Ten contracts a week. Sixty-five cents each. That is $338 a year.
Options contract fees by broker look trivial on paper. Sixty-five cents. Fifty cents. Some brokers advertise zero. Then you trade options for a year and the small number turns out to be the big number.
At 50 cents it is $260 a year. At a broker with no closing fees or capped commissions, less. None of this includes the spread, or the times you were wrong about direction, which is where the real money goes. But fees are the part you control completely. So control them.
Exercise and assignment fees are the ambush. Some brokers charge $15 or $20 when an option gets exercised or assigned. If you sell cash-secured puts regularly, assignment happens. That fee lands exactly when you are already managing a position you did not plan to own. Check this line specifically. It hides.
My opinion, and I will die on this hill: for options traders, contract fees matter more than the stock commission, more than the app design, more than the promo. Hunting the best broker for day trading or active options trading? Price your actual monthly contract volume at two or three brokers. The answer is usually obvious within five minutes.
Also compare per-trade minimums and caps. Some brokers charge per contract with no cap. Others cap the commission per trade. If you trade in size, a cap can matter more than the per-contract rate. Price your actual typical trade. Not a hypothetical one.
A quick brokerage fee comparison across the best online stock trading platform options keeps this honest. Two platforms can look identical on the home page and differ by hundreds of dollars a year in options fees. BrokerCompare compares options contract fees by broker across 50 US brokerages, including exercise and assignment. Start at brokercompare.fyi.