A market order enables you to buy or sell an option immediately at the next, best available price. Market orders indicate a preference for quick execution relative to price specificity.

While market orders provide fast trade executions, there’s no guarantee that your market order will be executed at a specific price.

The market price shown in the app is from the National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO), which is a consolidated view of the highest bid and the lowest ask price from all exchanges. Keep in mind, the market price might not be the best available price when the order is executed. If you want to buy at a specific price, place a limit order for options instead.

Due to increased volatility at market open, you can only place a market order for options during regular market hours starting 15 minutes after market open (9:45 AM–4 PM ET). Orders for late close options will extend to 4:15 PM ET.

You can’t place market orders for options during extended-hours trading or overnight hours.

You can only place market orders for options on single leg orders. Market orders aren’t available for options rolling or for other multi-leg options strategies, such as vertical spreads.

You can place market orders for options within your Robinhood retirement or individual investing account with margin or cash. Check out Placing an options trade for how-to steps.

To try to protect your account from overspending, we’ll apply an additional buffer to your order in some cases.

A market order for options may get blocked for a few reasons, like if it’s outside market hours, the price is unavailable, the order is over the contract limits, open interest is low on the contract, or if trading was halted for the stock you’re trying to buy or sell.