Use interactive brokers if you want a good price. Flat fee is higher but the trade routes are great.
That's FUD (and I'm an Interactive Brokers user). That sort of routing flashes your trade to groups before it hits the exchange, and they have the option to take it. By regulation they can only take it at or better than top of book price. If they don't take it, it will hit the exchange.
Look, Interactive Brokers is a great brokerage. Very usable software and API, best in class commissions and margin rates, and you get direct routing and their smart router works pretty good too from what I understand. But don't oversell it by bashing RH.
I actually assumed they were selling order flow. They have a ton of dumb money that many firms would die to interact with.
Also, for most people who trade 100-1000 shares it doesn't really matter.
Better to just pay a flat fee and get better routing.
IB doesn’t sell their order flow but they do take payment from dark pool operators & liquidity providers.