How Futures Exchanges Make Money: CME Group and ICE From Their 2025 10-Ks

Futures exchanges make most of their money by charging a small fee on every contract that is traded and cleared, plus subscription fees for market data and connectivity and a share of the interest earned on the collateral traders post. They do not profit from which way prices move. For CME Group, the largest US futures exchange, clearing and transaction fees were $5.28 billion of its $6.52 billion in revenue in 2025, earned at an average of about 70 cents per contract on a record 28.1 million contracts a day.

In short: an exchange is a volume business with mostly fixed costs. Revenue is roughly contracts traded x average fee per contract, and the average fee depends on product mix, member discounts and volume tiers. Market data is the second engine, sold per screen or device and growing steadily. Because the clearing house holds hundreds of billions of dollars of margin, interest on that cash is a meaningful third line, though most of it is passed back to clearing firms. Costs barely rise with volume, so in busy, volatile years margins widen: CME’s operating margin was 64.9% in 2025. The figures below come from CME Group’s and Intercontinental Exchange’s annual reports on Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025, filed with the SEC in February 2026.

For what an exchange and its clearing house actually do, start with how futures exchanges work. This article is about the economics.

The misconception: exchanges win when traders lose

An exchange is not the counterparty to anyone’s trade. Its clearing house stands between buyer and seller through novation, but it runs a matched book: every long is offset by a short, so price moves pass straight through from losers to winners via variation margin. The exchange earns the same fee whether the buyer or the seller turns out right.

What it needs is activity. CME’s 10-K states that most clearing and transaction fees “are recognized as revenue upon successful execution of the trade” and that “unfilled or canceled buy and sell orders have no impact on revenue.” Volume, not direction, is the business. That is why exchanges benefit from volatility: in its 2025 10-K, CME attributes higher volume in nearly every asset class to “higher overall market volatility,” tariff uncertainty and Federal Reserve policy.

CME Group: the revenue mix

From the consolidated statement of income in CME Group’s 2025 10-K (dollars in millions):

Revenue line	2025	2024	Change	Share of 2025 revenue
Clearing and transaction fees	$5,281.1	$4,988.2	+6%	81.0%
Market data and information services	$803.1	$710.2	+13%	12.3%
Other	$436.4	$431.7	+1%	6.7%
Total revenues	$6,520.6	$6,130.1	+6%	100%
Operating income	$4,229.5	$3,931.5		64.9% margin

Clearing and transaction fees are, in the 10-K’s words, “per-contract charges for trade matching, clearing, trading on the company’s electronic trading platforms,” plus related services. Fees “are charged at various rates based on the product traded, the method of trade, the exchange trading privileges of the customer making the trade and the type of contract.” Exchange members pay less than non-members, and high-volume customers earn tier discounts. Of the $5,281.1 million, $4,913.0 million came from futures and options, $283.7 million from the cash markets businesses (BrokerTec fixed income and EBS foreign exchange) and $84.4 million from cleared interest rate swaps.

Market data is sold mostly as flat monthly fees “for each screen, or device,” displaying real-time data, through direct subscriptions or third-party distributors. CME says the 13% increase was “largely attributable to price increases for certain products as well as an increase in usage.” About 30% of the line came from its two largest resellers.

Other revenue includes access and communication fees, collateral management fees, membership subscription fees and order routing arrangements.

Volume: the 2025 record

CME’s average daily volume (ADV) in 2025 was 28.129 million contracts, up 6%, on 7,060.4 million contracts for the year. CME’s fourth-quarter earnings release of February 4, 2026 called it “record average daily volume of 28.1 million contracts” and 2025 “the best year in our history.” Electronic trading on CME Globex was 26.163 million a day, or 93% of the total.

Asset class	ADV 2025 (thousands)	ADV 2024	Change
Interest rates	14,203	13,716	+4%
Equity indexes	7,410	6,847	+8%
Energy	2,695	2,488	+8%
Agricultural commodities	1,853	1,711	+8%
Metals	988	736	+34%
Foreign exchange	980	1,030	-5%
Total	28,129	26,528	+6%

Within those totals, the 10-K lists 10-Year Treasury note futures and options at 3.224 million a day, E-mini S&P 500 futures and options at 4.119 million, SOFR futures expiring within two years at 2.888 million, WTI crude oil at 1.186 million and gold at 683,000 (up 58%). The interest rate complex, covered in interest rate futures explained, is half of all CME volume.

Worked example: revenue per contract

The headline rate

CME reports futures and options clearing and transaction fees of $4,913.0 million on 7,060.4 million contracts:

$4,913.0m / 7,060.4m = $0.696 per contract

That matches the “average rate per contract” of 0.696 in the 10-K. In 2024 it was $4,623.3m / 6,685.0m = $0.692. CME counts volume in round turns, which it defines as “a completed transaction that involves a purchase and an offsetting sale,” so the rate is what the exchange collects for the matched trade as a whole, not per side.

