8 Best High-Yield Dividend ETFs for Income-Hungry Investors

Investors interested in collecting a substantial income stream from their investments either know a universal truth about high yield, or they eventually find it out: You don’t get something for nothing. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but it’s generally true that the higher the dividend you crave, the more risk you’ll be forced to take on.

However, if you want to collect a substantial income, high-yield dividend exchange-traded funds (ETFs) can provide you with some protection relative to owning generous individual payers.

High-yield dividend ETFs are funds that (quelle surprise!) pay greater-than-average distributions as measured by yield. They typically accomplish this while either investing broadly across the market or targeting certain sectors or geographies, though occasionally they use a few special market mechanics to deliver high dividends. And one of the immediate ways they help you tamp down on risk is by investing your money in not just one or two stocks, but across dozens, hundreds, even thousands. That diversification insulates you from the possibility of a single stock’s implosion cracking your nest egg wide open.

Let’s look at some of the best high-yield dividend ETFs you can buy. These funds pay between 3.5% and 8.4% annually—or, put differently, anywhere between three to eight times the broader market.

Editor’s Note: This article’s tabular data is up-to-date as of Oct. 7, 2026.

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Disclaimer: This article does not constitute individualized investment advice. Individual securities, funds, and/or other investments appear for your consideration and not as personalized investment recommendations. Act at your own discretion.

How Were These High-Yield Dividend ETFs Selected?

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Let’s start with a few ground rules.

First, these are dividend ETFs. In other words, this list is limited to funds that own stocks; bond funds don’t apply.

Next is the yield floor. There’s no universal definition of “high yield”; much like beauty, a high dividend is in the eye of the beholder. But given that it’s a list of high-dividend ETFs, I have to set the floor somewhere, and that somewhere is 3.5%. That ensures you’ll earn well more than double (and in most cases, many times more) what you’d collect by investing in an S&P 500 index fund.

Lastly, as a quality check, I’ve only included dividend ETFs that have earned a Morningstar Medalist rating—Morningstar’s forward-looking analytical view of the fund—of at least Bronze. A quick explanation of why that matters, per Morningstar:

“For actively managed funds, the top three ratings of Gold, Silver, and Bronze all indicate that our analysts expect the rated investment vehicle to produce positive alpha relative to its Morningstar Category index over the long term, meaning a period of at least five years. For passive strategies, the same ratings indicate that we expect the fund to deliver alpha relative to its Morningstar Category index that is above the lesser of the category median or zero over the long term.”

Importantly, a Medalist rating doesn’t mean Morningstar is necessarily bullish on the underlying asset class or categorization. It’s merely an expression of confidence in the fund compared to its peers.

From the remaining universe of ETFs to choose from, I picked ETFs from a variety of sectors, geographies, and strategies. I also selected funds that have reasonable expense ratios—given their specialties, many of these cost more than a bland broad-market ETF, but they’re fair or low for their category.

An Important Note About Dividend ETFs’ Distributions

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One last thing to know before diving into any dividend ETF: Their distributions tend to reflect the cash dividend payments of their underlying holdings.

What you’re getting from an ETF in a quarter is more or less your share of all the dividends that all of the holdings made within that quarter. But sometimes, individual components don’t always pay within each given quarter (even if they pay quarterly). Also, they occasionally increase regular dividends, make special payouts, or cut or even suspend regular dividends.

As a result, ETFs can have “lumpy” distributions that change from one quarter to the next.

Here’s an example: In a 12-month period, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY)—the largest ETF by assets on the planet, and thus one of the most commonly owned—paid out quarterly dividends of $1.90, $1.80, $1.99, and $1.83 per share. That’s a 10% difference between the smallest and largest payouts, and some years, it’s much more.

If you’ve not yet reached retirement, this inconsistency probably won’t matter to you at all. But it could be problematic—or at the least, worth planning around—if you are in retirement and heavily depend on dividend income to pay your regular bills. So especially if you’re in the latter boat, when you research dividend funds, I highly suggest not just looking at yield, but at distribution history, too.

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The Best High-Yield Dividend ETFs

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Without further ado, let’s look at some of the best high-yield dividend ETFs on the market right now.

Each fund is shown with current dividend yield and expense data, as well as its Morningstar Medalist rating. In no particular order …

Best High-Yield Dividend ETF #1: iShares Select Dividend ETF

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• Assets under management: $22.4 billion
• Dividend yield: 3.5%
• Expense ratio: 0.38%, or 3.80 per year on every $1,000 invested
• Morningstar Medalist rating: Bronze

When it comes to long-term performance, U.S. stocks have historically been king. The same tends to go with dividend-growth stocks—American dividend growers are pretty prolific, so much so that the qualifications to be a Dividend Aristocrat here require more years of uninterrupted dividend growth than similar international groupings.

