The 12 Best T Bill ETFs (Treasury Bills) To Park Cash in 2026

T Bills are ultra-short-term treasury bonds backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. Here we'll check out the best T Bill ETFs to buy treasury bills in 2026.

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T-Bills ETFs Comparison Table

In a hurry? Here's a comparison table of the quick stats on the 12 T-bill ETFs. I discuss each one in more detail further below.

Video – T-Bills Explained

Before diving into T-bills ETFs, you might not even know what they are. In the video below, I explain what T-bills are, how they work, and why you might want to buy them. Keep scrolling for the list of T-bills ETFs.

Intro – What Are T Bills?

T Bills, short for treasury bills, are just ultra-short-term bonds from the U.S. government. These short bonds with maturities of less than a year are called bills.

Because they're backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, they possess no liquidity risk, credit risk, or default risk inherent of corporate bonds. As such, T Bills are quite literally the “risk-free asset,” as they're called. These special, seemingly boring bonds are considered a “cash equivalent.”

T Bills Performance

At this point you might be thinking this all automatically means negligible returns from treasury bills, but you'd be wrong. Their annualized historical return from 1928 to 2025 was 3.32%. The average rate of inflation over that period was 3.02%, which means a real return (return adjusted for inflation) of 0.3%.

How Do T Bills Work?

T Bills are sold at a discount and don't pay a coupon like most bonds, so they simply return their face value at maturity. The difference between your purchase price and that face value is your “interest.”

Funds that buy and sell T-bills for you pay out that effective “interest” as a monthly dividend.

T Bills and Inflation

Because they're able to be rolled quickly, T Bills are also a decent inflation hedge. T Bills essentially kept pace with inflation during the double-digit inflation of the 1970’s in the U.S.! T Bills are a great place to park excess cash to be used for near-future liabilities so that you don't lose that purchasing power to inflation.

T Bills vs. Stocks

This might sound crazy, but there have also been extended periods where T Bills outperformed the stock market: the 15 years from 1929 to 1943, the 17 years from 1966-82, and the 13 years from 2000-12. Any purveyor of market history will recognize these periods as being pretty abysmal for stocks.

Stocks and treasury bonds tend to be inversely correlated, meaning when stocks zig, bonds tend to zag. Specifically, treasury bonds are a “flight to safety” asset that investors flock to during stock market turmoil or uncertainty. T-bill funds saw record inflows in 2023 as cautious investors sought yield and a safe haven with recession fears looming. In January 2023, the 3-month treasury bill rate was 4.57%. Now in May 2026, it has dropped by 1 percentage point to about 3.6%.

Tax Treatment of T-Bills

T-bills are attractive to many because while the gains from them are federally taxable as income, they are free from state and local taxes because they are U.S. government debt issues.

This gives T-bills an advantage over a typical money market fund or savings account, at least from a tax perspective.

SPAXX and FDRXX at Fidelity, for example, which are money market funds, have 40%+ in repurchase agreements, which do not qualify for that state tax exemption.

This is a particularly salient consideration for those in high-tax states like California, Connecticut, and New York.

How To Buy T Bills

You can buy individual T-bills directly from the US Treasury via TreasuryDirect.gov, but it's notoriously pretty cumbersome.

T-Bill ETFs allow you to avoid having to buy and roll a ladder of individual bonds yourself, and you can buy them at any major brokerage. Now that you know why treasury bills are attractive for a variety of purposes and audiences, let's check out the best T Bill ETFs with which to buy them.

The 12 Best T Bill ETFs

Below are the 12 best treasury bill ETFs. They vary somewhat in size, duration, and fees. I've ordered them by expense ratio from lowest to highest.

XHLF – BondBloxx Bloomberg Six Month Target Duration US Treasury ETF

XHLF is the cheapest T-Bills ETF on the list with a fee of only 0.03%. It's comparatively pretty young, having launched in late 2022, and BondBloxx is certainly not a household name, but the fund's low fee has allowed it to amass over $2 billion in assets in its short lifespan thus far.

