Options Trading Platforms Compared: What 8 Brokers Charge per Contract

Michael Whitman · Trading since 2017, full-time since 2020 · YouTube creator, 137K subscribers · Published 2026-11-08

An options contract costs between $0 and $0.80 in commission at eight large US brokers, going by the price list each one published on 8 November 2026. The headline rate is only part of the bill: closing trades, assignments, index options and volume tiers are priced differently at each.

The two brokers that charge nothing are paid by the market makers that fill your orders, rather than by you.

This page sets the price lists side by side, runs one month of trading through each, and then reads what the $0 brokers report being paid, from their own quarterly SEC filings. It does not rank brokers on apps or charts, and it names no broker as right for you.

What they are: eight brokers, three ways of charging for a contract

The eight fall into three groups by how they bill an options trade.

• No commission: Robinhood and Webull charge $0 a contract on US-listed stock and ETF options. Both are paid for routing those orders; their Q2 2026 reports are read on Robinhood vs Webull, and Q3 is below.
• A flat fee per contract: Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Interactive Brokers (IBKR Pro) and ETRADE charge $0.65 on every contract you buy or sell. ETRADE drops to $0.50 once you make 30 or more trades in a quarter. TradeStation charges $0.80 a contract a side in its lowest tier, 0 to 500 contracts a month, and less in higher tiers.
• Pay to open, close free: tastytrade charges $1 a contract to open, caps that at $10 a leg, and charges nothing to close.

Every broker also passes on regulatory and clearing charges of a few cents a contract. Those are the same kind of cost everywhere, so they sit outside the main table rather than inside it, and are counted separately in the worked example.

Where they differ: the fee table, read 8 November 2026

“None listed” means the fee schedule or pricing page read on 8 November did not show an exercise or assignment fee; it is not a confirmation that there is none.

IBKR Pro’s $0.65 applies up to 10,000 contracts a month when the premium is $0.10 or more; it charges $0.50 from $0.05 to $0.10 and $0.25 below that, and passes exchange fees through on top, which vary by venue and are not in these tables. IBKR Lite, for US residents, charges a flat $0.65 on the first 1,000 contracts a month without exchange fees.

Index options cost extra almost everywhere. For one SPX contract the listed add-on is $0.50 at Fidelity, $0.54 at E*TRADE, $0.60 at tastytrade, $0.50 at Robinhood (non-Gold accounts) and $1.00 a side at TradeStation’s lowest tier. tastytrade’s $10 cap does not apply to broad-based index options.

A worked example: one month at three activity levels

Take three hypothetical traders who only buy and sell single-leg stock or ETF options, online, with premiums above $0.10, and close every position before expiry:

• Light: 4 round trips of 2 contracts a month, which is 16 contracts traded across 8 orders.
• Regular: 20 round trips of 5 contracts, 200 contracts across 40 orders.
• Busy: 25 round trips of 10 contracts, 500 contracts across 50 orders.

The arithmetic is rate times contracts. Regular at Schwab is 200 x $0.65 = $130.

At E*TRADE the light trader makes 24 trades a quarter, fewer than the 30 that unlock $0.50, so pays $0.65, while the other two pay $0.50. tastytrade bills only the 100 opening contracts: 100 x $1 = $100. Its $10 cap starts to save money only on orders larger than 10 contracts, so it does not change these figures. No order here is small enough to hit Interactive Brokers’ $1.00 minimum.

What the pass-through fees add. tastytrade lists a $0.10 clearing fee on every contract, which adds $1.60, $20 and $50 to the three months and lifts its regular total to $120. Regulatory charges are smaller: Robinhood’s listed options regulatory and clearing fee of $0.04 a contract comes to $0.64, $8 and $20; the $0.025 OCC clearing fee listed by Interactive Brokers and by TradeStation comes to $0.40, $5 and $12.50. Fidelity says its options regulatory fee has ranged from $0.02 to $0.04 a contract.

Who pays a free broker: the Rule 606 numbers

A broker that charges $0 is still paid for your order. Every quarter, SEC Rule 606 makes each broker publish where it sends customer orders and what each venue paid it.

Options reports state the payment in cents per hundred shares, and one standard contract covers 100 shares, so the figure reads as cents per contract. Both brokers’ own text agrees: in Q3 2026 Webull listed rates of $0.23 to $1.00 a contract and Robinhood $0.30 to $1.20 for orders of 1 to 100 contracts, set by how wide each symbol’s spread is.

That money comes from the market maker, not from your account, so it is not a fee you pay. Whether it costs you anything shows up, if it does, in the price you are filled at. Being paid for options orders is also not limited to $0-commission brokers: each broker’s own 606 report says whether it is.

