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Low-Cost High Dividend Index Funds: Top 10 by Distribution Yield
For anyone who wants the trust fee as low as possible but still wants the cash, these are the low-cost high dividend index funds ranked from the highest distribution yield down.
The yield is not an estimate. It is calculated from the distributions actually paid over the last year. Japanese, US and global equity funds are ranked together in a single list.
Data as of 9 Oct 2026 (based on net asset value).
Updated automatically every day. Last update: 2026-10-12 10:05 (Japan time).
Distribution yield ranking (1st - 10th)
| Rank | Fund | Type | Index tracked | Payments | Net assets | Trust fee | Distribution yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Amundi Japan High Dividend | Japanese equities | Nikkei Progressive Dividend Stock Index | Twice a year | ¥10.0bn | 0.198% | 5.38% |
| 2 | SBI SPYD (S&P 500 high dividend) | US equities | S&P 500 High Dividend Index (SPYD) | Quarterly | ¥7.2bn | 0.1338% | 3.72% |
| 3 | Tracers Nikkei High Dividend Stock 50 | Japanese equities | Nikkei Average High Dividend Yield Stock 50 | 6x a year (odd months) | ¥65.4bn | 0.10725% | 3.64% |
| 4 | Rakuten SCHD (Japan version) | Japanese equities | Dow Jones Japan Dividend 100 | Quarterly | ¥26.6bn | 0.297% | 3.13% |
| 5 | SBI Japan High Dividend Equity (distributing) | Japanese equities | Rule-based selection (not index-tracking) | Quarterly | ¥239.8bn | 0.099% | 3.12% |
| 6 | SBI SCHD (US high dividend 100) | US equities | SCHD (Dow Jones US Dividend 100) | Quarterly | ¥231.9bn | 0.1227% | 3.00% |
| 7 | Nikkei High Dividend Yield Stock Fund Closed to new lump-sum purchases (monthly plans and existing holdings continue) | Japanese equities | The 30 highest yielders in the Nikkei 225 | Twice a year | ¥312.7bn | 0.693% | 2.91% |
| 8 | Rakuten SCHD (US high dividend 100) | US equities | SCHD (Dow Jones US Dividend 100) | Quarterly | ¥262.8bn | 0.1238% | 2.73% |
| 9 | Amundi All-Country High Dividend | Global equities | MSCI ACWI High Dividend Yield | Quarterly | ¥3.8bn | 0.165% | 2.35% |
| 10 | SBI V US High Dividend (VYM) | US equities | VYM (FTSE High Dividend Yield) | Quarterly | ¥26.2bn | 0.1238% | 1.97% |
Annual distribution and NAV (how the yield is built)
The figures the yield above is calculated from. Both the distribution and the NAV are per 10,000 units.
| Rank | Fund | Annual distribution (actual) | NAV | Distribution yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Amundi Japan High Dividend | ¥800 | ¥14,871 | 5.38% |
| 2 | SBI SPYD (S&P 500 high dividend) | ¥470 | ¥12,624 | 3.72% |
| 3 | Tracers Nikkei High Dividend Stock 50 | ¥600 | ¥16,484 | 3.64% |
| 4 | Rakuten SCHD (Japan version) | ¥470 | ¥15,026 | 3.13% |
| 5 | SBI Japan High Dividend Equity (distributing) | ¥550 | ¥17,651 | 3.12% |
| 6 | SBI SCHD (US high dividend 100) | ¥370 | ¥12,332 | 3.00% |
| 7 | Nikkei High Dividend Yield Stock Fund | ¥730 | ¥25,126 | 2.91% |
| 8 | Rakuten SCHD (US high dividend 100) | ¥360 | ¥13,207 | 2.73% |
| 9 | Amundi All-Country High Dividend | ¥305 | ¥12,963 | 2.35% |
| 10 | SBI V US High Dividend (VYM) | ¥295 | ¥14,944 | 1.97% |
How to buy a Japanese mutual fund (7 steps for beginners)
Unlike shares, mutual funds are not traded on an exchange. You place an order with the fund management company and buy at that day's net asset value (NAV). There is no order book and you cannot set a limit price.
