---
title: I Went Looking for the Options Fee on Wealthsimple Trade and Couldn't Find One
description: Wealthsimple dropped its per-contract options fee last fall. Here's what changed, what still costs money, and why it made me actually try a covered call.
---

# I Went Looking for the Options Fee on Wealthsimple Trade and Couldn't Find One

Wealthsimple dropped its per-contract options fee last fall. Here's what changed, what still costs money, and why it made me actually try a covered call.

I do most of my active trading on Wealthsimple Trade, and for a while I mostly ignored the options tab. Not because I was against options as a concept, but because the per-contract fee made anything small-scale feel pointless — if I wanted to sell a single covered call against 100 shares, the fee was eating a real chunk of whatever premium I'd collect.

That changed last October. Wealthsimple's options page now states plainly: "$0 commissions and $0 trading fees" on equity and ETF options, and they're positioning it as the only $0 options platform in Canada. I went and checked the current fee schedule myself before writing this, and it holds up — no commission, no per-contract charge on standard equity or ETF options. The one exception is index options (things like SPX or XSP contracts), which still carry a small per-contract fee, ranging from about a quarter to a dollar depending on the specific index. For the kind of trading I actually do — options on stocks and ETFs I already hold — that exception doesn't apply.

## Why this mattered to me specifically

I'm not a frequent options trader. I hold a handful of stocks long-term and occasionally think about covered calls as a way to generate a bit of extra income on shares I'm not planning to sell soon. Under the old fee structure, doing that with a small number of contracts barely broke even once you accounted for the fee on both the opening and closing trade. It's the kind of thing that only made sense at a larger scale, which wasn't me.

With the fee gone, I actually went ahead and sold my first covered call in a non-registered account — a small, boring, out-of-the-money one against shares I was fine holding either way. I'm not going to pretend I've become an options trader overnight, and I'd be cautious about anyone jumping into anything more complex (naked positions, multi-leg spreads) without understanding the risk first — those still require a margin account here, and for good reason. But for the simple, income-generating strategies retail investors actually use, removing the fee removed the one thing that made small trades not worth the hassle.

It's also a reminder that the "$0 commission" framing brokerages use doesn't always tell the whole story — Questrade, for comparison, also charges $0 commission but still applies a small per-contract fee, and the traditional bank platforms often stack both. Wealthsimple genuinely removing both charges on equity and ETF options is a meaningfully different offer, not just marketing language.

**Referral Code**: LTHNZA — [Get $25 Bonus](https://www.wealthsimple.com/invite/LTHNZA)

If you're already trading on Wealthsimple, it's worth a look at the options tab even if you'd written it off before like I had. And if you haven't opened an account yet, the referral link above still gets you the $25 welcome bonus I got when I signed up.

*This post shares my personal take and isn't financial advice — see my [full disclosure](https://wealthsimplereferral.ca/en/disclosure/) for details.*

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Source: [Wealthsimple](https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/trade/options)

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