Bar chart of the highest current yields among the dividend-paying shares this site tracks.

Dividend stocks

Dividend ETFs

Exchange-traded funds built around dividend-paying equities — broad high-yield baskets, dividend-growth screens and quality-filtered versions of both.

Securities in this list 17
Median forward yield est. 3.04% Last regular payment annualised ÷ price. Middle of the list, not an average
Median trailing 12m yield 3.11% Cash actually paid over the last 365 days ÷ price
Most rising years in our history 11+ yrs Longest run of rising years inside the payment history we store. Our history is shallower than some issuers' records, so this is a floor, not a company record
Which securities this list covers
This list is not common stocks. It covers exchange-traded funds only — dividend-focused equity ETFs, plus the covered-call and bond-fund variants where they carry the same tag. What a fund pays out is the sum of what its holdings paid, minus the expense ratio, and it is set by the portfolio rather than by a board, so a fund distribution yield and a company dividend yield are not the same measurement even though both are printed as a percentage. Fund yields here are computed exactly as they are for every other security on the site — recent payments over the current price — which means they will not match a fund sheet's SEC 30-day yield, a figure calculated under a different SEC-prescribed formula.

A dividend ETF turns the single-stock problem into an index-rules problem. You are no longer asking whether one company will keep paying; you are asking what the fund's methodology selects, how often it rebalances, and what it does when a holding cuts. Two funds with the word 'dividend' in the name can hold almost nothing in common.

Broadly, the funds fall into two camps. High-yield screens rank the market by yield and take the top slice, which mechanically loads them towards the sectors and companies the market has marked down — more income now, more exposure to cuts. Dividend-growth screens instead require a minimum record of consecutive increases and often add profitability or leverage filters, which produces a lower starting yield and a portfolio tilted towards mature, well-covered businesses. Quality-screened variants sit between the two, filtering a yield ranking by balance-sheet and cash-flow tests.

The fund's distribution is the sum of what its holdings paid, minus the expense ratio, so it moves around with the portfolio rather than being set by a board. A published fund yield can be measured several different ways — trailing twelve months, the most recent distribution annualised, or the SEC 30-day yield — and the three can differ meaningfully for the same fund on the same day. The figure in our table is computed the same way as for every other security here: recent payments against the current price.

Diversification inside a dividend ETF is real but partial. Owning 100 payers removes the risk that one cut ruins the income, but most yield-ranked funds concentrate in a handful of sectors, and a sector-wide shock hits the whole basket at once. Check the fund's own holdings and sector weights before assuming the label has diversified anything.

Forward yield and trailing yield are two different numbers
Two different yields appear in these tables and they are not interchangeable, which is why neither is ever headed simply 'Yield' and why both columns spell their basis out in the header rather than in a note. Yield (forward est.) is a forward estimate: the most recent regular payment multiplied by the number of payments a year, divided by the latest price. It describes what the next twelve months would pay if the payment and the price both stood still, and neither of those is promised. Yield (trailing 12m) looks backwards: the cash actually paid out over the last 365 days, divided by the same price. Where a security's cadence is irregular, or its last payment is too old for the stream to look live, the forward column falls back to the trailing figure — that is why the two columns are sometimes identical. A gap between them is information rather than an error: it usually means the payment was raised or cut during the year, or that a special distribution sits inside the trailing number. Neither column is comparable to a Treasury yield, a bond's yield to maturity, a credit index effective yield or a bank deposit APY without first adjusting for what each of those measures.

The list

Every security in our database matching this list's filter. Click a ticker for its full payment history.

Our payment history for a security begins wherever the data provider's history begins — often the early 1970s — so a rising-year figure in this table counts only the years we can see: an issuer may have raised its dividend for decades before our first stored payment, which means the numbers here are frequently shorter than the record the company itself reports, and the issuer's own investor-relations page is the authority on that record.

The table below lists 17 of the 17 securities matching this filter. Ranked on the forward distribution estimate. A published fund yield can be a trailing twelve-month figure, the most recent distribution annualised, or an SEC 30-day yield, and those three can differ materially for the same fund on the same day — so compare the column headed the same way, not just the number. Each row shows the structure of the security, its sector, the latest stored price and market capitalisation, both yield bases, the forward dividend per share, the payment schedule, the number of rising years visible in our own payment history and the next ex-dividend date after today. It is a research screen, not a recommendation. The dividend screener covers common stocks and REITs only, so this list of funds cannot be reproduced there.

