Stats › Active, passive and flows › Payment for order flow
Payment for order flow
When you place an order with a US retail broker, that order usually doesn't go to an exchange. It goes to a wholesale market maker, and the market maker pays your broker for the privilege of handling it. Tiny amounts per share. Very large amounts in total. That's payment for order flow, and it's most of the reason your commission is zero.
US brokers took in roughly $4.4 billion of it in 2025. What surprises most people is the split. Options produced about $3.0 billion of that, against $1.4 billion from every share trade combined. The framing everyone carries around, formed during the 2021 retail trading boom, treats this as a stock market practice. It hasn't been one for a while, and the reason is simply that options spreads are wider, so the flow is worth more.
This page has the breakdown by asset class, the concentration figures, and a section on the rules that were proposed and then mostly withdrawn, which matters because a lot of commentary assumes the regime changed and it didn't. There's an honest note at the bottom too: the total is an estimate from broker disclosures, not a regulator's figure, and a competing estimate is in circulation. I've put both there rather than choosing. Four sources, all linked, two of them straight from the SEC.
US brokers received roughly $4.4 billion in payment for order flow in 2025: $3.0 billion from options, $1.2 billion from non S&P 500 equities and $0.2 billion from S&P 500 equities. Options are now roughly two thirds of all PFOF, which reverses the usual assumption that this is primarily an equities practice. The SEC reports that the top five providers account for over 95% of total PFOF, and in options the top three account for as much as 90%.
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