Roundups of options brokers usually bury the one number an options trader actually pays. This scoring does the opposite. Using BrokerCompare's dataset of 50 US brokerages, verified on September 15, 2026, brokers are ranked first by their recorded options contract fee, which carries half the weight, then by platform features an options trader uses, paper trading and extended-hours trading, then by access, a $0 account minimum and fractional shares. Fees are recorded for 29 of the 50 brokers; a broker missing from this ranking is unrecorded, not expensive, and the method section at the end says exactly what was counted.
The $0 group: eight brokers
Eight brokers record a $0 contract fee: Robinhood, Webull, SoFi Invest, Public, moomoo, Firstrade, eToro US and Alpaca Securities. The tiebreakers separate them. All eight open at a $0 minimum and offer fractional shares, and all but eToro US record extended-hours trading. Paper trading, the feature that lets a new options trader rehearse without money at risk, is recorded at four of them: Webull, moomoo, eToro US and Alpaca Securities. On the stated scoring, that puts Webull, moomoo and Alpaca at the front of the group, with eToro close behind despite its shorter trading day.
The middle: $0.40 to $0.65
ChoiceTrade and SpeedTrader record the cheapest paid fee at $0.40 per contract, followed by Ally Invest and CenterPoint Securities at $0.50. The median recorded fee across the dataset is $0.59, and the industry standard $0.65 is charged by eight brokers, including Charles Schwab and Fidelity. For a trader placing 20 contracts a month, the difference between this band and the $0 group is $8 to $13 a month: real money over a year, but small enough that platform quality can reasonably outrank it, which is why the scoring gives features and access the other half of the weight.
The top of the schedule: $1.00
Four brokers record a $1.00 contract fee: Vanguard, tastytrade, Zacks Trade and U.S. Bancorp Investments. At 100 contracts a month that is $100 in fees before any other cost, against $0 at the first group. None of the four is a bad brokerage; Vanguard's fee sits alongside the lowest fund costs in the industry, and tastytrade is built for options specialists. The score simply reports what the fee schedule says, which is the point of publishing the method.
What the score cannot see
Execution quality, option chain design, margin pricing and customer support decide real-world options trading as much as the contract fee, and none of them is a field in this dataset. Our guide to options contract fees by broker covers the fee itself in more depth, and the full 50-broker comparison counts every other fee we record. If a switch is on the table, the SwitchCost Checker prices it from the same data.
The method, stated plainly
Contract fee 50 percent, platform features 30 percent, access 20 percent, applied to the fields BrokerCompare records for each broker. The dataset was verified on September 15, 2026, and 21 of the 50 brokers have no recorded contract fee, so they cannot be scored and do not appear. Brokers change fees without asking us; treat this as a September snapshot and confirm the current schedule before trading.