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1. Open a brokerage account | Online brokers such as SBI Securities, Rakuten Securities and Monex are the cheapest route. Face-to-face brokers and banks sometimes charge a front-end load on the very same fund. Every fund on this page can be bought with a zero purchase fee (no-load) at an online broker. With an ID document and a My Number card you can open an account from your phone in anything from a day to a few days. |
| 2. Apply for a NISA account at the same time | Tick "open a NISA account" on the application form. Distributions are normally taxed at 20.315%, but inside a NISA they are tax free. If your aim is to receive distributions, there is almost no reason not to use it. You can apply later, but the tax office check takes one to two weeks. |
| 3. Fund the account | Move money from your bank to the brokerage account. The "instant deposit" service each broker offers is free and credited immediately. Linking SBI Securities with SBI Shinsei Bank, or Rakuten Securities with Rakuten Bank, moves the cash across automatically whenever you buy. |
| 4. Find the fund | On the broker's site go to "investment trusts" and then fund search, and type the name. Official names are long, so searching for a distinctive fragment such as "SCHD", "SPYD" or "高配当株50" is faster. Watch out for near-identical names: a version without "年4回決算型" (quarterly settlement) in the name is the accumulating share class and pays no distribution at all. It is a different product. |
| 5. Choose how to buy | You can buy by amount, by units, or as a monthly plan. For a first purchase, buying by amount (say 10,000 yen) is the clearest. Use the monthly plan if you want to invest a set sum each month. Buying by units means you specify the number of units, so the amount you pay is not fixed when you place the order. |
| 6. Choose the distribution course | This is the step that matters most. The order screen offers "receive distributions" and "reinvest distributions". If you want the cash, you must pick the receiving course. Some brokers default to reinvestment, and if you miss it no cash will ever reach your account. |
| 7. Place the order and wait for execution | Your order is filled at that day's NAV, which is set only once a day. Funds holding Japanese assets are filled the same day if you order by around 15:00; after the cut-off you get the next business day's NAV. Funds holding foreign assets such as US equities are usually filled the next business day, because their price is only fixed after the overseas market closes. Exact cut-off times vary by broker. |
When you place the order you do not know the price you will pay. This is called forward pricing. If investors could trade after seeing the NAV, existing holders would be disadvantaged, so the rule applies to every mutual fund.
Receiving or reinvesting: choosing the distribution course
With the same fund, the distribution course decides whether cash actually reaches you. This ranking is written for people who want to receive the cash, so the receiving course is the default assumption.
| Item | Receiving course | Reinvesting course |
|---|---|---|
| Cash | Paid into your brokerage account at every settlement | None; it buys more of the same fund |
| Compounding | Weak | Strong |
| Suits | People topping up living costs or spending money, and anyone who enjoys seeing the cash arrive | People with no near-term need for the money who simply want the pot to grow |
| NISA allowance | Uses allowance only for what you buy | Each reinvestment uses fresh allowance |
If you reinvest inside a NISA, those extra purchases consume new allowance. Once the annual allowance is used up, the reinvested amount may be bought in a taxable account instead.
You can switch course later, but at some brokers the change applies only to units bought after the switch, not to what you already hold. It is safer to decide at the outset.
If growing the pot is your only goal, a fund that pays no distribution at all (a plain all-country or S&P 500 index fund) is more tax-efficient: in a taxable account every distribution is taxed, which leaves less to reinvest. What a distributing fund buys you instead is regular cash without having to decide when to sell.
Terms worth knowing
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| NAV (kijun kagaku) | The price of the fund, normally quoted per 10,000 units. It is fixed once a day, after that day's trading is over. |
| Units | How much of the fund you hold. Investing 10,000 yen at a NAV of 12,500 yen gives you 8,000 units. |
| Per 10,000 units | Both the NAV and the distribution are quoted per 10,000 units. The yield in the table above is the annual distribution per 10,000 units divided by the NAV per 10,000 units, so it is the same rate whatever you hold. |
| No-load | A fund with no purchase fee. Almost every low-cost index fund bought through an online broker is no-load. |
| Trust fee | The running cost deducted for as long as you hold the fund. It is quoted as an annual rate and taken out of the NAV a little each day, so you never get a bill for it and never feel it being paid. |
| Total cost | The trust fee plus brokerage commissions, custody fees and other expenses the fund actually incurred. It appears in the annual report and is a little higher than the trust fee. |
| Retained amount on redemption | Money deducted when you sell and kept inside the fund. Some funds charge it and some do not; check the prospectus section on redemption costs. |
| Individual cost basis | Your own average purchase price for the fund. Whether a distribution counts as an ordinary distribution or a return of capital is decided by comparing this figure with the NAV. |
| Settlement date | The day the money actually moves. For purchases it is roughly two to five business days after execution, and funds holding foreign assets are at the slower end. Selling takes the same number of days before the cash is back. |
| Settlement day and payment day | The settlement day is when the amount of the distribution is set; the payment day is when it reaches your account, typically about five business days later. Buying on the settlement day does not earn you that distribution: the right belongs to whoever held the fund on that day. |
Tax on distributions, and NISA
There are two kinds of distribution and they are taxed differently. Two payments of "100 yen" can be entirely different things.
| Type | What it is | Tax |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary distribution | Paid out of gains the fund has actually made. Real income. | 20.315% in a taxable account (15.315% income tax plus 5% local tax) |
| Special distribution (return of capital) | Simply your own money coming back. Not income at all. | Tax free, but your cost basis falls by the same amount |
A special distribution arises when the fund pays out although it has made no gain. "Tax free" sounds attractive, but your assets have not grown by a single yen. The higher the yield, the more it is worth checking whether a return of capital is mixed in. Your broker's transaction history, or the annual tax statement, will show it.
Inside a NISA (the growth investment allowance) even ordinary distributions are tax free, so the benefit lands squarely on the income you were after. Under the NISA that started in 2024 you can use 2.4 million yen a year in the growth allowance and 1.2 million in the accumulation allowance, 3.6 million a year in total, up to a lifetime 18 million yen of which 12 million may sit in the growth allowance.
