Kalshi alternatives: what to trade on instead, and why people switch

Three facts drive almost every search for a Kalshi alternative. Kalshi bars event contract trading from 55 named jurisdictions, including the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, India, France and Italy. Its published taker rate is 7% on the standard curve, the highest of the major venues. And its own help centre says most markets settle around three hours after the result is known.

For sports, Pred is the best of them. Lower taker rate, thirteen football competitions rather than a rotating tournament slate, resolution in about three minutes, and no restriction on profitable accounts. The other venues are covered below. They each fix one of those problems, and most of them are shut to the same countries Kalshi is.

Every figure below comes from the venue's own published schedule, agreement or help centre. Sources are listed at the end.

Why people look for an alternative to Kalshi

Four reasons, and they barely overlap.

1. Kalshi will not let you trade where you live

Section VI of the Kalshi Member Agreement names the jurisdictions where trading event contracts on the platform is prohibited:

Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Australia, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Côte d'Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, France, Haiti, Hungary, India, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Monaco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, North Korea, People's Republic of China, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Venezuela, Yemen, Zimbabwe.

That is 55 named jurisdictions, plus anywhere subject to US country-wide sanctions. Ireland and New Zealand were both added after Kalshi's October 2025 international launch, so older articles listing them as available are wrong.

One detail explains most of the confused forum posts. The restriction covers event contracts only. Kalshi's agreement says people in restricted jurisdictions may still hold membership, access the platform and trade products that are not event contracts. So you can create an account from London, look at the markets, and find you cannot place an order. That is the gap between "available in 143 countries" and being able to place an order.

2. The US legal position changed on 28 August 2026

On 6 April 2026 the Third Circuit ruled in Kalshi's favour against New Jersey, holding that sports event contracts are swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act and that federal law preempts state gaming law.

On 28 August 2026 the Ninth Circuit ruled the opposite way in KalshiEX, LLC v. Assad. A unanimous three-judge panel held that Kalshi's sports event contracts are likely not swaps, which puts them outside the CFTC's exclusive jurisdiction and inside the reach of Nevada's gaming regulators. Robinhood and Crypto.com lost their parallel appeals the same day.

New Jersey filed a petition with the Supreme Court days later. Until that resolves, the answer to "is Kalshi legal in my state" depends on which circuit you live in, and it can change.

None of this means Kalshi is going away. It does mean the nationwide availability that Kalshi built its marketing on is now contested, and that is a reasonable thing to want a backup for.

3. The fee

All three of the major venues now price on the same equation:

fee = base rate × contracts × p × (1 − p)

Where p is the contract price in dollars. The charge peaks at 50 cents, where the outcome is least certain, and falls away towards either extreme. The structure is identical everywhere. Only the coefficient differs, which reduces a comparison people write thousand-word posts about to one number each.

Kalshi's coefficient is 0.07. Polymarket US is 0.06. Pred is 0.025.

4. Kalshi is not a sports platform

Kalshi runs twelve market categories: elections, politics, culture, sports, crypto, commodities, climate, economics, mentions, finance, tech and science, plus trending. It added perpetual futures in 2026 with its own tiered fee schedule.

Sports is one shelf in a very large shop. If you only trade sports, you are paying attention costs for eleven categories you never open, and competing for the product team's roadmap against CPI markets and Fed decisions.

The alternatives

Pred

A peer-to-peer sports prediction exchange built on Base, settling in USDC. Users trade contracts against each other on a shared order book. Pred runs the venue and never takes the other side.

Sports coverage as of today: the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, the Bundesliga, Ligue 1, MLS, the Champions League, the Europa League, the EFL Championship, Süper Lig, Brasileiro Série A, Liga MX and Copa Libertadores, plus the NBA, WTA tennis, Formula 1 and awards markets. Moneyline, spreads and totals on every fixture, with more than twenty additional markets per match.

Taker base rate 2.5%, makers pay nothing. Execution in 200ms. Markets resolve in about three minutes once the official outcome is confirmed. Pred does not restrict, limit or close accounts for being profitable.