Dividend ETFs — computed from stored prices and individual dividend payments. Yield (forward est.) annualises the last regular payment; Yield (trailing 12m) is the cash paid over the last 365 days. Both are divided by the latest stored price. The rising-years column counts only the years inside our own payment history.
Save Ticker Name Type Sector Price Market cap Yield (forward est.)Latest payment, annualised, over today's price. Yield (trailing 12m) Forward div / share / yrWhat a share is on track to pay over a year. Pays Rising yrs (our history) Next ex-date (after today)
DIV Global X - SuperDividend U.S. ETF ETF Financial Services $19.91 $754.93M 6.39% 6.37% $1.27 Monthly 1
SPHD Invesco S&P 500 High Dividend Low Volatility ETF ETF Financial Services $53.29 $3.36B 4.95% 4.59% $2.64 Monthly 1
PEY Invesco High Yield Equity Dividend Achievers ETF ETF Financial Services $25.16 $1.18B 4.45% 4.14% $1.12 Monthly 1
SPYD State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 High Dividend ETF ETF Financial Services $50.44 $7.48B 4.30% 4.03% $2.17 Quarterly 2
SDOG ALPS Sector Dividend Dogs ETF ETF Financial Services $73.88 $1.36B 3.55% 3.22% $2.62 Quarterly 1
FDL First Trust Morningstar Dividend Leaders Index Fund ETF Financial Services $53.33 $7.55B 3.55% 3.46% $1.89 Quarterly 1
HDV iShares Core High Dividend ETF ETF Financial Services $29.81 $14.23B 3.31% 3.31% $0.99 2
DHS WisdomTree U.S. High Dividend Fund ETF Financial Services $119.58 $1.54B 3.06% 3.11% $3.66 Monthly 1
DVY iShares Select Dividend ETF ETF Financial Services $164.11 $23.89B 3.04% 3.20% $4.99 Quarterly 5
SCHD Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF ETF Financial Services $35.11 $100.48B 2.88% 2.98% $1.01 Quarterly 8
SDY State Street SPDR S&P Dividend ETF ETF Financial Services $158.25 $21.85B 2.45% 2.36% $3.87 Quarterly 0
VYM Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF ETF Financial Services $164.84 $97.93B 2.38% 2.20% $3.92 Quarterly 0
NOBL ProShares - S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF ETF Financial Services $58.65 $11.86B 2.07% 1.99% $1.21 Quarterly 1
DGRO iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF ETF Financial Services $79.84 $42.05B 1.66% 1.85% $1.32 Quarterly 11+ †
VIG Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF ETF Financial Services $244.29 $132.26B 1.64% 1.47% $4.00 Quarterly 1
DGRW WisdomTree U.S. Quality Dividend Growth Fund ETF Financial Services $99.42 $17.12B 0.78% 1.24% $0.78 Monthly 1
RDVY First Trust Rising Dividend Achievers ETF ETF Financial Services $82.38 $24.88B 0.72% 0.82% $0.59 Quarterly 0

† A figure marked with a dagger is a floor, not a total. The rising run reaches the first year of payment history we hold for that security, so the count stops where our data stops rather than where the company's record does — the real record is longer by an amount we cannot see from here. Check the issuer's investor-relations page, which publishes its own dividend history, before quoting any of these numbers as a company record.

Showing 17 of 17 matching securities.

Data as of Aug 25, 2026.

Prices and market capitalisations last refreshed Aug 25, 2026; the yields, streaks and next ex-dates beside them were derived Aug 25, 2026. Nothing here is a live quote.

What a fund wrapper does and does not remove
An ETF's distribution is not fixed and is not guaranteed. It falls when its holdings cut, and the fund's expense ratio is deducted from the income before you receive it.
How dividend income goes wrong
A dividend is a decision, not a contract. Boards can cut or suspend a payment at any meeting, and they usually do it at the worst moment — when earnings, the balance sheet and the share price are already under pressure, so the income and the capital fall together. A yield far above its peer group is normally the market pricing in that cut rather than an oversight: the yield is high because the price has already fallen. Dividends can also shrink in real terms if they grow more slowly than inflation, and a single-stock income stream concentrates company risk, sector risk and, for foreign payers, currency and withholding risk. Past payments are a record, not a promise.
About the research score
The research score is a screen, not a recommendation and not a credit rating. It blends the current yield, how much of reported earnings the payment consumes, the length of the rising-payment run visible in our stored history and how many years of payments we hold for the security at all — both of the last two are bounded by how far back our payment data goes, so a company with a long record but a short file scores lower than one with the same record and deeper data. A high score means a security matched those four mechanical tests on the day the numbers were computed. It says nothing about what the shares will do next, and it does not know about a lawsuit, a refinancing or a lost contract. Full definitions are on the methodology page.

