Vanguard Super Review: One Fee, 36 Options and a Very Short Track Record

💸 Vanguard Super fees: one rate covers every option🔗

At a $50,000 balance, total fees and costs come to 0.49%, and 0.29% of that is administration. The rest covers the cost of running the investments. In dollars, that is $245 a year, of which $145 is administration.

Now look at what happens when you switch investment option. There are 36 of them, running from High Growth to the age-based lifecycle stages. Every single one is priced at the same 0.49%. One price whatever you pick, whether you want the most aggressive setting on the menu or the most defensive.

That is worth sitting with for a moment, because it removes a decision most super members spend years getting wrong. Most funds price their options differently, which is exactly why this one is worth spelling out. One rate, one number to remember, and no need to read your way through the menu to work out what each choice costs.

🔁 Why the usual cheap-option advice does not apply here🔗

At most funds, the option you choose moves your fee more than the fund you choose does. The result is that a standard piece of super advice is to hunt down the cheap index option inside your fund and move your money there. The fee drops. The strategy is not exotic. It is arithmetic, and our Aware Super review works through a fund where that gap is wide.

At Vanguard Super, that lever does not exist. There is no cheap option to switch into and no expensive one to avoid, because every option carries the same rate. Want more risk? You can take it without paying extra. Want less risk? You do not get a discount for being cautious either.

If an indexed option is what drew you here in the first place, the index option inside super covers what you are actually buying, and what you give up.

📏 The same rate at every balance APRA publishes🔗

Most funds charge a fixed dollar amount plus a percentage rate. The dollar part stays the same as your balance grows, so the published percentage falls. That is how a fund can look pricey at $10,000 and cheap at $250,000. Vanguard Super does not work that way.

That flat percentage cuts in two directions, and both are worth being precise about. At a small balance, the fee scales with what you actually have. There is no fixed dollar charge sitting underneath it, so a lean account is not carrying a cost that stays the same while the balance is small.

At a large balance, the logic reverses. A percentage fee with no dollar cap keeps growing in dollar terms as the balance grows, which is what the right-hand column above shows. A fixed dollar fee would have faded into the background by comparison. Which pattern suits you depends on the size of your balance and what you are weighing it against. Neither one is good or bad in the abstract.

📊 Vanguard Super performance: three years, and nothing longer🔗

Here is the number people search for. APRA puts Vanguard Super's three-year net investment return at 8.47% as at 2026-06-30.

That is the entire returns record. There is no five-year figure and no ten-year figure, because the fund only launched in 2022. A three-year number tells you what markets did while the fund was young. It is not evidence of anything over a career, and it should not be read as if it were.

Sitting outside the performance test is neither a pass nor a fail. It means the piece of evidence most people reach for when judging a super fund does not exist here yet.

On size, Vanguard Super has 44,870 member accounts, which is small next to the big industry funds. Its MySuper default sits in APRA's 60%-75% growth band and holds 62.3% in growth assets. Across all options in that band, the median five-year return is 5.90%. Vanguard Super cannot be lined up against that number, because Vanguard Super has no five-year figure at all. Putting a three-year return next to a five-year median is not a comparison. It is two different questions.

🏷️ The Vanguard name is not evidence about this fund🔗

Vanguard built its name on index funds and exchange-traded funds, much of it overseas. That reputation is real, and it is a big reason Australians take a look at Vanguard Super in the first place.

It is also not evidence about how this particular fund has gone or will go. A brand does not carry a track record across products. Vanguard Super is judged on what APRA publishes about Vanguard Super, not on the logo in the corner of the letterhead. The name is a reason to look. It is not a finding.

🤷 So is Vanguard Super any good?🔗

The honest answer is that the fund is too young to judge on returns. Three years of data, one three-year net investment return of 8.47%, no five-year number, no ten-year number, and no APRA performance test. You cannot size up a fund built to run for decades on that.

The useful move is to separate what you can verify from what you cannot. You can verify what the fund charges, because the fee is published and identical across every option and every balance APRA reports. You cannot verify long-run performance, because that record does not exist yet. Everything past those two points, whether it is a rating, a forecast or a confident hot take, is somebody filling the gap.

And if you are weighing a move rather than a number, how to change super funds covers what you give up on the way out, starting with the insurance.

❓ Frequently asked questions🔗