Options Regulatory Fee: How It Works, Rates, and 2026 Change

The options regulatory fee is a per-contract charge that every U.S. options exchange assesses on customer trades to fund its market oversight work. On your confirmation it usually shows up as a single blended amount between one and two cents per contract, applied to both the opening and closing sides of a trade. Starting July 1, 2026, the industry is switching to a new method for calculating and collecting the fee, and the change affects how much you pay depending on where your broker routes orders.

What the Fee Pays For

Options exchanges are self-regulatory organizations that police their own markets, and this fee covers the cost of that policing. Revenue funds surveillance systems that monitor transactions for manipulative trading and insider dealing, examinations of member firms, and enforcement when violations turn up.1FINRA.org. FINRA Section 1 – Member Regulatory Fees

The money is walled off from an exchange’s commercial revenue. When collections outrun the regulatory arm’s actual spending, the rate drops; when costs rise or volume falls, the rate goes up. That cost-recovery design is why you see periodic rate adjustments rather than a fixed number.

How the Charge Reaches Your Account

The Options Clearing Corporation is the central clearinghouse for all U.S. listed options, and it collects the fee from clearing firms on behalf of each exchange.2NYSE Arca. NYSE Arca Options Fee Schedule The clearing firm passes the charge to your introducing broker, which passes it to you.

Most retail brokers don’t itemize each exchange’s charge separately. They calculate a blended rate based on where their order flow typically goes and show it as a single line on your confirmation. Commission-free brokers still collect it, because the fee is an exchange-mandated regulatory charge and not a brokerage commission.

Which Trades Trigger the Fee

The fee applies only to transactions cleared in the “customer” range at OCC, which covers retail investors and most institutional accounts that aren’t registered as broker-dealers or market makers. Proprietary trades by broker-dealer firms and trades by designated market makers are exempt because those participants pay for regulatory oversight through separate fee structures.3Federal Register. Self-Regulatory Organizations; NYSE American LLC; Notice of Filing and Immediate Effectiveness of a Proposed Rule Change To Adopt a New Methodology for Assessment and Collection of the Options Regulatory Fee

Within the customer range, coverage is broad:

  • Opening a position and closing it are charged independently. A round trip pays the fee twice.
  • Calls and puts are treated the same. Equity options, index options, and ETF options all fall under it.
  • Through June 30, 2026, the fee applies regardless of which exchange executes the order; from July 1, 2026 forward, only the executing exchange charges.4Nasdaq PHLX. Options 7 Pricing Schedule

For an active trader running hundreds of contracts a week, the cumulative cost is noticeable even though the per-contract amount is small.

Current Rates and the July 1, 2026 Change

Through June 30, 2026, individual exchange rates sit in the familiar range of small fractions of a penny per contract:

These small individual rates add up under the current model because every exchange assesses its fee on all customer transactions cleared through OCC by that exchange’s member firms, no matter where the trade actually executed. A single trade routed to one exchange can generate charges from several others whose clearing members also cleared it. Brokers bundle all of that into one blended figure for the customer.

On July 1, 2026, the entire industry moves to a new model: each exchange will assess its fee only on customer transactions that execute on that exchange.3Federal Register. Self-Regulatory Organizations; NYSE American LLC; Notice of Filing and Immediate Effectiveness of a Proposed Rule Change To Adopt a New Methodology for Assessment and Collection of the Options Regulatory Fee That eliminates the pileup of multiple exchanges charging on the same trade.7U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Notice of Filing and Immediate Effectiveness of Proposed Rule Change – MIAX

Because each exchange now collects from a smaller pool of transactions, the per-contract rates jump. Some figures effective July 1, 2026:

The spread between exchanges looks large, but what you actually pay depends on where your broker routes. Under the old model you paid a sliver to almost every exchange. Under the new model you pay one exchange’s higher rate. Routing now matters more for total cost than it used to.

How It Differs from the SEC Section 31 Fee

The most common source of confusion on an options confirmation is the SEC Section 31 fee, which is a different charge with a different purpose. Section 31 funds the SEC’s own operations and is calculated on the dollar value of transactions, currently $20.60 per million dollars of covered sales.9U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Section 31 Transaction Fee Rate Advisory for Fiscal Year 2026 The options regulatory fee is a flat per-contract amount regardless of the trade’s dollar value. Section 31 applies only to sales; this fee applies to both buys and sells.

You may also see an OCC clearing fee and, on some proprietary index products, exchange-specific surcharges. Brokers often lump these together under a single “regulatory and exchange fees” line, so checking your broker’s detailed fee schedule is the only way to see what each piece costs.

Tax Treatment

For most retail traders, this fee and similar regulatory charges are not separately deductible. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act suspended the miscellaneous itemized deduction for investment expenses from 2018 through 2025.10Congress.gov. Expiring Provisions of P.L. 115-97 (the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act) That suspension is scheduled to expire after the 2025 tax year, which would let investment-related fees become deductible again on Schedule A for the 2026 tax year, subject to the 2% of adjusted gross income floor that applied before the TCJA. Whether Congress extends or makes the suspension permanent remains open as of mid-2026.

Deductibility aside, the fee factors into cost basis. Amounts paid on opening a position increase your basis, and amounts paid on closing reduce your net proceeds. That slightly reduces taxable gain (or slightly increases deductible loss) on every trade, even if you never itemize. Most brokerage platforms handle this automatically in their tax reporting, but verify it if you track basis yourself.