: How much do brokerages pay exchanges per trade? When an online broker executes a trade on for example the NYSE how much do they pay to have the trade executed on the NYSE?

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There is no one answer to this question, but there are some generalities.

Most exchanges make a distinction between the passive and the aggressive sides of a trade. The passive participant is the order that was resting on the market at the time of the trade. It is an order that based on its price was not executable at the time, and therefore goes into the order book. For example, I'm willing to sell 100 shares of a stock at .98 but nobody wants to buy that right now, so it remains as an open order on the exchange.

Then somebody comes along and is willing to meet my price (I am glossing over lots of details here). So they aggressively take out my order by either posting a market-buy, or specifically that they want to buy 100 shares at either .98, or at some higher price.

Most exchanges will actually give me, as the passive (i.e. liquidity making) investor a small rebate, while the other person is charged a few fractions of a cent. Google found NYSEArca details, and most other exchanges make their fees public as well. As of this writing the generic price charged/credited:

[CO].0023 per share (credit) for orders that provide liquidity to the Book
[CO].003 per share (fee) for orders that take liquidity from the Book

But they provide volume discounts, and many of the larger deals do fall into another tier of volume, which provides a different price structure.