Is VUG Halal?Vanguard Growth ETF Shariah Compliance Breakdown

Vanguard Growth ETF (VUG) is one of the most popular ETFs in the world with $130B in assets. We screened every single holding — all 188 stocks — against Shariah standards using the Halal Terminal API to give you a definitive, data-backed answer.

Screening Results at a Glance

Why VUG Fails Shariah Screening

VUG tracks large-cap US growth stocks. Growth companies tend to be more Shariah-friendly than value stocks because they reinvest profits rather than distributing dividends (less interest income concern) and carry less debt relative to their market caps.

At 75% compliance, VUG is better than broad indices (S&P 500 at 67%) but worse than pure tech ETFs (VGT at 82%). The non-compliant holdings come from two buckets:

1. Financial services: Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal are classified as growth stocks but derive revenue from conventional financial services.
2. Health insurance: Elevance, Cigna, and Humana operate in conventional insurance, which involves interest-based investments.

Top Compliant Holdings

These VUG holdings pass Shariah screening:

1. AAPL
2. MSFT
3. NVDA
4. AMZN
5. META
6. GOOGL
7. TSLA
8. AVGO
9. LLY
10. COST

Non-Compliant Holdings

These holdings fail and are the primary reason VUG is not compliant:

1. V (Visa — 2.8%)
2. MA (Mastercard — 2.1%)
3. ELV (Elevance Health — insurance)
4. CI (Cigna — insurance)
5. HUM (Humana — insurance)
6. PYPL (PayPal — fintech)

Halal Alternatives

For similar market exposure with full Shariah compliance:

• SPUS (SP Funds S&P 500 Sharia ETF) — Shariah-screened S&P 500
• HLAL (Wahed FTSE USA Shariah ETF)
• UMMA (Wahed Dow Jones Islamic World ETF)

For a full comparison, see our Best Halal ETFs for 2026 guide.

Screen VUG Yourself

curl https://api.halalterminal.com/api/etf/VUG/screening \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY"

import requests

resp = requests.get(
    "https://api.halalterminal.com/api/etf/VUG/screening",
    headers={"X-API-Key": "YOUR_KEY"}
)
data = resp.json()

print(f"Compliance Rate: {data['compliance_rate']}%")
print(f"Compliant: {data['compliant_holdings']}/{data['total_holdings']}")
print(f"Purification: {data['purification_rate']:.1%}")

for h in data["holdings"]:
    if h["compliance_status"] != "compliant":
        print(f"  FAIL: {h['symbol']} ({h['weight']:.1%} weight)")

Key Takeaways

• VUG is NOT Shariah-compliant — 75.0% of holdings pass screening
• Weighted compliance: 78.5%
• Purification rate: 2.2%
• Halal alternatives: SPUS, HLAL, and UMMA offer similar exposure with full compliance