A significant portion of that AUM has probably come from people moving to XHLF from the stalwart SGOV, an older, more expensive, more popular T-bills ETF.

XHLF holds treasury bills with maturities less than 1 year to aim for a target duration of 6 months, making it a bit longer than most of the other funds on this list. Appropriately, its index is the Bloomberg US Treasury 6 Month Target Duration Index.

SPTU – State Street SPDR Portfolio Ultra Short T-Bill ETF

SPTU is the newest fund on this list, having launched in October 2025. SPDR and State Street are household names, but as of May 1, 2026, this fund still has “only” about $14M in AUM. I expect it to attract more assets over time, as it has a low fee of 0.05%.

SPTU has a target duration of 2 months.

VBIL – Vanguard 0-3 Month Treasury Bill ETF

Vanguard made waves in early 2025 by finally launching products for T-bills after previously not having any. Since then, VBIL has quickly amassed about $7 billion, which shouldn't be too surprising given the Vanguard brand is notorious for steady inflows.

VBIL initially had an expense ratio of 0.07% but it dropped to 0.06% only a few months in.

VBIL has a target duration of 1 month by seeking to track the Bloomberg US Treasury Bills 0-3 Month Index.

Bogleheads who are Vanguard purists will almost certainly love VBIL.

VGUS – Vanguard Ultra-Short Treasury ETF

Interestingly, Vanguard also launched VGUS at the same time as VBIL. VGUS is slightly longer, holding bills up to 1 year, giving it an effective duration of about 5 months. Specifically, it tracks the Bloomberg Short Treasury Index.

VGUS also costs 1 basis point more than VBIL at 0.07% and is less popular with about $1B in assets.

Investors may prefer VGUS over VBIL if they have a known liability more than 3 months away.

I discussed VBIL and VGUS in a separate post here.

CLIP – Global X 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF

CLIP from Global X is another relatively new fund on the list, having launched in mid-2023. Since then, it has grown to about $3B in AUM. It is one of the most affordable ETFs for T-Bills with an expense ratio of 0.07%.

After the stalwart SGOV's fee waiver expired in mid-2024, CLIP suddenly became much more attractive with a savings of 0.02% for roughly the same exposure.

CLIP provides plain-vanilla exposure to 1-3 month T-Bills by seeking to track the Solactive 1-3 month US T-Bill Index.

TBLL – Invesco Short Term Treasury ETF

TBLL from Invesco also holds T bills with less than a year left to maturity. It launched in 2017 and seeks to track the ICE U.S. Treasury Short Bond Index.

TBLL has $2 billion in assets, an expense ratio of 0.08%, and an effective duration of 3 months.

TBLL previously traded under the ticker CLTL and was named the Invesco Treasury Collateral ETF.

SGOV – iShares 0-3 Month Treasury Bond ETF

SGOV from iShares launched in May, 2020. It holds T-bills with maturities less than 3 months, giving it a short duration of about 1 month.

SGOV used to be one of the cheapest options on this list, but its fee waiver expired, so it now has a fee of 0.09%. Not the cheapest, but still a great option.

Because it was very affordable for so long, SGOV has $84 billion in assets. I covered SGOV specifically in a separate post here.

Let me also briefly address SCHO here, which weirdly seems to come up in conversations about SGOV often. SCHO is the Schwab Short-Term U.S. Treasury ETF.

Plainly, SCHO is not a T-bill ETF. It doesn't hold T-bills. It tracks the Bloomberg US Treasury 1-3 Year Index, meaning it holds Treasury bonds with maturities between 1 and 3 years. Its effective duration is around 1.8 years, roughly 20x the duration of SGOV. So basically, SGOV is for cash while SCHO is for short bonds.

GBIL – Goldman Sachs Access Treasury 0-1 Year ETF

Think of GBIL as basically a more expensive version of VGUS above, holding T-bills with a time to maturity of less than 1 year. The fund seeks to track the FTSE US Treasury 0-1 Year Composite Select Index and has an expense ratio of 0.12%.

GBIL has a little over $7 billion in assets.

