529 Performance Rankings Q3 2024

The plans listed below are ones that consumers can enroll in directly. Premium subscribers can also access performance rankings for plans sold through brokers and RIAs (fee-based financial planners).

Top 10 performing 529 college savings plans

Here are our 529 performance rankings (data as of September 30, 2024).

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Rank	Plan	State	Average return
1	Maryland College Investment Plan	Maryland	7.21%Enroll Now
2	Alaska 529	Alaska	7.11%Enroll Now
2	T. Rowe Price College Savings Plan	Alaska	7.11%Enroll Now
4	SMART529 Select	West Virginia	7.07%
5	ISave 529	Iowa	6.80%Enroll Now
6	Nebraska Education Savings Trust -- Direct College Savings Plan	Nebraska	6.71%Enroll Now
7	START Saving Program	Louisiana	6.54%
8	Direct Portfolio College Savings Plan	Colorado	6.51%
9	Learning Quest 529 Education Savings Program (Direct-sold)	Kansas	6.45%
10	SMART529 WV Direct College Savings Plan	West Virginia	6.44%

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Q3 2024 529 plan performance rankings

In producing our age-based performance rankings, we analyze one-year, three-year, five-year and ten-year investment performance of all age-based or target-year portfolios offered by a 529 plan at each age band from 0 to 19+. We then calculate a hypothetical average annual return for all ages within each plan, and use this to rank the plans from best to worst performing. Please view our methodology for more details.

You should always review the portfolios offered by a plan and understand what is included before making an investment decision. Some portfolios are more aggressive than others, i.e., they include more equity, which may provide greater returns but greater risk as well. Be sure that you are comfortable with the risk level of your portfolios.

The ten-year performance ranking provides the best measure of long-term investment performance. However, note that many plans have introduced age-based portfolios recently, and do not yet have ten years' worth of performance history. Reviewing rankings from other time periods will allow you to see and compare the performance of a greater number of plans.

How we rank 529 plan performance

529 plans offer thousands of investment portfolios which can vary greatly in their composition. Comparing 529 plans based on investment performance is therefore no easy task and requires a special methodology. Saving For College has developed a proprietary enrollment-based methodology for ranking plans based on historical performance to assist college savers in comparing 529 plans.

We identify all enrollment-based portfolios from each 529 plan. These are dynamic portfolios designed to shift to more conservative asset allocations over time as the account beneficiary approaches college age. There are two types: age-based portfolios, in which the investor chooses the portfolio closest to the beneficiary’s current age; target-year portfolios, in which the investor chooses the portfolio closest to the expected year of college enrollment.

We then compare the historical performance of each of the selected portfolios within a given age band from 0 to 19+, over the past one-year, three-year, five-year and ten-year investment periods. There are separate comparisons for direct-sold and advisor-sold plans.

Finally, we calculate a hypothetical average annual return for each plan’s enrollment-based portfolios along a glide path from 0 to 19+, and rank the plans from highest to lowest return.

For a more in-depth explanation of our methodology, please read our white paper.

See the one-year direct-sold, three-year direct-sold, five-year direct-sold, ten-year direct-sold rankings.

More information

Premium subscribers have access to performance rankings for advisor-sold 529 plans for the one-year, three-year, five-year and ten-year investment periods. In addition, subscribers can easily look up the historical performance for every 529 portfolio in every available share class by using our Fee and Performance Lookup Tool.

529 Quarterly Performance Rankings

Top 10 performing 529 college savings plans

How we rank 529 plan performance

More information