# How to read Rule 605 and Rule 606 execution and routing reports

What US execution-quality (Rule 605) and order-routing (Rule 606) reports contain, who must publish them, where the files are, and what they cannot show.

*https://stockmarketstack.com/guides/reading-rule-605-and-606-reports · background to Desktop Trading Platforms & Order Flow*

**Answer:** Rule 605 makes market centers, and from August 2026 brokers with 100,000 or more customer accounts, publish monthly execution statistics for orders in NMS stocks: spreads, price improvement and speed, by order type and size. Rule 606 makes every broker publish quarterly where it routed held, non-directed orders and what each venue paid or charged. Neither shows your own fills, and the rule text says 605 statistics alone cannot settle a best-execution question.

Two US rules make execution and routing data public, and both are routinely cited in arguments
about which broker fills best. This page does not have a view on that question, and neither do the
reports. It explains what each file contains, who must publish it, where to find it, and the parts
of the execution that neither one can see.

The rules apply to orders in US-listed stocks, and Rule 606 also to listed options. A trading
platform is not a broker: when you route stock orders from [MultiCharts](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/multicharts),
[Quantower](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/quantower) or [MotiveWave](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/motivewave) to a broker you connected, that
broker's reports are the ones that describe your orders. Futures, which are the main business of
platforms such as [NinjaTrader](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/ninjatrader) and [Sierra Chart](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/sierra-chart), are
not covered by either rule.

## How it works

An order passes through two parties these rules care about. The **broker** receives it from you and
decides where to send it. The **market center** executes it: an exchange, an exchange market maker,
an OTC market maker such as a wholesaler, or an alternative trading system. A large broker can be
both.

- **Rule 606** is the broker's account of the first step: where it sent orders, and what money
  changed hands with each destination. Quarterly.
- **Rule 605** is the account of the second: how orders were filled, measured against the national
  best bid and offer. Monthly. Until the 2024 amendments only market centers published it. From the
  compliance date of 1 August 2026, brokers that introduce or carry 100,000 or more customer accounts
  publish one too.

Neither is a record of your trades. Both are aggregates over everybody's orders that fit the rule's
definitions, and the definitions leave a good deal out.

## Rule 606: where the broker sent orders, and the money

[Rule 606(a)](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-17/part-242/section-242.606) requires every broker
or dealer to publish, for each calendar quarter, a report on its routing of **non-directed** orders
in NMS stocks submitted on a **held** basis, and of non-directed customer orders in listed options,
broken down by month. It is due within one month after the quarter ends and must stay on a free
public website for three years, built with the SEC's XML schema and PDF renderer. The report for the
third quarter of 2026 is due by the end of October 2026.

Three definitions decide what is in it. A **directed** order is one where the customer told the broker
which venue to use; everything else is non-directed, and only non-directed orders are counted. A
**held** order is one the broker must try to execute immediately; a **not held** order gives the
broker discretion over price and time, as the SEC's
[2024 release](https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/final/2024/34-99679.pdf) summarises it, and is
outside the public report. And a **customer order** under
[Rule 600](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-17/part-242/section-242.600) excludes any stock order
worth $200,000 or more, and any options order worth $50,000 or more.

Each report has three sections, S&P 500 stocks, other NMS stocks and options, and each section
gives:

- the share of orders that were non-directed, split into market, marketable limit, non-marketable
  limit and other orders;
- the ten venues that received the most non-directed orders, plus any venue that received 5% or
  more, with the share of each order type sent to each;
- for each of those venues, the **net payment for order flow received, profit-sharing payments
  received, transaction fees paid and rebates received**, as a dollar total and per share, for each
  order type;
- a written discussion of the material terms of each relationship, including volume-based tiers,
  incentives for reaching a volume threshold, penalties for missing one and minimum flow agreements.

Read it for what it is: a list of destinations and the economics attached to them. A venue named in
606 is where the broker sent the order "for execution". If that venue is a wholesaler that routes
part of it on, the onward route is in the wholesaler's own reports, not the broker's. And 606(a)
reports no execution prices at all.

Two further reports exist only **on request**. Under 606(b)(1) a customer can ask for the venue each
of their orders went to over the previous six months, whether each was directed, and the time of
any resulting execution, and the broker must say at least once a year in writing that this is
available. Under 606(b)(3), a customer who places not held orders can ask for a six-month report,
due within seven business days, with per-venue fill rates, average fill size, net fees or rebates in
cents per 100 shares to four decimal places, and the shares executed at the midpoint and on each
side of the spread. A broker is excused from 606(b)(3) where not held orders were under 5% of the
NMS stock shares it received from customers over the prior six months, and for any customer who
averaged under $1,000,000 a month in not held orders.

