Prediction Market Platforms Compared: Fees & Access

Kalshi is the most accessible choice for US residents (bank deposit, CFTC oversight), Polymarket offers the deepest liquidity for non-US traders willing to use crypto, and Metaculus is the free, no-money alternative for pure forecasting. The right platform depends on your location, funding method, and whether liquidity or regulatory protection matters more.

Which Prediction Market Platforms Exist Today?

The prediction market landscape splits into three categories: regulated real-money exchanges, blockchain-based platforms, and community forecasting systems. Each model attracts a different user base and carries a different risk profile. The right choice depends on your regulatory jurisdiction, risk tolerance, and what you want to predict.

Real-money exchanges like Kalshi and Robinhood operate under federal oversight with standard bank deposits. Blockchain platforms like Polymarket use cryptocurrency infrastructure and settle in USDC. Community platforms like Metaculus use no real money at all, relying on reputation scores instead. See our platforms hub for individual sign-up guides.

How Do the Major Platforms Compare?

The five platforms below split along three lines: regulation (CFTC-regulated vs. offshore vs. no real money), deposit method (bank vs. crypto), and fee model (per-contract vs. percentage of winnings vs. free). Kalshi and Robinhood need no crypto knowledge; Polymarket requires a funded wallet.

Kalshi and Polymarket dominate volume. Kalshi handles the regulated US market while Polymarket leads in global crypto-native trading. Metaculus occupies a distinct niche: no money changes hands, but its forecaster community has produced strong calibration results in academic evaluations. For a head-to-head breakdown of the two volume leaders, see our Polymarket vs Kalshi comparison and Kalshi vs Robinhood comparison.

How Do Prediction Market Fees Compare?

Fee structures vary by model, not just by rate. Kalshi charges a per-contract fee on both entry and exit, typically 1 to 2 cents on a $1 settlement. Polymarket charges roughly 2% of net winnings at settlement, so losing trades cost nothing beyond the contract price. Metaculus is free; Robinhood hasn’t published a confirmed fee schedule for event contracts.

A $100 position on Kalshi costs roughly $1-2 in explicit fees regardless of the contract price. The same trade on Polymarket costs nothing if it loses, and roughly 2% of the profit if it wins — cheaper on high-probability contracts with thin margins, more expensive on low-probability, high-payout trades where the profit is large. Our prediction market fees guide walks through worked examples at different contract prices.

Effective trading cost is fees plus spread, and spread can matter more than the headline rate on thin markets. Model your exact cost before entering a position with the fee calculator, and check the live dashboard for current spread data across platforms.

Fee figures last verified July 18, 2026 against each platform’s published terms and our fee-calculator dataset. Confirm current rates in-app before trading, since fee schedules can change without notice.

What Types of Markets Does Each Platform Offer?

Kalshi has expanded aggressively into political event contracts following its CFTC legal victory, and also covers economics (Fed rate decisions, GDP, inflation), climate events, and technology milestones. Polymarket offers the broadest selection globally, including categories that regulated US platforms cannot list.

Metaculus specializes in long-horizon scientific and technological questions — think AI benchmark timelines, space exploration milestones, and geopolitical scenarios over multi-year windows. These are questions real-money platforms rarely list because capital lockup makes long-duration contracts unattractive. Our politics and economics category guides cover what’s tradable on each regulated platform in more depth.

Robinhood and Gemini offer narrower selections. Their strength is distribution to existing user bases rather than market breadth.

How Does Regulatory Status Affect Your Choice?

Regulation is the single biggest differentiator. Kalshi and Robinhood operate under CFTC oversight with segregated customer funds and regulatory reporting requirements. If either platform fails, your funds carry the same protections as any regulated derivatives exchange — unlike offshore platforms, which offer no equivalent backstop.

Polymarket operates offshore. The platform settled with the CFTC in January 2022 over an unregistered-trading-facility charge and has since geo-blocked US IP addresses from real-money trading. It remains widely used internationally and maintains deep liquidity, but US users have no regulatory recourse if something goes wrong.

For US residents prioritizing regulatory certainty, Kalshi and Robinhood are the clear choices — though “certainty” is relative. Whether federal CFTC status overrides state gambling law is being actively litigated, with different outcomes in different courts, and Minnesota has gone further by banning prediction markets generally, pending a federal court challenge. See our Minnesota ban explainer and state-by-state legal tracker for current status. For users outside the US or those comfortable with crypto custody, Polymarket offers the deepest liquidity on many high-profile markets. Before funding any real-money account, review our responsible gambling resources.

Legal status last verified July 18, 2026.

How Does Platform Choice Affect Accuracy?

Our dataset tracks resolution data across platforms for the same events. Early results indicate that higher-liquidity platforms tend to converge on accurate prices faster, since more capital competing for a contract narrows the bid-ask spread and pulls the price toward true probability.

Metaculus presents an interesting counterpoint: despite using no real money, its community forecasting often matches or exceeds the accuracy of real-money markets on questions where both offer predictions. The academic literature attributes this to Metaculus’s strong forecaster community and reputation incentives.

We publish cross-platform accuracy comparisons on the Odds Reference dashboard as our dataset grows.

Key Takeaways

• Kalshi is the default for US residents who want regulatory protection and bank deposits
• Polymarket charges ~2% of net winnings and offers the deepest global liquidity, but operates outside US regulatory frameworks and geo-blocks US traders
• Metaculus provides strong forecasting accuracy without requiring any money
• Robinhood brings prediction markets to mainstream brokerage users, though its event-contract fee schedule isn’t fully published — verify current terms before trading
• Effective costs (fees plus spread) matter more than headline fee rates — always check liquidity, and use the fee calculator before sizing a position