How this list is built

This page is a single filter applied to the same database that drives every other table on the site: a security qualifies or it does not, and the order is set by the column named in the section heading. Nothing is hand-picked, promoted or paid for, and no position on the page implies anything about the merits of the security in it.

Yields, payment schedules, rising-year counts and payout ratios are all computed from the quotes and individual payments we store, so any figure here can be checked against the payment list on the security's own page. That also sets the limit on the rising-year column: it counts within the payments we hold and stops where they start, so for a long-established payer it is a floor and the issuer's own investor-relations page is the authority on the company's record. Where we hold no data — a missing payout ratio, an unknown next ex-date — the cell is blank rather than filled with an estimate. The next ex-date column shows only dates strictly after today, because a security going ex today is already trading without that payment. The methodology page sets out every definition in full.

Where each number on this page comes from. Price, market capitalisation and the security's name, sector and industry: Financial Modeling Prep, quote and company-screener endpoints, stored daily by pipeline/quotes.py and weekly by pipeline/universe.py. Individual dividend payments — amount, ex-date, record date, pay date and whether the payment was regular or special: Financial Modeling Prep, dividends endpoint, stored by pipeline/dividends_fmp.py. Payout ratio: Financial Modeling Prep, ratios-ttm endpoint, stored by pipeline/fundamentals.py and measured against GAAP earnings per share. Everything else — the forward yield estimate, the trailing twelve-month yield, the payment cadence, the count of rising years and the first year of history it could be counted from, the five-year growth rate, the next ex-date and the research score — is computed on this server by pipeline/compute.py from those stored payments and prices. No vendor's own yield field is printed anywhere in this section, which is why every figure here can be traced back to a list of individual payments on the security's own page.

Other cuts of the same data

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Common questions

What is the difference between the forward yield and the trailing 12-month yield in your tables?
They measure different things, so they appear in separate columns, each header names its own basis, and the two are never totalled or averaged together. The forward estimate — headed 'Yield (forward est.)' — is the most recent regular payment multiplied by the number of payments per year, divided by the latest price. It is an estimate of the next twelve months on the assumption that nothing changes. The trailing figure — headed 'Yield (trailing 12m)' — is the cash actually paid over the last 365 days divided by the same price, so it is a record rather than an estimate. Special dividends are excluded from the forward estimate because they are by definition not repeated, but they are inside the trailing number, which is one reason the two can differ. Where a payment cadence cannot be established, or the last payment is too old for the stream to look live, the forward column falls back to the trailing figure and the two columns show the same number.
Which securities are included in the figures on this page?
US-listed common stocks and REITs, and nothing else. Preferred series and exchange-traded baby bonds are excluded by the query: they pay a contractual coupon on a fixed face amount, which is a different instrument from a dividend a board votes on each quarter, and they are covered under preferred stocks and bonds. ETFs, closed-end funds, covered-call funds, BDCs and MLPs are also outside the set used for counts, medians, sector aggregates and the screener. Two curated lists — monthly payers and dividend ETFs — deliberately describe a wider universe, and each states at the top exactly which structures it contains.
Does 'upcoming ex-dividend date' include today?
No. On the ex-dividend date the shares already trade without the right to the payment, so a security going ex today is not an upcoming opportunity to receive that dividend — buying it this morning means the seller keeps the money. On the dividend stocks hub, securities going ex today are separated into their own labelled group rather than left inside the upcoming table, and every 'next ex-dividend date' figure on this site counts only dates strictly after today.
What does a very high yield usually mean?
Usually that the price has already fallen because the market expects the payment to be cut. Yield is a fraction: when the numerator is unchanged and the denominator collapses, the yield rises. A double-digit yield in a sector where everyone else pays 3% is a question to investigate, not a bargain to assume. It can also be an artefact — a fund distributing return of capital, a partnership passing through a one-off, or a stale price in our data.
Why is your rising-year figure shorter than the record the company reports?
Because the two count over different windows. Our figure counts consecutive rising calendar years inside the payment history stored in this database, and that history begins where our data provider's history begins — frequently the early 1970s. A company that has raised its dividend since the 1950s or 1960s was raising it long before our first stored payment, and we cannot see those years, so the number in our column stops at the edge of our file rather than at the start of the run. Where that happens the table prints the figure with a trailing plus and a dagger to mark it as a floor. It is not a correction of the company's number and it is not a competing count: the issuer's investor-relations page is the authority on its own record, and the figure here is only the part of that record we hold the payments for.

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