BIL – SPDR Bloomberg Barclays 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF

BIL from SPDR holds treasury bills with maturities between 1 and 3 months. Because BIL has the name recognition in this space and has been around since 2007, it has about $50 billion in assets.

BIL has an expense ratio of 0.14% and seeks to track the Bloomberg Barclays 1-3 Month U.S. Treasury Bill Index.

SHV – iShares Short Treasury Bond ETF

The iShares Short Treasury Bond ETF (SHV) holds T-bills with maturities of 1 year or less. Its duration is about 3 months, slightly longer than BIL above.

SHV has over $20 billion in assets, likely simply because it is the oldest fund on this list, having launched in early 2007.

SHV has an expense ratio of 0.15% and seeks to track the Barclays Capital U.S. Short Treasury Bond Index.

TBIL – F/m US Treasury 3 Month Bill ETF

TBIL from F/m Investments launched in 2022 and plainly holds 3 month T-Bills, making it roughly similar to SGOV and BIL, though it costs more at 0.15%, which I think sort of makes it obsolete, but it has over $7 billion in assets.

While functionally similar to SGOV and BIL, TBIL is somewhat unique in this context in that it only holds 2 T-bills at any given time, one outgoing and one new issue. In that sense, it is simply constantly rolling a single 3-month bill, whereas other funds here like SGOV hold a laddered basket of T-bills across the full 0-3 month range. That ends up not really mattering much in any practical sense for the investor, but it's worth noting.

TBIL seeks to track the Bloomberg US Treasury Bellwether 3M Total Return USD Unhedged Index after previously tracking the ICE BofA US Treasury Bill 3 Month Index.

BOXX – Alpha Architect 1-3 Month Box ETF

BOXX is the Alpha Architect 1-3 Month Box ETF. The name should hint to you that this fund aims to resemble 1-3 month T-Bills, but it's important to note right off the bat that in doing so, BOXX doesn't actually hold any T-Bills at all. It uses complex derivatives to synthetically extract a return resembling the risk-free rate of 1-3 month T-Bills, but in a much more tax-efficient manner than the other funds discussed here, because it aims to avoid distributions and to convert income to capital gains.

So while it's not a true T-Bills ETF in the purest sense, it would have been remiss to not include it on this list. BOXX has a fee of 0.19%.

Click here to read my separate post on the details of BOXX.

Recap – T-Bills ETFs Comparison Table (Again)

That was a lot of info. Here's the comparison table again of all the T-bills ETFs discussed:

T-Bills ETFs Infographic

Here's that same table as an image if you want to save it:

Where To Buy These T Bill ETFs

All the above ETFs for treasury bills should be available at any major broker. My choice is M1 Finance. M1 has zero trade commissions and zero account fees, and offers fractional shares, dynamic rebalancing, intuitive pie visualization, and a sleek, user-friendly interface and mobile app. I wrote a comprehensive review of M1 Finance here.

Canadians can find the above ETFs on Questrade or Interactive Brokers. Investors outside North America can use Interactive Brokers.

What do you think of T-bills? Let me know in the comments.

T Bills FAQ's

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Disclaimer:  While I love diving into investing-related data and playing around with backtests, this is not financial advice, investing advice, or tax advice. The information on this website is for informational, educational, and entertainment purposes only. Investment products discussed (ETFs, mutual funds, etc.) are for illustrative purposes only. It is not a research report. It is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or otherwise transact in any of the products mentioned. I always attempt to ensure the accuracy of information presented but that accuracy cannot be guaranteed. Do your own due diligence. I mention M1 Finance a lot around here. M1 does not provide investment advice, and this is not an offer or solicitation of an offer, or advice to buy or sell any security, and you are encouraged to consult your personal investment, legal, and tax advisors. Hypothetical examples used, such as historical backtests, do not reflect any specific investments, are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be considered an offer to buy or sell any products. All investing involves risk, including the risk of losing the money you invest. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Opinions are my own and do not represent those of other parties mentioned. Read my lengthier disclaimer here.