But it is really, really difficult to find highly-rated broad baskets of U.S. dividend stocks that pay a 3%-plus yield.

The iShares Select Dividend ETF (DVY) is one of these rare gems. It’s an index fund that starts with a broad universe of U.S. stocks, then selects the 100 highest-yielding dividend stocks that meet certain criteria, including a float-adjusted market cap of at least $3 billion, at least five years of dividend payments, a higher current dividend per share than its five-year average, a five-year dividend coverage ratio of 167% or more, breakeven or positive earnings over the past 12 months, and more. These rules are designed to point DVY toward more stable companies that can afford their higher yields.

Also worth noting: The index explicitly excludes real estate investment trusts (REITs), which is more common among dividend ETFs than you’d think. There are a few reasons, but chief among them is the difference in tax treatment between traditional companies’ dividends (which are typically “qualified” and thus levied at favorable long-term capital gains tax rates) and REITs’ dividends (typically “non-qualified” and subject to your ordinary income tax rate.)

The portfolio makeup naturally ebbs and flows over time, but right now, it’s stacked with financial services (25%) and utility stocks (22%), and also has double-digit weights in consumer staples companies and energy firms. Rather than traditional systems like market cap weighting (bigger size, more assets) and equal weighting, DVY assigns its weights once a year based on each company’s indicated annual dividend yield, which is just the forward-looking annualized yield based on the most recent payout that we use in all of our stock stories. Good news here: Right now, top holdings HP (HPQ), Pfizer (PFE), and Altria Group (MO) each account for less than 2.5% of assets, so there’s not much in the way of single-stock risk.

The yield is more than triple what we’re getting from the S&P 500. So if you’re looking to extract high yield from American blue-chip stocks, DVY is one of the best high-yield dividend ETFs to buy.

Want to learn more about DVY? Check out the iShares provider site.

Related: 12 Best Vanguard ETFs You Can Buy [Build a Low-Cost Portfolio]

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Best High-Yield Dividend ETF #2: Franklin International Low Volatility High Dividend ETF

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• Assets under management: $5.9 billion
• Dividend yield: 3.9%
• Expense ratio: 0.40%, or $4.00 per year on every $1,000 invested
• Morningstar Medalist rating: Bronze

Any group of favorably rated high-yield dividend ETFs is bound to include at least a couple international stock funds. Large, established dividend payers abroad—especially in developed countries—have for years tended to pay more than their U.S. counterparts, in part because the long-term outperformance of U.S. stocks has depressed yields.

And one of the best such funds—Franklin International Low Volatility High Dividend ETF (LVHI)—is of the low-volatility persuasion. For the uninitiated, low- and minimum-volatility ETFs are designed to wiggle less than the market, so the idea here is that when stocks lunge southward, low- and min-vol funds won’t decline as much—and might even produce some gains.

Franklin’s fund is designed to provide a portfolio of high-yielding dividend stocks that demonstrate low price and profit volatility. Its underlying index starts with a screen to identify dividend-paying companies that can pay “relatively high sustainable dividend yields,” then it grades yields based on price and earnings volatility.

LVHI also puts various limits on the portfolio to eliminate overconcentration risk—for instance, no stock can make up more than 2.5% of the index at quarterly rebalancing, no sector can make up more than 25%, and REITs, which we’ll get to in a bit, can’t exceed 15%. Also, no geographic region will exceed 50% of assets, and no single country will exceed 15%. To further tamp down on volatility, LVHI hedges against currency fluctuations.

Franklin International Low Volatility High Dividend currently owns about 195 stocks from about 20 developed nations, including Canada (15%), Japan (15%), and the U.K. (15%). Most of the portfolio (~85%) is large-cap in nature, including top holdings such as British integrated energy major Shell (SHEL), Australian miner BHP Group (BHP), and Canada’s Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS).

These large international names throw off a yield of almost 4%, and that’s actually much lower than it was a few months ago thanks to recent gains in the fund. But it also dishes out much higher returns (and much lower risk) compared to the ETF’s category average. All of this makes LVHI not just a great holding for anytime, but also one of the best ETFs for bear markets. Indeed, its losses during 2025’s near-bear drop were less than half the broader market’s.

Income investors should note that LVHI, like many international dividend funds, has “lumpy” dividends, as foreign companies often pay just semiannually or even annually. For instance: Its four most recent quarterly dividend payments ranged from 16.0¢ to 81.4¢!

