U.S. Options Volume Rises 20.6% Through September as ETFs Lead

U.S.-listed options averaged 70.6 million contracts a day through September, up 20.6% year over year as ETF and index options grew faster and same-day trading set a quarterly record.

The nine-month average was 70,565,120 contracts a day, compared with 58,525,561 in the same period of 2025. ETF options averaged 29,270,935 daily, up 35.4%; index options averaged 6,237,700, up 29.3%; and equity options averaged 35,056,485, up 9.3%.

Options volume totaled 15,207,163,554 contracts in 2025, up 24.4% from 12,224,227,606 in 2024 and marking a sixth consecutive annual record. That left equity options with the largest daily average among the three categories through September, despite their slower growth. ETF options expanded fastest, while index options also advanced at more than triple the equity rate.

Marketwide average daily volume was 70.6 million contracts in the third quarter, down from the second-quarter record. Single-stock options averaged 32.7 million a day, an 8% sequential decline; index options fell 3% to 6.1 million, while ETF options rose 1% to 28.3 million. The quarter-to-quarter changes compare with Q2; the year-to-date growth rates above compare with the first nine months of 2025.

Zero-days-to-expiration, or 0DTE, options are contracts traded on their expiration day. They averaged a record 24.2 million contracts per day in the third quarter. For options excluding index underliers, expiration-day contracts represented 28% of volume by 2025, compared with 19.6% at the start of 2022. In December 2025, individual customers accounted for 73.5% of expiration-day volume, excluding market makers, versus 54.3% on other days.

An account-level dataset covering options trading from November 2022 through the end of 2025 identified 5,299,576 individual-customer identifiers that traded options. That was 7.5% of the 70,603,493 identifiers in the dataset. The figures count identifiers, not people: one identifier can connect a customer's activity across brokers, while joint accounts can be linked to multiple identifiers.

A 2024 survey of 2,861 U.S. investors with non-retirement investments found that 21% had bought or sold options. The share was 43% among respondents younger than 35 and 10% among those 55 and older. Those survey answers describe self-reported activity among the survey population, not a share of options-market volume.

The U.S.-listed options totals do not include a separate breakdown for crypto options.