Publication check, 19 October 2026. The GovInfo annual Rule 606 text, SEC Rule 606 FAQs and adoption release, and SEC’s April 2026 Rule 605 FAQs were retrieved. The direct eCFR page was unavailable. The Rule 605 FAQs specify August 2026 compliance and a later November 2026 odd-lot benchmark requirement. No broker report or individual trade was audited.
Rule 606 requires covered brokers to publish quarterly aggregate routing reports for specified customer orders. They show venues and payment arrangements, but cannot establish the execution quality of an individual trade.
The report is one public source about a broker's routing practices. Read it alongside Rule 605 statistics for more context, but neither report reconstructs a particular customer's fill.
What Rule 606 requires
SEC Rule 606 of Regulation NMS and the SEC's Rule 606 FAQ require quarterly aggregate reports for specified non-directed held orders in NMS stocks and specified options orders below the rule’s $50,000 market-value threshold, with order-type and payment disclosures. Separate provisions govern customer-specific requests for held and not-held orders.
The reports are public, free, and posted on each broker's website — usually under "regulatory disclosures" or "order routing."
The fields and what they mean
Venue. Where orders were routed.
These may include wholesale market makers and exchanges. The venue mix varies by broker, security and order type; concentration alone does not establish execution quality.
Percentage of orders routed. What share went to each venue. Concentration alone does not establish poor execution or a rule violation.
Order type breakdown. Market orders, marketable limit orders, non-marketable limit orders and other orders are reported separately. This matters because the economics differ — a non-marketable limit order provides liquidity and may earn a rebate, while a marketable order takes available liquidity; the venue’s and broker’s actual fees and rebates need checking.
Net payment per 100 shares. For stock orders, read the disclosed unit exactly: 150 cents per 100 shares equals $1.50 per 100 shares, or 1.5 cents per share. The SEC FAQ explains that the options field using this XML label is interpreted as cents per standard options contract. No particular firm’s payment range is asserted here without a reproducible report and cell reference.
Material aspects of the relationship. A narrative description of any arrangement that could influence routing.
What the report can and cannot tell you
It can tell you where specified groups of customer orders were routed, and what payments were received or paid for those groups.
It cannot tell you whether you got a good price.
Payment for order flow is a fact about the broker's revenue. It is not a fact about your fill.
Payment alone does not prove a better or worse price. Aggregate execution quality is covered by a different report.
The report that adds execution-quality context
SEC Rule 605 requires covered reporting entities, including covered broker-dealers with at least 100,000 customer accounts under the amended definition, to publish monthly execution-quality statistics for covered NMS stock orders. Those include:
Effective spread — twice the distance between execution price and the midpoint at the relevant benchmark time, averaged across covered executions; not a customer's actual round-trip cost. Quoted spread — what was displayed at order receipt. Price improvement — the rate and size of executions better than the national best bid or offer. Speed — execution time by order size and type.
Comparing effective and quoted spread can help assess average execution against displayed quotes for comparable order categories. It does not determine an individual fill's quality.
Use the two together. Rule 606 shows aggregate routing and payment; Rule 605 shows aggregate execution outcomes for covered orders. Neither identifies the result of one customer's order.
Why the reports have improved
Rule 605 was substantially amended, with compliance beginning 1 August 2026 and broker-dealers joining the expanded set of reporting entities, with the aim of making execution quality comparable across firms rather than merely disclosed by each.
The amendments expand covered entities, order categories and statistics. Compare matching definitions and reporting periods; the rule does not make different order mixes interchangeable. The April 2026 SEC FAQs set 1 November 2026 for collection of price-improvement statistics against the best available displayed price including applicable odd-lot information, with November reports due by the end of December. That later metric should not be assumed present in every October comparison.
Rule 606 makes specified aggregate routing and payment arrangements public. These figures inform, but do not settle, questions about payment for order flow or a broker's best-execution practices.
What to actually look for
Concentration. If a large share of covered orders goes to one venue, examine that venue's execution statistics and the broker's routing explanation. The aggregate percentage alone does not establish where a particular order went.
Payment relative to order type. Payment on non-marketable limit orders has different economics from payment on market orders. The breakdown is disclosed for a reason.
Consistency over quarters. A routing pattern that changes sharply is worth understanding.
Then check Rule 605 for the broker, if it is a reporting entity, and relevant venues. The statistics help compare covered order categories, not answer whether an individual fill was optimal.
The honest limitation
These reports are aggregate, not individual. They tell you how a broker's order flow behaved in total, not what happened to your order.