Want to learn more about LVHI? Check out the Franklin Templeton provider site.

Related: How to Choose a Financial Advisor

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Best High-Yield Dividend ETF #3: iShares International Select Dividend ETF

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• Assets under management: $8.2 billion
• Dividend yield: 5.8%
• Expense ratio: 0.50%, or $5.00 per year on every $1,000 invested
• Morningstar Medalist rating: Silver

The iShares International Select Dividend ETF (IDV) is a more straightforward basket of overseas stocks. It’s another index fund—one that doesn’t care about volatility, just relatively high payments. 

IDV’s 100-stock portfolio is a roughly 70/25/5 blend of large-, mid-, and small-cap stocks from across the developed world, predominantly Europe. The U.K., France, Spain, and Italy all merit double-digit weights at the moment. There’s not much emerging-market exposure, and what’s there is in relatively larger and developed EMs: namely, South Korea and China.

While the portfolio does have quite a few multinationals that are well-known here in the States, the top weights are reserved for the likes of French integrated giant TotalEnergies (TTE), Italian utility Enel (ENLAY), and Spanish telecommunications firm Telefónica (TEF). And collectively, this portfolio puts out a monster yield of almost 6%.

The 0.5% annual fee isn’t exactly low in a bubble, but it’s within the cheapest quintile across its Morningstar category (Foreign Large Value), so you’re getting a relatively cheap fund.

Want to learn more about IDV? Check out the iShares provider site.

Best High-Yield Dividend ETF #4: SPDR S&P Global Dividend ETF

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• Assets under management: $276.8 million
• Expense ratio: 0.40%, or $4.00 per year on every $1,000 invested
• Dividend yield: 4.3%
• Morningstar Medalist rating: Bronze

“Global” and “international” are not the same thing. If you see “international” in a fund’s name, that tends to mean it owns securities from countries around the world—but not the U.S. However, a “global” fund will hold both international and U.S. stocks.

So while the SPDR S&P Global Dividend ETF’s (WDIV) is predominantly international in nature, it also provides exposure to several high-yielding U.S. dividend stocks.

Most income investors should appreciate WDIV’s focus: It aims to own stocks with high yields, yes, but also income stability and even dividend growth. The ETF tracks the S&P Global Dividend Aristocrats Index, which starts with a universe of companies from the S&P Global Broad Market Index (BMI) that have increased or kept dividends stable for at least 10 consecutive years. It then selects the 100 highest-yielding stocks from that group, though it limits itself to 20 picks from any given country. (It also limits single-country and sector exposure to 25% of assets at rebalancing.)

The resulting portfolio is roughly 75/25 split between international and U.S. stocks; that’s a huge departure from your typical global fund, which tends to be closer to 50/50. The international allocation is currently heaviest in Canadian (12%), U.K. (9%), and Chinese (9%) stocks. From a sector perspective, financials (21%), industrials (14%), and utilities (14%) have the most say in performance.

WDIV also differs from the other international funds in that it’s not nearly so heavy in mega-corporations. Large caps are less robustly represented at 50% of assets, while mids are nearly 40%, and smalls make up the rest. You’ll find names you know, like big U.S. dividend payers such as Verizon (VZ) and Altria (MO), as well as less ubiquitous brand names like Belgian chemical company Solvay and Canadian oil-and-gas firm Keyera.

Few funds provide access to any amount of traditional U.S. blue-chips and yield more than 5%. WDIV is an exception.

Want to learn more about WDIV? Check out the State Street Global Advisors provider site.

Related: 7 Best Growth Stocks to Buy for the Rest of 2026

Best High-Yield Dividend ETF #5: Vanguard Real Estate ETF

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• Assets under management: $38.1 billion*
• Dividend yield: 3.8%
• Expense ratio: 0.13%, or $1.30 per year on every $1,000 invested
• Morningstar Medalist rating: Gold

Ever since REITs became their own sector in 2016, they’ve typically been among the highest-yielding S&P 500 sectors.

Unlike most companies that more or less choose to pay out dividends, REITs are compelled to—by law. REITs were created by Congress in 1960 to spur real estate investing. They’re given favorable tax treatment … but in exchange, they’re required to pay out at least 90% of their taxable income to shareholders, in the form of dividends.

You could own a handful of individual REITs if you’d like, or you can load up on the sector via REIT ETFs.