The original data: ten quarters of Webull’s options payments

The data: Webull’s ten Rule 606 XML filings from Q2 2024 to Q3 2026 and Robinhood Securities’ Q3 2026 report, generated on 30 October 2026, parsed venue by venue and month by month. Cents per contract is total dollars divided by the contracts those dollars imply at each venue’s stated rate.

• Webull, Q3 2026: $86.17 million of options order-flow payments, 34.93 cents a contract across all order types and 31.92 cents on market orders.
• Robinhood Securities, Q3 2026: $413.76 million, 76.2% of all its reported order-flow payments, at 47.35 cents a contract across all order types and 38.69 cents on market orders.
• Growth: Webull’s options payments were $18.57 million in Q2 2024, so they rose 4.6 times in ten quarters, and the rate per contract rose from 21.01 cents to 34.93 cents.

Set against the commissions. The regular month’s 200 contracts at Webull’s Q3 rate imply about $69.87 paid to Webull by market makers; at Robinhood’s rate, about $94.71. A Schwab customer pays $130 in commission for the same month, more than either payment, whereas the Webull customer pays nothing directly. Those payments are what the $0 model runs on.

Download the data: options payments per contract and monthly costs by broker. Both are free to reuse with credit and a link to this page, under the site license.

Fees that only show up later: assignment, index options and tiers

Assignment changes the order. Sell options and some will be assigned. tastytrade charges $5 each time; Schwab, Fidelity, ETRADE, Interactive Brokers and TradeStation list $0. Four assignments in the regular month add $20 at tastytrade, which moves it from a tie with ETRADE at $100 to $120, before its clearing fee. At E*TRADE an assigned contract also skips its $0.50 closing fee.

Tiers reset. E*TRADE’s $0.50 rate depends on 30 trades a quarter. TradeStation moves you up a tier during the month you pass a volume threshold and keeps you there through the next month, then drops you back if volume falls, so a quiet spell raises the rate afterwards.

Cheap closes are free at some brokers. Fidelity charges nothing to buy back an option priced at 65 cents or less online, E*TRADE nothing at 10 cents or less, and tastytrade nothing on any close. A seller who closes positions late, when they are almost worthless, pays far less than the table suggests there.

Day-trading limits are in flux. FINRA ended the pattern day trader rule effective 4 June 2026 and replaced it with intraday margin, but brokers may phase the change in until 20 October 2027, so how many same-day options trades an account may make can still differ from one broker to the next.

Which to pick: matching the fee model to how you trade

The $0 brokers cost the least in commissions when your fills would be the same anywhere; the 606 numbers above are what you would be weighing against that.

Among the paid brokers, tastytrade costs the least when you trade lightly: $8 for the light month, against $10.40 at the $0.65 brokers. E*TRADE ties it when you make 30 or more trades a quarter: both come to $100 for the regular month, against $130 at Schwab, Fidelity and Interactive Brokers.

tastytrade costs the most when you sell options and are assigned often, or trade index options, where its cap does not apply.

IBKR Pro’s rate falls further when premiums are under $0.10, at $0.50 or $0.25 a contract, or when you pass 10,000 contracts a month, though its exchange fees come on top.

When it fails: four ways the cheapest table misleads

It fails when the fill is worse. A $0.05 worse price on one contract costs $5, far more than any commission in the table. Commission is only the visible part of a trade’s cost; the spread, priced on trading fees, is usually larger.

It fails on multi-leg trades. Every broker charging per contract bills each leg, so a four-leg iron condor of 5 contracts is 20 contracts to open and 20 to close: $26 at $0.65.

It fails when terms change. These are the prices on 8 November 2026. tastytrade’s sheet says it was last updated 28 October 2026, and Robinhood’s schedule shows a fee on “professional” options orders effective 15 October 2026. Check the date on the page before you rely on it.

It fails when the broker is not who it says. A low price from an unregistered firm costs everything. Check the registration first, as set out on how to verify a broker.

Options broker questions, answered briefly

Which options platform has the lowest fees?

On the 8 November 2026 price lists, Robinhood and Webull charge $0 a contract on stock and ETF options. Among brokers that charge, E*TRADE ($0.50 at 30+ trades a quarter) and tastytrade ($1 to open, $0 to close) were lowest for regular traders.

Do $0 options brokers really cost nothing?

They charge no commission, but market makers pay them for the orders: 34.93 cents a contract at Webull and 47.35 cents at Robinhood in Q3 2026, by their own Rule 606 reports.

Is there a fee when an option is assigned?

At tastytrade, $5. Schwab, Fidelity, E*TRADE, Interactive Brokers and TradeStation list $0.

Related: the order after the broker

Once a broker is chosen, how to trade options covers the approval levels and the first order. The difference between the two contract types these brokers sell is on futures vs options, and every cost of a trade beyond commission, from the spread to the SEC fee, is priced on trading fees. For E-mini and micro contracts instead of options, the all-in cost of one round turn at each broker is set out on futures trading platforms.

This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.