I have accounts at both, and my perception is that Vanguard is pretty much exclusively low cost, but Fidelity does have some very competitive options if you can find them. They just also have a lot of overpriced junk.
Fidelity’s technology and customer service does generally seem better. Although they were completely baffled when their app refused to run on a rooted phone with an error message along the lines of “your account is frozen” after I logged in. (It wasn’t, and worked fine after I realized that was the issue and put it on the deny list.)
Overall, I trust Vanguard more, but both have their strong points.
The overpriced junk is wedged into bespoke employer 401k programs that are managed by the brokers. There is usually only one or two low fee options hiding in the list and you have to be savvy to find them. Most employer 401k programs suck because they (custodian) are agreeing to the fund composition based on price to them. If you are lucky you might not end up in John Hancock or Transamerica. Yuck!
Fidelity’s technology and customer service does generally seem better. Although they were completely baffled when their app refused to run on a rooted phone with an error message along the lines of “your account is frozen” after I logged in. (It wasn’t, and worked fine after I realized that was the issue and put it on the deny list.)
Overall, I trust Vanguard more, but both have their strong points.