Two warnings. First, monthly-paying funds are excluded from NISA. The funds in this ranking pay two, four or six times a year and are eligible, but pick a monthly payer and you cannot hold it in a NISA. Second, for funds investing in US equities, roughly 10% withholding tax is taken in the United States before the distribution is calculated. A taxable account has a mechanism to relieve that double taxation, but in a NISA the distribution is already tax free, so the US withholding cannot be recovered.
Five things to look at when choosing
Picking on yield alone goes wrong easily, so weigh these five together. All five appear in the ranking table above.
| Point | How to read it |
|---|---|
| 1. Trust fee | Lower is better. Index funds run at 0.1% to 0.3%, an order of magnitude below the monthly-paying active funds at 1.5% to 2.0% a year. For the same yield, the gap in fees is the gap in what you keep. |
| 2. Net assets | Bigger is safer. A very small fund risks early termination. Below a few billion yen it is worth checking whether the fund has simply just launched. |
| 3. Payment frequency | Two, four or six times a year. More payments mean more occasions on which cash arrives, but for the same annual total the amount you receive is identical. More frequent payments are easier to live on. |
| 4. Index tracked | The index decides what you own. The Nikkei High Dividend Stock 50 holds 50 high-yielding Japanese names; SCHD holds 100 quality US companies with a record of raising dividends; SPYD holds the 80 highest-yielding members of the S&P 500. SPYD-based funds tend to yield more, while SCHD-based funds tend to grow their payouts faster. |
| 5. Currency | Funds holding US or global equities are exposed to the yen. A weaker yen lifts both the distribution and the NAV; a stronger yen cuts them. Unhedged versions are the norm, and every fund in this ranking is unhedged. |
Holding one Japanese-equity fund and one US-equity fund spreads both the currency risk and the market risk. The Japanese fund carries no currency exposure but holds few names; the US fund is better diversified but is exposed to the yen and to US withholding tax.
Common misconceptions
| The belief | What is actually true |
|---|---|
| The bigger the distribution, the more you make | A distribution just hands back part of what the fund has built up, and the NAV falls by the amount paid. Whether you are ahead depends on the total of the distribution plus the change in NAV, in other words the total return. |
| A high yield means a good fund | Yield is the distribution divided by the NAV, so it rises when the NAV merely falls. A fund that is losing value can easily look high yielding. Look at the trend in net assets and in the NAV as well. |
| The yields on this page will continue | Yields move every day as the NAV changes and as distributions are revised. A distribution can be cut or skipped depending on how the fund performs. These are past results, not a promise. |
| It is much the same as a monthly-paying fund | The funds here are low-cost index products tracking a published index. The long-established monthly payers are active funds charging 1.5% to 2.0% a year, and many of them distribute by eating into capital. They are quite different animals. |
| Buy on the payment date and you get the money | The right to a distribution belongs to whoever holds the fund on the settlement day. Order on that day and, if execution falls after it, you miss that payment. Funds holding foreign assets may be executed the next business day, so leave a few days' margin. |
How to read the data
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Data as of | 9 Oct 2026 (based on net asset value). Updated automatically every day. A fund's NAV for a given day is only published that evening, so the figure can be one business day behind. |
| Funds covered | The 10 funds that meet three conditions: a low trust fee, a distribution actually paid out in cash, and a portfolio of high dividend shares chosen by an index or by a published rule. Not many Japanese funds meet all three, so the pool itself is small. |
| Distribution yield | The total distribution over the last year divided by the latest NAV, times 100. It is an actual figure, not a forecast, and is before tax. The payments summed are the most recent ones matching the fund's own settlement frequency (two, four or six times a year). |
| Why actual rather than forecast | Mutual funds in Japan publish no official forecast distribution, unlike J-REITs and listed companies. All a management company announces is the amount fixed at each settlement. Quoting the dividend yield of the underlying ETF (SCHD and the like) instead would ignore currency moves and changes in NAV, and would drift away from what holders really receive. So only distributions actually paid are used here. |
| Net assets | The net assets on the latest business day. The larger they are, the less likely the fund is to be wound up early, and the more stable the running of it. |
| Trust fee | The cost charged for as long as you hold the fund, taken from each fund's prospectus as an annual rate including tax. It does not change from day to day, so it is carried as a fixed value. The total cost actually borne is a little higher, as brokerage and custody expenses are added. |
| A warning on distributions | A distribution may be an ordinary distribution, paid out of gains the fund has made, or a special distribution, which is simply your own capital coming back. A high yield does not mean your assets have grown by that much. Every time a distribution is paid, the NAV falls by the same amount. |
| Please note | Yields change daily with the NAV and with revisions to the distribution. Distributions are not guaranteed and may be cut or skipped depending on how the fund performs. This page is for information only and is not a recommendation to buy any particular fund. Please make your own investment decisions. |
| Sources | NAV, net assets and distributions come from the Investment Trusts Association of Japan fund search library. The index tracked and the trust fee come from each management company's prospectus. |