice. It does not consider your objectives, financial situation or needs, and it does not account for insurance premiums inside your account. Fees and returns change, and past returns are not a guide to future ones. Read a fund's product disclosure statement before deciding anything.