Kalshi WebSocket
As of September 11, 2026, Kalshi WS connect to snapshot is 5.0 min at the median (p50, 24h window), with 5.0 min at p90 and 5.0 min at p99. Kalshi ranks #2 of 2 chains measured on this benchmark.
Kalshi's WebSocket API at wss://api.elections.kalshi.com/trade-api/ws/v2 requires RSA-PSS-SHA256 signed authentication headers (KALSHI-ACCESS-KEY, KALSHI-ACCESS-TIMESTAMP, KALSHI-ACCESS-SIGNATURE) and a US IP address. The us-east probe node connects with a keyed account and records connect-to-snapshot and inter-arrival metrics. The eu-west and sgp probe nodes return 403 even with valid credentials, so Kalshi's latency in the rank matrix reflects us-east only. Important: Kalshi's ticker channel does not push a market snapshot on subscribe — it sends incremental price updates only. The 'connect-to-snapshot' metric for Kalshi therefore measures how long after subscribing the next price change arrives, which is driven by market activity rather than connection speed. On an active market this is 10–60s; on a quiet market it can be several minutes. The inter-arrival panel is the more meaningful indicator of the feed's real-time responsiveness.
How Kalshi compares
Live p50 over the last 24 hours across every chain on this benchmark, ranked lowest first.
- #1Polymarket2.00 s
- #2Kalshi5.0 min
Methodology, charts and the full ledger live on the Polymarket WebSocket latency, live connection and update speed from 3 regions page. Raw data: JSON endpoint.