Volume versus price

Fees rose by $289.7 million. CME’s own decomposition: $261.2 million from higher volume and $28.5 million from a higher average rate, which it attributes to a fee increase effective February 1, 2025 and a shift in product mix, partly offset by bigger volume discounts. In other words, about 90% of the growth was more contracts, about 10% was price.

By asset class

CME discloses fees by asset class in its revenue note and ADV by asset class in its MD&A. Dividing one by the other gives an implied rate. The year had 7,060.4 / 28.129 = 251 trading days.

Asset class	2025 fees ($m)	Contracts traded (m)	Implied revenue per contract	Share of F&O fees	Share of volume
Interest rates	1,719.6	3,565.0	$0.48	35.0%	50.5%
Equity indexes	1,170.4	1,859.9	$0.63	23.8%	26.3%
Foreign exchange	197.0	246.0	$0.80	4.0%	3.5%
Energy	813.2	676.4	$1.20	16.6%	9.6%
Agricultural	658.1	465.1	$1.42	13.4%	6.6%
Metals	354.7	248.0	$1.43	7.2%	3.5%
Total	4,913.0	7,060.4	$0.70	100%	100%

These are averages across futures and options, members and non-members, and all volume tiers; individual fees in CME’s published schedules differ. The pattern is clear, though: interest rate contracts, traded in huge size by professionals at discounted member rates, earn less than half what a commodity contract earns. A shift of volume toward rates lowers the average rate even if no fee changes, which is why CME reports “product mix” as a driver.

Rates move even when fee schedules barely do

Running the same calculation on CME’s 2024 figures (6,685.0 million contracts over 252 trading days) shows how mix and volume tiers shift the realised rate from year to year:

Asset class	Implied rate 2024	Implied rate 2025	Change in rate	Change in ADV	Change in fees
Interest rates	$0.480	$0.482	+0.5%	+3.6%	+3.6%
Equity indexes	$0.635	$0.629	-0.9%	+8.2%	+6.9%
Foreign exchange	$0.765	$0.801	+4.7%	-4.9%	-0.8%
Energy	$1.277	$1.202	-5.8%	+8.3%	+1.6%
Agricultural	$1.357	$1.415	+4.3%	+8.3%	+12.5%
Metals	$1.533	$1.430	-6.7%	+34.2%	+24.8%

Metals is the clearest case. Volume rose 34%, with gold futures and options up 58%, which CME’s 10-K attributes to safe-haven demand and “additional use of our metal products by our retail client base.” Fees rose a smaller 24.8%, so the realised rate fell 6.7%, consistent with CME’s general explanation that volume-based incentives and product mix pull the average down as activity grows. The table is derived arithmetic, not a figure CME publishes, but it shows why analysts model exchanges on both volume and rate, never volume alone.

What a single trading desk pays

An illustrative desk trades 2,000 CME interest rate contracts a day for a year. At the implied average of $0.482, that is 2,000 x 251 x $0.482 = about $242,000 in exchange fees for the year. At CME’s all-product average of $0.696, it would be about $349,000. Brokerage commissions and clearing firm charges are extra and are not CME revenue (see how futures commission merchants work).

The non-futures fee lines

Two smaller pieces of CME’s clearing and transaction fees come from outside listed futures. The cash markets business earned $283.7 million in 2025: $151.1 million of BrokerTec fixed income transaction fees and $132.6 million of EBS foreign exchange fees. These platforms match trades in US Treasuries, repo and spot FX, and the 10-K reports average daily notional of $365.7 billion in US repo, $96.6 billion in US Treasuries and $63.8 billion in spot FX. CME charges a transaction fee “generally based on volume or notional value” but, for most of this business, is “not involved in the settlement of the contract.” Cleared interest rate swaps added $84.4 million. Together these are about 7% of clearing and transaction fees.

The clearing house balance sheet: interest on collateral

At December 31, 2025, CME’s balance sheet carried $159.7 billion of “performance bonds and guaranty fund contributions,” up from $98.9 billion a year earlier. That is the margin and default fund cash posted by clearing firms, offset by an equal liability.

CME invests the cash and shares the income. The 10-K reports earnings on cash performance bonds and guaranty fund contributions of $5,253.6 million in 2025, and expenses for the “distribution of interest earned on performance bond collateral reinvestments to the clearing firms” of $4,842.5 million. Netting the two:

$5,253.6m - $4,842.5m = $411.1 million, compared with $274.4 million in 2024

That is equivalent to about 10% of CME’s operating income, though CME reports both pieces below the operating line, in non-operating income and expense. It is sensitive to the level of short-term interest rates and to how much cash, rather than securities, members post. It also explains why a clearing house’s collateral policies are a business decision as well as a risk decision (see how clearing houses work).

Costs: why margins are so high

CME’s 2025 operating expenses were $2,291.1 million, up 4% while revenue rose 6%. The 10-K says “the majority of our expenses do not vary directly with changes in our contract volume.” The main exception is licensing and other fee agreements ($371.0 million), which includes license fees paid on equity index volume, royalties and broker rebates in energy and metals, and revenue sharing. Index licensing has a twist: CME owns 27% of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC, so part of what it pays to license S&P 500 products comes back as equity earnings.