The biggest name in that game is the Vanguard Real Estate ETF (VNQ). This Vanguard ETF tracks a broad index of REITs covering a variety of industries: office buildings, apartments, data centers, warehouses, senior living facilities, even driving ranges. It too is market cap-weighted. Current top holdings in this 140-REIT portfolio include medical facility and senior housing company Welltower (WELL), logistics REIT Prologis (PLD), datacenter landlord Equinix (EQIX), and telecommunications infrastructure firm American Tower (AMT).

“The fund beat the category average by 28 basis points annualized over the five years through the end of December 2025,” Morningstar Associate Analyst Brian Paoli said about this Gold-rated fund. “Real estate stocks are more sensitive to interest rate changes, and this volatile period had interest rate hikes in 2022 and 2023 and rate cuts in 2024 and 2025. The fund proved its ability to perform well against its peers through these different market conditions.”

* Vanguard fund assets are spread across multiple share classes, including mutual funds and ETFs alike. Assets listed for VNQ is for the ETF share class only.

Want to learn more about VNQ? Check out the Vanguard provider site.

Related: 11 Best Vanguard Funds for the Everyday Investor

Best High-Yield Dividend ETF #6: InfraCap MLP ETF

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• Assets under management: $469.6 million
• Dividend yield: 8.4%
• Expense ratio: 1.72%*, or $17.20 per year on every $1,000 invested
• Morningstar Medalist rating: Silver

Master limited partnerships aren’t a type of energy company—they’re an overall business structure that’s applicable to numerous industries. They’re considered “pass-through entities” because income isn’t taxed at the corporate level—it’s “passed through” to owners and “unitholders” (the MLP equivalent of shareholders) via “distributions” (the MLP equivalent of dividends). 

However, many publicly traded MLPs are energy-related. These companies are typically involved in energy infrastructure—that means pipelines, storage, terminals, and other assets involved in the transportation and holding of oil, gas, and other energy commodities. They also happen to be among the market’s higher yielders; while they don’t necessarily have a mandate for distributions the way REITs do, they often distribute most if not all of their available cash flows.

The InfraCap MLP ETF (AMZA) is an actively managed ETF that owns a small grouping of MLPs. Managers Jay Hatfield and Andrew Meleney have put together a portfolio of just around 25 infrastructure names, and it’s currently hyper-concentrated in six stocks: Energy Transfer LP (ET), Sunoco LP (SUN), Plains All American Pipeline LP (PAA), Western Midstream Partners LP (WES), MPLX LP (MPLX), and Enterprise Products Partners LP (EPD) currently account for 75% of the fund’s assets.

Importantly: MLP distributions are primarily made up of tax-deferred return of capital, with the remainder typically considered ordinary income. MLPs even require an additional form—the K-1—come tax time. However, InfraCap’s fund is structured as a C corporation, and instead issues a Form 1099-DIV, which allows investors to avoid the more complex K-1, simplifying tax reporting.

AMZA is also a rarity in that it’s a monthly dividend payer (most equity dividend ETFs pay quarterly).

* AMZA’s management fee is 0.95%. Additional fees are typically attributed to “income tax expenses,” which are an estimate of the potential tax expense (or benefit) that would occur if the fund recognized any unrealized gains or losses in the portfolio. This is common among funds that hold MLPs. This can vary widely from year to year and even day to day.

Want to learn more about AMZA? Check out the Virtus Investment Partners provider site.

Related: 10 Best Schwab ETFs to Buy [Build Your Core for Cheap]

Best High-Yield Dividend ETF #7: Nuveen Preferred and Income ETF

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• Assets under management: $159.4 million
• SEC yield: 6.6%*
• Expense ratio: 0.56%, or $5.60 per year on every $1,000 invested
• Morningstar Medalist rating: Gold

If someone is talking about “stock,” 999 times out of a thousand, they’re talking about “common stock.” If you want to buy shares of Apple (AAPL), you’d look up “AAPL” in your brokerage account and buy AAPL shares. That’s Apple’s common stock.

But that’s not the only kind of stock you can buy.

Preferred stocks are a “hybrid” security that has some characteristics you find in common stock, as well as some you find in bonds. For instance, preferred stocks trade on an exchange, represent ownership in a company, and typically pay qualified dividends (which, as I mentioned earlier, are taxed at more favorable long-term capital gains rates). However, preferred stocks typically don’t have voting rights, tend to trade around a par value, and distribute a fixed level of income—all qualities of bonds.

Why the name “preferred”? Because their dividends have preference over common-stock dividends. If a company wants to cut its dividends, for instance, it must do so to the common-stock dividends before it does so to the preferreds. Also, many preferreds are also “cumulative,” meaning that if a dividend payment is missed, it must be paid before the company can start paying common shareholders again.

