Robinhood is adding its first-ever per-contract options fee, and it only applies to a narrow slice of accounts. Starting on or after October 15, 2026, any account that carries the exchange-defined “Professional” options designation will be charged $0.50 for every contract bought or sold. Everyone else keeps paying $0 per contract, unchanged.
- Only accounts averaging more than 390 options orders per day in a calendar month get the “Professional” label, and only those accounts pay the new fee.
- Retail Robinhood accounts stay at $0 per contract. Nothing changes for the ordinary trader placing a handful of orders a day.
- At $0.50 per contract, Robinhood’s Professional rate is still cheaper than Schwab, Fidelity, or Interactive Brokers Lite’s standard $0.65 per contract.
- The designation and fee are month-to-month: fall back under 390 orders/day average and the “Professional” status, and the fee, comes off automatically.
What’s Actually Changing at Robinhood
Robinhood confirmed the change in its own Options Trading FAQ and its Standard Pricing Fee Schedule: on or after October 15, 2026, options orders placed by an account classified as a “Professional” customer under options-exchange rules will cost $0.50 per contract, charged on both the buy and the sell side. This is Robinhood’s first per-contract options fee of any kind. Since the app launched options trading, its entire pitch has rested on zero commissions and zero per-contract charges, and that pitch is unchanged for the overwhelming majority of accounts.
The fee is not a Robinhood policy invented from scratch. It is Robinhood catching up to a designation that already exists at the exchange level and that most other brokers have priced for years.
Who Actually Gets the “Professional” Label
The options exchanges define a “Professional” as anyone who is not a registered broker-dealer but who places an average of more than 390 listed-options orders per day during a calendar month. Every submitted order counts toward that average, even ones that fill only partially or don’t fill at all, though a multi-leg order like a vertical spread or an iron condor counts as a single order rather than one per leg (up to eight legs).
390 orders a day, every trading day in a month, is a volume level almost no discretionary retail trader reaches. It describes accounts running automated strategies, high-frequency spread rolling, or market-making-adjacent order flow, not someone checking a chain and buying a few calls. The underlying rule change that determines how quickly this designation gets applied and removed was filed with the SEC by Cboe’s exchanges earlier in 2026 (SEC filing SR-CBOE-2026-060), which shortened the review window from quarterly to monthly. Robinhood’s new fee is a direct downstream effect of that exchange rule: once an account is flagged “Professional,” Robinhood now has its own dollar cost attached to it.
If your average drops back to 390 or fewer orders a day in a later month, the “Professional” designation and the fee both go away automatically. There is no appeal process to fight the label and no manual override, since the count is based purely on order volume.
How $0.50 Per Contract Compares
Even for the accounts that do get charged, $0.50 per contract lands below what several major brokers already charge every options customer, professional or not, as of Robinhood’s August 2026 verification data:
| Broker | Standard options fee | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Robinhood (retail) | $0.00/contract | All non-Professional accounts |
| Robinhood (Professional) | $0.50/contract | Accounts averaging 390+ orders/day in the prior month |
| Charles Schwab / thinkorswim | $0.65/contract | All accounts |
| Fidelity Investments | $0.65/contract | All accounts |
| Interactive Brokers (Lite) | $0.65/contract | All accounts |
| tastytrade | $1.00/contract to open (capped, $0 to close) | All accounts |
Commission figures for Schwab, Fidelity, Interactive Brokers, and tastytrade are pulled from our verified broker database (last verified 2026-08-06). Check each broker’s current pricing page directly before making a decision, since fee schedules change without much notice, as this Robinhood update itself demonstrates.
A Hypothetical Example
Say a trader runs an automated 0DTE strategy that submits an average of 450 options orders per day over a full calendar month. Under the 390-orders rule, that account would be flagged “Professional” starting the following month. On Robinhood, that means paying $0.50 per contract on every order going forward, until a month comes in under the 390-order average. For illustrative purposes only: if that hypothetical account executed 2,000 contracts in a month at the new rate, the added cost would be around $1,000 for that month, versus $0 before the designation applied. This is a hypothetical scenario for illustration, not a projection of any specific account’s activity or a recommendation to trade at any particular volume.
What Retail Traders Don’t Need to Worry About
For the vast majority of Robinhood’s options customers, none of this changes anything. If you’re placing a few orders a day, whether that’s opening a single spread, adjusting a position, or closing out a covered call, you are nowhere near the 390-orders-per-day average this rule is built around. Robinhood’s headline pitch of $0 per contract stays exactly as it was.
If you want to double check the current fee schedule yourself before it takes effect, Robinhood’s own pricing page is the authoritative source and will reflect any further updates before the October 15 effective date.
Bottom Line
Robinhood’s new $0.50-per-contract fee only touches accounts that already cross an exchange-defined, high-volume threshold most retail traders will never approach. The fee is lower than what Schwab, Fidelity, and IBKR Lite charge every customer regardless of volume, and it comes off automatically the moment an account’s order pace drops back under the line. The real story here isn’t a fee hike for retail traders, it’s Robinhood finally pricing a designation the rest of the industry has priced for years.
FAQ
Q: Will this fee apply to my Robinhood account?
A: Only if your account averages more than 390 options orders per day during a calendar month, which options exchanges use to classify you as a “Professional” customer. Ordinary retail order volume falls far short of this threshold.
Q: How do I check my own order-per-day average?
A: Divide your total options orders placed in a month by the number of trading days in that month. Robinhood does not currently publish a running average in the app, so this has to be tracked manually from your order history.
Q: Does this fee affect stocks, crypto, or futures on Robinhood?
A: No. The 390-orders rule and the resulting fee apply only to listed options orders. Robinhood’s pricing on equities and other asset classes is unchanged.
Q: Is $0.50 per contract high compared to other brokers?
A: No. It’s lower than the $0.65 per contract that Schwab, Fidelity, and Interactive Brokers Lite charge every customer, professional designation or not.
Q: Can I lose the “Professional” designation once I have it?
A: Yes. It’s reassessed based on your order activity, and if your average options orders per day fall to 390 or fewer in a subsequent month, the designation and the associated fee are removed automatically.
Want to understand what else affects the price you actually pay on an options trade beyond the sticker commission? See our breakdown of how options market structure affects your trade fills and costs.