Rule 606 also provides customer-specific routing information on request. That identifies venues for covered past orders, but it does not by itself measure execution quality.
What to do with both reports
Find your broker's 606 report and note the top venues and whether payment is received.
Find the 605 statistics for those venues and compare effective spread against quoted spread.
Request your own six-month routing history if you want the routing details available under Rule 606. The information differs for held and not-held orders; ask your broker which provision applies.
This is a way to examine public aggregate evidence. It is not a substitute for reviewing your own confirmations and order details.
The customer-specific request
Rule 606 includes customer-specific request provisions.
For held NMS-stock orders, Rule 606(b)(1) provides a customer-request report covering the prior six months' routing venues and transaction times, if any. Not-held orders have a different, more detailed request regime with specified exceptions.
This can identify where a covered order was routed. It does not tell you what the best obtainable price would have been on that occasion.
Ask the broker how to submit a Rule 606 customer request. No cited evidence here establishes how often customers do so.
The two reports together
| Question | Report |
|---|---|
| Where did covered order flow go overall? | Rule 606, quarterly |
| Was my broker paid for that? | Rule 606 |
| How did covered orders execute on average? | Rule 605, monthly |
| How much better than the quote on average? | Rule 605 — price-improvement statistics |
| Where did my own orders go? | Rule 606 customer request, six months |
Conclusions about execution quality require more evidence than the routing and payment rows alone.
What the disclosure does not settle
Rule 606 makes routing and payment visible. It does not settle whether payment for order flow harms investors, and it was never going to.
The question requires comparing execution quality across brokers with different routing arrangements, which is Rule 605's territory rather than 606's.
The two reports answer adjacent questions and neither answers the whole one. A broker receiving payment may deliver excellent execution; one receiving none may deliver poor execution.
Anyone drawing a conclusion about your outcome from a 606 report alone is drawing it from the wrong document. Your own confirmations, order timestamps and relevant quotes provide evidence about a particular trade; aggregate reports cannot reconstruct its counterfactual best obtainable fill.
The units, in one table
For stock orders, check the disclosed unit before comparing payments. The examples below are arithmetic illustrations, not transcriptions of a particular firm's report.
| As printed in a Rule 606 report | Means | Per share |
|---|---|---|
| 150 cents per 100 shares | $1.50 per 100 shares | 1.5 cents |
| 34 cents per 100 shares | $0.34 per 100 shares | 0.34 cents |
| 207 cents per 100 shares | $2.07 per 100 shares | 2.07 cents |
These unit examples do not describe Robinhood or any other named firm’s actual payment rates.
Two further points about the unit. It is a net figure, so a venue that both pays and charges appears as the difference. And it is payment to the broker, not a cost line on your confirmation: Rule 605 offers aggregate execution statistics, but those statistics alone do not identify the causal cost or benefit of a payment arrangement to an individual customer.
Before you act on this
This article explains how something works. It is general education, not advice about your situation. It does not consider your goals, income, tax position or how much risk you can afford.
Investing involves risk, including losing money. Before you act, speak to a licensed professional. You can check whether someone is licensed at Investor.gov and FINRA BrokerCheck.
Common questions
Where do I find my broker's report?
On its website under regulatory disclosures or order routing. Brokers are required to make them publicly available.
Is payment for order flow bad for me?
The payment disclosure alone cannot answer that. Rule 605 statistics provide aggregate execution-quality context, not a causal measurement of the payment's effect on your order.
Can I ask about my own orders specifically?
Yes. Rule 606 provides for customer-specific disclosure on request covering the prior six months.
Related reading: Price improvement and Rule 605 · Market orders and limit orders · The order protection rule
Where to go next
The two reports provide useful public context about routing and execution. Our orders and execution lesson covers routing and venue economics.
Sources
Primary sources. SEC Rule 606 of Regulation NMS · SEC Rule 606 FAQ · SEC Rule 605 FAQ
Related research on this site. Related topic: payment for order flow, routing transparency and the limits of aggregate execution data..
Education, not advice. Rule 605 and 606 requirements are amended periodically; verify current requirements at sec.gov.
Additional source detail
SEC Rule 606 of Regulation NMS — quarterly order routing disclosure, order type breakdown, net payment disclosure and the customer-specific request provision. SEC Rule 605 — order execution disclosure, including effective spread, quoted spread, price improvement and speed statistics. SEC Rule 611 and Rule 600(b) for related definitions.
License. This may be reproduced with attribution to StockEducation.com and a link to this page.