In short: Preferreds tend to act more like bonds than stocks. They’re far less volatile than stocks—they rarely have explosive upside, but they also rarely have explosive downside. That makes them defensive in nature—doubly so when you consider they offer much higher yields than your average stock.

Everyday investors have a difficult time investing in individual preferred stocks because, compared to commons, information and analysis about specific preferred shares is hard to come by. So, much like bonds, it often makes more sense to own them via ETF. And preferred stock ETFs like the Nuveen Preferred and Income ETF (NPFI) are among the best-yielding high-dividend ETFs you can find.

NPFI is an actively managed collection of about 160 preferred stocks. Around 80% of assets are considered investment-grade by the major debt rating agencies. Virtually all of the remainder is considered non-investment-grade (or “junk”), though it’s predominantly in the highest-quality tier of junk.

Like with most of its competitors, Nuveen’s preferred ETF overwhelmingly holds financial-sector preferreds (banks, insurance firms, financial services companies, etc.), though it does own issues from the utility, communication services, and other sectors. Top positions right now include preferred shares from the likes of NatWest, Royal Bank of Canada (RY), and HSBC Holdings (HSBC).

This Nuveen ETF is relatively young, debuting in 2024, but Morningstar has seen enough to merit a Gold Medalist rating. While it’s not among the very cheapest preferred ETFs, it still has lower-than-average fees, and it has so far produced category-beating performance. You also enjoy a yield of more than 6% currently. So if you’re looking for big income but more conservative price action, FPFD is among the best high-yield dividends ETFs you can own.

* SEC yield reflects the interest earned across the most recent 30-day period. This is a standard measure for funds holding bonds and preferred stocks.

Want to learn more about NFPI? Check out the Nuveen provider site.

Related: How to Invest for (and in) Retirement

Best High-Yield Dividend ETF #8: JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF

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• Assets under management: $45.6 billion
• Dividend yield: 8.2%
• Expense ratio: 0.35%, or $3.50 per year on every $1,000 invested
• Morningstar Medalist rating: Gold

While most high-dividend ETFs deliver big income by simply owning high-yield dividend stocks, a few funds go about it from a different angle, using options and other market mechanics to generate yield instead.

Take the JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF (JEPI), for instance.

At a glance, JEPI’s 136 portfolio holdings wouldn’t make you blink an eye. It’s a 70/30 split of large- and mid-cap stocks—not too far removed from what you’d find in an S&P 500 index tracker. Positions such as Microsoft (MSFT), Nvidia (NVDA), and Apple (AAPL). And that fund would likely yield somewhere in the 1%-2% range.

But JEPI delivers a sweet yield of more than 8% right now.

That’s because JEPI doesn’t merely hold these stocks. It also engages in selling covered calls—a type of options trading that’s designed to generate income using stocks you already own. Managers Hamilton Reiner, Raffaele Zingone, Matt Bensen, and Judy Jansen write approximately 2% out-of-the-money call options on the S&P 500 Index. “It’s a quarter every week,” says Jon Maier, Chief ETF Strategist, Managing Director, JPMorgan Asset Management. “A quarter of the portfolio is rewritten for a month, and then a week later, a month. So it’s staggered.”

The downside to this strategy: You can limit your upside in your underlying holdings. The upside? You can reduce volatility and reap healthy dividend payments. With JEPI specifically, “the underlying portfolio is managed with lower volatility than the S&P 500. So when you have the option overlay, combined with the underlying lower-volatility portfolio, it provides volatility that’s about 60% of the S&P 500 and yields between 7% and 9%,” Maier says.

It’s rare that an options-trading strategy earns a Morningstar Medalist rating. Morningstar analyst Lan Anh Tran’s reason behind JEPI’s Gold award? “JPMorgan Equity Premium Income takes a nuanced approach to covered calls that delivers high income while reducing downside risk. This fund’s incremental improvements on a basic covered-call strategy make it a solid option in the derivative income Morningstar Category.”

Just understand that the “income” from covered calls isn’t the same as the dividend income generated by all of the other funds listed here. Options income is taxed as capital gains—usually the short-term variety, which receives less favorable treatment, as it’s taxed at your marginal income rate.

Want to learn more about JEPI? Check out the JPMorgan Asset Management provider site.

Related: 10 Best Dividend Mutual Funds You Can Buy Now

Learn More About These and Other Funds With Morningstar Investor

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Disclosures

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All Plynk disclosures can be viewed here.