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ETF Fees carries the fee table an ETF filed in its prospectus: the gross expense ratio, the net expense ratio, the components that make them up, and any waiver in force. Each observation is associated with an etf_id and the date of the filing it was read from. Fees are a share-class fact, so two share classes on one portfolio can charge different amounts.
Plan: Fund · Credits: 1 per call

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What You Can Use ETF Fee Data For

Rank a peer group by what an investor actually pays. Distinguish a headline gross ratio from the net ratio after a contractual waiver, and see when that waiver expires. Identify fund-of-fund structures where acquired fund fees sit on top of the manager’s own fee. Estimate the drag a fee imposes on a long holding period.

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ETF Fee Coverage

Fee data exists for share classes whose sponsor files a prospectus fee table. Not every exchange-traded product does.
No fee row is not a zero fee. Unit investment trusts and grantor trusts — SPY and GLD among them — file no prospectus fee table at all, so they carry no fee record. Reading that absence as “free” is wrong, and ranking a universe by expense ratio silently drops every one of these funds.

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Key ETF Fee Fields

gross_expense_ratio is the total annual operating expense before any waiver, as a decimal — 0.0009 is nine basis points. net_expense_ratio is what the investor pays after waivers. net_is_filed says whether the net figure was printed in the filing. When it is false, the filing printed no separate waiver line, which usually means gross and net are the same. management_fee is the manager’s own fee. fee_12b1 is the distribution fee. acquired_fund_fees is the expense of underlying funds held by a fund-of-fund structure, which is a real cost to the investor but is not charged by this manager. waiver and waiver_expiry describe a contractual fee reduction and the date it lapses. fee_as_of is the date of the filing the table was read from.

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ETF Fee Date Convention

fee_as_of is the effective date of the prospectus the fee table came from, not the date FocusAlpha read it. Fee tables change at most annually, so this date is typically months old and that is expected.

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ETF Fee Sources

Fees are read from the fund’s own SEC prospectus fee table. They are not vendor estimates and are not computed from expenses paid.

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Query ETF Fees

Fees are returned in the fees block of the ETF profile endpoint. There is no separate fee route.
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etf_id (E000011), a ticker (SPY), an ISIN, or a CUSIP.
When no fee filing exists for a share class, the block carries a status of not_covered and a note explaining that trusts of this kind file none — the absence is reported rather than represented as a zero. To compare fees across many funds at once, use the min_expense_ratio and max_expense_ratio filters on ETF Screening. Sorting a screen by expense ratio drops every fund with no fee table; the response’s unranked block says how many were dropped. See also ETF Screening for cross-fund fee filters, and ETF Data for the other blocks returned by the same profile call.