## Rule 605: how orders were filled

[Rule 605](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-17/part-242/section-242.605) produces two files a
month, both due within one month after the month they cover and both kept online for three years.

**Who files.** Every market center, and, under paragraph (a)(7), any broker or dealer that
introduces or carries 100,000 or more customer accounts trading NMS stocks, counting accounts held
through an omnibus clearing arrangement. A firm that is both reports each function separately. The
SEC's adopting release estimated that about 85 broker-dealers were above the threshold and that
together they handled over 98% of customer accounts. The amendments were adopted on 6 March 2024
and took effect on 14 June 2024. Compliance, first set for 14 December 2025, was
[extended to 1 August 2026](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/10/02/2025-19316/extension-of-compliance-date-for-disclosure-of-order-execution-information),
so August 2026 is the first month reported under the amended rule.

**Which orders count.** A [covered order](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-17/part-242/section-242.600)
is a market or limit order received during regular hours while a national best bid and offer is
being disseminated, plus a non-marketable limit order received outside regular hours that executes
during them. It excludes any order with special handling: market-on-open and market-on-close
orders, all-or-none orders, not held orders, orders for other than regular settlement, and orders at
prices unrelated to the market. A fill at the closing auction is not in a 605 report, and neither is
anything executed before 9:30 a.m. or after 4 p.m.

**The detailed report** is categorised by security, by order type and by order size. The order types
run from market orders through marketable limit and immediate-or-cancel orders to midpoint-or-better,
executable non-marketable and stop orders. The size categories, rebuilt in 2024, combine a notional
band (under $250, then $250 to $1,000, $1,000 to $5,000, $5,000 to $10,000, $10,000 to $20,000,
$20,000 to $50,000, $50,000 to $200,000 and $200,000 or more) with whether the order was for less
than a share, an odd lot or at least a round lot: 24 categories. Before the amendments, orders under
100 shares were not reported at all, and orders of 10,000 shares or more were excluded under a 2001
exemption.

The columns that matter most:

- **Effective spread**: for a buy, twice the execution price minus the midpoint of the national best
  bid and offer at the time the order was received; for a sell, the reverse. Reported as an average,
  as a percentage of the midpoint, and as a ratio to the quoted spread. A ratio under 100% means
  executions were, on average, inside the quoted spread.
- **Price improvement**: shares executed better than the quote, at the quote and outside it, with the
  average amount per share. Since 2024 there is a second set measured against the **best available
  displayed price**, which also counts the best odd-lot order on the consolidated feed, so a fill can
  look improved against the [NBBO](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/nbbo) and not against the odd-lot price.
- **Realized spread**: the same calculation as the effective spread, but against the midpoint at
  fixed intervals after the execution, at 50 milliseconds, 1 second, 15 seconds, 1 minute and 5
  minutes. It measures where the midpoint went after the fill, which is a property of the market and
  the order flow as much as of the venue.
- **Speed**: shares executed in time buckets running from under 100 microseconds to 5 minutes or
  more, measured from receipt, or for a non-marketable limit order from the moment it became
  executable.
- **For limit orders**: how many received any fill, and how many shares traded in the market at
  prices that could have filled them while they were live, counted market-wide and on exchanges
  only.

**The summary report** is the readable one. Paragraph (a)(2) limits it to market and marketable limit
orders, split into S&P 500 stocks and other stocks and into nine size rows: the eight notional bands
and a combined row for every order under $200,000. Its twelve columns are average order size in
shares and in dollars, average midpoint, percentage executed at the quote or better, percentage
price-improved, net percentage price improvement, percentage effective spread, percentage quoted
spread, the effective-to-quoted ratio, percentage realized spread at 15 seconds and at 1 minute, and
average execution speed in milliseconds. It is a CSV built to the SEC's schema with a PDF renderer;
the [technical specification](https://www.sec.gov/files/orderexecutionsummaryreporttechnicalspecification.pdf)
names each file with the reporter's code and the month, and puts the designated participant's code
in the first column.