The operating leverage is visible in the 10-K’s non-GAAP figures and the GAAP margin alike: an extra contract costs almost nothing to match and clear, so incremental volume falls mostly to profit.

Where the money goes

Exchanges with this kind of margin generate far more cash than they need to reinvest. CME’s operating cash flow was $4,277.1 million in 2025, and its fourth-quarter release says it paid dividends of about $3.9 billion during the year and has returned “nearly $30 billion” to shareholders in dividends since adopting a variable dividend policy in early 2012. The same release lists CME’s next growth bets as US Treasury clearing, 24/7 cryptocurrency trading and prediction markets, each an attempt to add volume to the same largely fixed cost base.

ICE: a different mix

Intercontinental Exchange is organised in three segments, and futures are only part of it. From ICE’s 2025 10-K (dollars in millions), revenues less transaction-based expenses:

Segment	2025	2024	Share of 2025
Exchanges	$5,411	$4,959	54.5%
Fixed Income and Data Services	$2,419	$2,298	24.4%
Mortgage Technology	$2,101	$2,022	21.2%
Total	$9,931	$9,279	100%

The Exchanges segment includes the NYSE as well as ICE’s futures exchanges and clearing houses. Transaction-based expenses ($2,709 million in that segment) are mostly rebates and fees in the cash equities and options business. Within the segment, futures and options revenue was $3,023 million, up 12%, or about 30% of ICE’s consolidated net revenue.

ICE futures volume and revenue per contract

Futures and options	Contracts traded 2025 (m)	ADV 2025 (thousands)	Revenue ($m)	Rate per contract (10-K)	Computed
Energy	1,256	5,003	2,182	$1.74	$1.737
Agricultural and metals	106	423	233	$2.19	$2.198
Financial	983	3,835	608	$0.61	$0.619
Total	2,345	9,261	3,023		$1.289

ICE’s reported rates differ slightly from these simple quotients, which use rounded totals. Energy is the engine: the Brent crude contract and its related network of “over 800 related crude and refined oil products,” plus natural gas, power and environmental contracts, produced 72% of ICE’s futures and options revenue. Open interest across ICE futures and options reached 102.7 million contracts at year-end 2025, up 17%.

The comparison

CME traded about three times ICE’s futures and options volume in 2025 but earned only about 1.6 times its futures and options fees, because ICE’s mix is weighted toward energy and softs, which carry higher per-contract rates than CME’s interest rate business. ICE’s Exchanges segment ran a 73.6% operating margin on net revenue, but its consolidated margin was 49.6%, diluted by the mortgage technology business and by amortisation from acquisitions. ICE reports data in two places: $1,031 million of exchange data and connectivity in the Exchanges segment, and $1,234 million of fixed income data and analytics plus $722 million of data and network technology in Fixed Income and Data Services. ICE also books net interest on certain clearing margin deposits inside “OTC and other” revenue, rather than below the operating line as CME does, so the two companies’ collateral income is not directly comparable.

What can go wrong for the business model

Volume is cyclical. Revenue tracks activity, and activity tracks uncertainty. A calm year, with steady rates and low volatility, lowers volume without lowering fixed costs.
Fee pressure and mix. Large customers negotiate volume tiers, and competition from other venues caps fees. CME’s 2025 rate rose only 0.4 cents despite a list price increase.
Customer concentration. One clearing firm accounted for 12% of CME’s clearing and transaction fees in 2025. CME argues customer business would move to another clearing firm if that firm left, but the dependence on a small number of large FCMs is structural.
Interest rate sensitivity. Net collateral income rises and falls with short-term rates and with members’ choice between cash and securities.
Product concentration. Interest rates were 35% of CME’s futures and options fees. Any structural change in how Treasury and SOFR risk is traded or cleared would show up directly in revenue.
Index licences. Equity index products depend on licensing agreements; license costs and terms affect margins on some of the most active contracts.

The short version

Futures exchanges earn a fee on each contract traded and cleared, sell market data by the screen, charge for connectivity, and keep part of the interest on collateral. In 2025 CME Group earned $6.52 billion, 81% from clearing and transaction fees and 12% from market data, on a record 28.1 million contracts a day at an average of $0.696 per contract; about 90% of its fee growth came from volume. Implied rates ran from about 48 cents for interest rate contracts to over $1.40 for agricultural and metals contracts. CME’s clearing house held $159.7 billion of performance bonds and guaranty funds and kept a net $411 million of the interest earned on them. ICE earned $3.0 billion from futures and options at about $1.29 per contract, driven by energy, inside a broader exchange, data and mortgage technology business. Because costs are largely fixed, volatility and volume are what make exchange margins high. Figures are for fiscal year 2025 as reported in each company’s 10-K; this is not investment advice about either company.