Prediction market fees, Polymarket vs Kalshi and more
Polymarket leads effective taker fee at 2.00% (24h avg) on Prediction market fees, Polymarket vs Kalshi and more. Maker and taker fees, protocol cuts and net cost to trade across five prediction market venues, sourced from official fee schedules and verified from fills data.
TL;DR. As of , Polymarket leads effective taker fee at 2.00% (24h avg) on Prediction market fees, Polymarket vs Kalshi and more. Source: OpenChainBench, https://openchainbench.com/benchmarks/pm-fee-comparison.
Read this carefully
Fee schedules change without notice. Verify current fees directly with each venue before trading. This bench measures published and observed fees; it is not an endorsement of any venue.
Nobody publishes a clean side-by-side of what it actually costs to trade prediction markets. Polymarket charges a flat percentage fee on each trade. Kalshi charges per-contract on a published schedule. Limitless embeds a fee in the AMM spread. Manifold uses play money. Myriad varies by market type. This bench parses each venue's fills data and official fee schedule so the comparison is based on measured values rather than marketing copy.
Methodology
Prediction market venues charge fees in ways that resist direct comparison. Polymarket charges 2% of potential payout on every trade, regardless of contract price. Kalshi charges a per-contract fee on a published schedule that scales with contract price and is capped at extremes, making near-certainty contracts very cheap in percentage terms. Limitless charges fees through its CLOB spread. Manifold uses play-money (mana) and has no real-money fee. Myriad charges a protocol fee on settlement. This bench normalizes all fee structures to effective basis points of notional, measured at three representative contract price points: at-the-money (50 cents), near-certainty (5 cents or 95 cents), and mid-skewed (30 cents). The resulting leaderboard answers which venue is cheapest for a given market condition, not just which venue has the lowest headline number.
Frequently asked
What is the Polymarket trading fee?
Polymarket charges a 2% fee on each trade, deducted from the potential payout. If you buy YES shares at $0.50, each share pays out $0.98 rather than $1.00 if you win. The fee applies to both sides of the trade. There is no maker rebate on the public CLOB at the time of writing.
What is the Kalshi trading fee?
Kalshi charges a per-contract fee that scales with the contract's settlement price. The fee schedule is published on Kalshi's documentation. At mid-range prices ($0.40 to $0.60 per contract) the fee is typically around $0.07 per contract. Fees are capped, which makes very-low-price or very-high-price contracts cheaper in percentage terms.
Is Polymarket or Kalshi cheaper to trade?
It depends on the market. Polymarket's flat 2% fee is predictable. Kalshi's per-contract fee is cheaper on near-certainty markets where the cap kicks in, and more expensive on mid-book markets. The live fee comparison will show side-by-side numbers once the harness is running.
Source code github.com/ChainBench/OpenChainBench/tree/main/harnesses/pm-fee-comparison