**The April 2026 exemptions.** An
[SEC order of 1 April 2026](https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/exorders/2026/34-105136.pdf) adjusted
the scope before the first reports. A customer-facing broker that executes fractional shares only so
customers can sell fractions left by a dividend reinvestment plan or a stock dividend need not file
a separate market-center report for that activity. The order also replaced the exemptions for
orders around trading halts and crossed markets, extended the one for inactively traded securities
to brokers, and rescinded the old exclusion of manually received orders.

## Where the files are

**Rule 606 reports** are on each broker's own website. The rule names no central registry; it
requires a free, readily accessible site and three years of history. Brokers usually file it under
order routing or regulatory disclosures.

**Rule 605 reports** are also on each firm's own site, but there is an index. Under the
[Rule 605 NMS plan](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/09/15/2025-17714/joint-industry-plan-order-approving-an-amendment-to-the-national-market-system-plan-establishing),
every reporting firm designates a self-regulatory organization, which assigns it a reporter
identification code and posts a link to its reports. On 9 October 2026
[FINRA's page](https://www.finra.org/filing-reporting/regulation-nms/sec-rule-605-reports) listed 230
firms that had designated it: 124 broker-dealers, 61 OTC market makers, 25 alternative trading
systems, 19 single-dealer trading systems and one exchange market maker. Each exchange can act as
designated participant too, and lists its own reports and the firms that chose it. The SEC's
[schemas page](https://www.sec.gov/data-research/technical-specifications-schemas) carries the
renderers for both report types, so a downloaded file can be turned into the standard PDF layout.

## What the reports cannot tell you

The rule says it first. Rule 605's preamble states that its disclosures "do not encompass all of the
factors that may be important to investors in evaluating the order routing services of a
broker-dealer", that any firm's statistics mix orders from many brokers with different objectives,
and that the information "alone does not create a reliable basis to address whether any particular
broker-dealer failed to obtain the most favorable terms reasonably available". Beyond that:

- **Different order mixes are not comparable.** A venue's 605 averages over every broker that sent it
  orders. Two venues receiving different stocks, sizes and times of day will produce different
  spreads and improvement figures, whatever their quality. The summary's S&P 500 split and size rows
  narrow this; they do not remove it.
- **606 has the money, 605 has the quality, and they do not join.** A 606 names venues and payments
  per order type for a quarter; a 605 describes the venue's whole flow for a month. Nothing links the
  orders in one to the orders in the other.
- **The excluded orders are the ones many active traders use.** Not held, auction, all-or-none and
  extended-hours orders are outside 605, and directed and not held orders are outside 606(a). If you
  pick the destination exchange on the order ticket, your order is directed and absent from the
  broker's public routing statistics, though still in a 606(b)(1) report on request.
- **Fees and commissions are elsewhere.** 605 measures price against the quote. What you paid the
  broker is on your statements, and 606 shows only what passed between the broker and the venues.
- **The word "order flow" means two things.** In "payment for order flow" it is a broker's stream of
  customer orders, as defined in Rule 10b-10. On a footprint chart it is the
  [prints and book updates from a venue](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/order-flow). The reports concern the first.

## What you can do about it

**Find your broker's 606.** Search the broker's site for "606" or "order routing". Open the latest
quarter, then read the S&P 500 and other-stocks sections separately, because routing often differs
between them. For each listed venue, note the share of market and marketable limit orders sent there
and the net payment or fee per share in the same row. Then read the narrative section for volume
tiers and minimum-flow terms, which the numbers do not show.

**Ask for your own routing report.** A 606(b)(1) request returns the venue and execution time for
each of your orders over six months. If you use not held orders at an average of $1,000,000 a month
or more, ask for the 606(b)(3) report too, which comes back within seven business days with fill
rates and fees by venue.

**Read the 605 for the venues your broker routes to.** Take the top venues from the 606, find each
one's reporter on FINRA's list or the exchange's own site, and download the summary report for the
same months. Compare like with like: the same S&P 500 section, the same order type and the same
notional band as your own orders. Read the effective-to-quoted ratio, the percentage price-improved
and the realized spread at 15 seconds side by side, and remember the mix caveat above.

**From August 2026, read the broker's own 605.** If your broker has 100,000 or more customer
accounts, it now publishes execution statistics on the orders it receives, the closest the public
data comes to describing a broker's customers rather than a venue's. Months before August 2026 do
not exist under the amended rule, so a series that starts there has no earlier comparison.

