Silver ETFs and silver FoFs: what each one costs you

The question

Our recent posts on silver fund returns covered what silver did. This one is about what it costs to hold it: the fee, the size of the fund, and how far each product drifts from the price it is meant to follow.

There are two ways in. A silver ETF holds physical silver and trades on the exchange, so it needs a demat account. A silver fund of funds (FoF) is an ordinary mutual fund that buys units of a silver ETF, so it takes SIPs but adds a second layer. Expense ratios are AMFI's disclosures of early October 2026, assets are AMFI's average for July to September 2026, and returns run to Friday 9 October 2026.

The ETFs

The table covers the 14 silver ETFs with at least ₹1,000 crore and a year of NAVs, except Tata's: its NAV moved a few days behind the others during the October 2025 spike, which makes its one-year figure, 48.30%, incomparable.

The fee spread is narrow, and so is the result. Fees run from 0.35% to 0.59%. Over three years the nine oldest ETFs are within 0.50 points a year of each other, 45.74% to 46.24%. Nippon India's, with the second-highest fee among them at 0.58%, has the lowest three-year return, but UTI's, at 0.59%, sits mid-table. Across the nine the link between fee and return is loose: the correlation is −0.41.

Size does not buy a lower fee here. Nippon India's ETF holds more than twice the money of the next one and charges more than most. If you buy on the exchange, the bid-ask spread and brokerage can matter as much as a 0.2-point difference in fee.

Against the price of silver

Our reference is the world price, the COMEX close in rupees on our gold and silver price page. It rose 48.5% a year over the three years, against 45.7% to 46.2% for the ETFs. Fees explain only a slice of that. The ETFs follow silver's price in India, which includes import duty and a local premium, and that gap moved far more than any fee.

Between 19 and 24 July 2024, when the Union Budget cut the import duty on silver, the ETF lost 4.6% against the world price. From 30 September to 14 October 2025 the ETF gained 14.8% on the world price, then lost 17.0% against it by 31 March 2026. Over the three years the net shift was 4.6%, of which about 1.2 points were the ETF's own 0.40% fee. The rest is the Indian price, and it hits every silver ETF alike.

The FoFs: two layers and a premium

A FoF's own expense ratio is only its layer; the ETF's fee comes out of the ETF's NAV underneath. Even so, the seven FoFs with three years trailed their own ETF by 1.3 to 2.4 points a year, several times their own fee. The Axis and Kotak comparison page shows the two that trailed least.

Two things add to the fee. A FoF keeps some cash for redemptions, and in an asset that more than tripled, cash is a drag. And a FoF values its ETF units at the exchange price, not at the ETF's NAV. When the ETF trades at a premium, the FoF's NAV carries it. Between 30 September and 9 October 2025, HDFC's FoF rose 6.2% more than its ETF's NAV, and Zerodha's 6.6%; ICICI Prudential's moved 0.5%. That premium has since gone, which is why the one-year returns of the FoFs, measured from 9 October 2025, run from 26% to 37% while the ETFs sit near 38% to 39%. Tata's FoF, at 26.04%, is the lowest.

What this does not tell you

Which ETF trades cheapest on a given day. Spreads and premiums are not in our data; check them before buying on the exchange.

Where silver goes next. Nothing here is a forecast or a recommendation to buy or sell any fund. Every silver FoF is on the domestic fund-of-funds page, the fund-of-funds guide explains the structure, and silver funds: 99% in a year covers the January peak.