**Check what your platform sends.** On a desktop platform the broker and the order type are your
choice. An order the platform marks for a specific exchange, an auction order or an extended-hours
order falls outside parts of both rules. If the comparison matters to you, compare orders of the types
the reports cover, and keep your own fills: the
[trading platforms category](https://stockmarketstack.com/categories/trading-platforms) lists the platforms and the brokers each
card names.

## Tools this bears on

- [MultiCharts](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/multicharts.md) — Windows charting, backtesting and order routing on EasyLanguage, sold outright or monthly.
- [Quantower](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/quantower.md) — Windows order-flow terminal for 60+ connections, with an open C# API and a real free tier.
- [MotiveWave](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/motivewave.md) — Java desktop charting whose Elliott Wave tooling is the reason anyone buys it.
- [NinjaTrader](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/ninjatrader.md) — Windows futures platform with C# strategy scripting and order-flow charting.

## FAQ

### What is the difference between a Rule 605 and a Rule 606 report?

A 605 report is about execution, published monthly by whoever executes or handles the orders, with prices and speed measured against the national best bid and offer. A 606 report is about routing, published quarterly by the broker, naming the venues it sent orders to and the payments, fees and rebates attached. One shows quality without the money, the other the money without the quality.

### Does my broker have to publish a Rule 605 report?

Only if it introduces or carries 100,000 or more customer accounts that trade NMS stocks, or acts as a market center itself. The threshold took effect with the amended rule's compliance date of 1 August 2026. The SEC estimated in 2024 that about 85 broker-dealers were above it, handling over 98% of customer accounts.

### Can I get a report on where my own orders went?

Yes. Under Rule 606(b)(1) a broker must, on request, tell you the venue each of your orders was routed to in the previous six months, whether you directed it, and the time of any resulting trade. It must remind customers of that right in writing at least once a year.

### Do Rule 605 and 606 cover futures or crypto?

No. Rule 605 covers orders in NMS stocks, and Rule 606 covers NMS stocks and listed options. Futures orders, including those placed through futures-first desktop platforms, and crypto orders are outside both rules.

### Where are Rule 605 reports published?

On a free public website chosen by each reporting firm. Each firm designates a self-regulatory organization, which assigns it a reporter code and posts a link to its reports. On 9 October 2026 FINRA's page listed 230 firms that had designated it, 124 of them broker-dealers. Exchanges publish their own.

## Sources

1. [17 CFR 242.605 — Disclosure of order execution information](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-17/part-242/section-242.605) — Office of the Federal Register, read 2026-10-09
2. [17 CFR 242.606 — Disclosure of order routing information](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-17/part-242/section-242.606) — Office of the Federal Register, read 2026-10-09
3. [17 CFR 242.600 — NMS security designation and definitions](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-17/part-242/section-242.600) — Office of the Federal Register, read 2026-10-09
4. [Disclosure of Order Execution Information, Final Rule, Release No. 34-99679](https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/final/2024/34-99679.pdf) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2024-03-06
5. [Extension of Compliance Date for Disclosure of Order Execution Information, Release No. 34-104147 (90 FR 47552)](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/10/02/2025-19316/extension-of-compliance-date-for-disclosure-of-order-execution-information) — Securities and Exchange Commission, 2025-10-02
6. [Order Granting Limited Exemptions from Rule 605 and Modifying and Rescinding Certain Exemptions, Release No. 34-105136](https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/exorders/2026/34-105136.pdf) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2026-04-01
7. [Order Approving an Amendment to the National Market System Plan Establishing Procedures Under Rule 605, Release No. 34-103939](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/09/15/2025-17714/joint-industry-plan-order-approving-an-amendment-to-the-national-market-system-plan-establishing) — Securities and Exchange Commission, 2025-09-15
8. [Technical Specifications and Schemas — Order Execution Summary (OES) Data Report and Order Routing and Handling Data](https://www.sec.gov/data-research/technical-specifications-schemas) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, read 2026-10-09
9. [Order Execution Summary Data Reports under Rule 605(a)(2), Technical Specification](https://www.sec.gov/files/orderexecutionsummaryreporttechnicalspecification.pdf) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, read 2026-10-09
10. [NMS Stock Order Execution Information (SEC Rule 605 Reports)](https://www.finra.org/filing-reporting/regulation-nms/sec-rule-605-reports) — Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, read 2026-10-09

*Last updated 2026-10-09. A reference page, corrected in place — not a dated post.*