Football depth is where the difference against Kalshi shows up. Thirteen competitions, including the Championship, Liga MX, Süper Lig and Copa Libertadores, rather than a rotating slate built around the World Cup, the Champions League and the Premier League.

Polymarket

The closest structural match to Kalshi and the obvious swap if you want the same breadth. Order book, USDC settlement, huge market range across politics, sport, crypto and culture.

Polymarket now runs two venues. Polymarket US operates under CFTC registration after the QCEX acquisition, with a published taker coefficient of 0.06 and a maker rebate of 0.0125, effective 1 July 2026. The international platform prices by category, with sports at 0.05.

Polymarket pays makers a rebate funded out of taker fees, which sounds like an edge until you read the share. On sports the maker rebate pool dropped from 25% of collected fees to 15% when the sports coefficient moved from 0.03 to 0.05. Takers pay more, makers get a smaller cut of it. Pred charges makers nothing and runs a separate maker rewards programme funded by the exchange rather than by a slice of what takers were charged.

Polymarket is also restricted in the UK, France, Belgium, Australia and Singapore, among others. It is no answer at all if geography was your reason for leaving Kalshi.

ProphetX

A sports-only exchange holding US federal registration, dual registered as a designated contract market and a clearing organisation since June 2026. That registration is also what defines its perimeter: 49 states, Nevada excluded, and nowhere else on earth.

Charges 2% on net winnings per market on straight trades and nothing on combination trades, per its own commission page. That is a different base from everyone else: a rate on profit rather than a rate on every fill. If you win rarely and trade often, it works out cheaper. If you win consistently, it does not.

Its own site quotes an average match time of 0.4 seconds, twice Pred's 200ms. Coverage is built around the US leagues, and it is a US-only venue: if Kalshi's restricted jurisdictions list is why you are here, ProphetX does not help.

Novig

A peer-to-peer sports exchange registered with the CFTC, built on a no-commission model for retail with fees charged to institutional market makers instead. Available in most US states and nowhere outside them. Coverage centres on the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and college sport, with thin international markets.

Sporttrade

An exchange licensed state by state, presenting markets on a 0 to 100 price scale rather than in odds format. Licensing one state at a time gives it the narrowest footprint of anything on this page.

Robinhood and Crypto.com

Both list sports event contracts and both lost their Ninth Circuit appeals alongside Kalshi on 28 August 2026. If your reason for leaving Kalshi is the state-law fight, neither solves it.

What a US registration actually buys you

Federal registration gets treated as a quality rating in most write-ups. It is a jurisdictional perimeter.

Every registered venue above is US-only or close to it, and the registration is the reason. Kalshi's 55 restricted jurisdictions exist because of the framework it operates under, not in spite of it. ProphetX and Novig never left the United States at all. If you are reading this from outside the US, a CFTC registration is not a benefit you are being offered. It is the wall you are standing on the wrong side of.

It did not hold up in court either. On 28 August the Ninth Circuit held that Kalshi's sports event contracts are likely not swaps, so the registration did not shield it from Nevada's regulators. Robinhood and Crypto.com lost the same argument the same day.

What protects a trader on an exchange is structural, and you can check all three of these yourself:

Who can take the other side of your position. Kalshi's Member Agreement discloses that an affiliate, Kalshi Trading LLC, is a member of the exchange. Pred has no affiliated trading entity and takes no position in any market it runs. Revenue comes from trading fees on matched orders.

Who decides the outcome. Kalshi's help centre says a market settles once its markets team finalises the result, which is why the typical wait is about three hours. Pred settles on-chain in USDC on Base, in about three minutes.

Whether winning costs you access. Kalshi reserves the right, at its sole and absolute discretion, to suspend or revoke membership and platform access. Pred does not restrict, limit or close accounts for profitability, and cannot benefit from doing so, because it never holds the losing side.

What each one charges

Taker fee on 1,000 contracts, calculated from each venue's published coefficient.

As a share of stake at the most expensive point on the curve: Kalshi 3.50%, Polymarket 3.00%, Pred 1.25%.

Two things this table does not show. Takers pay the spread as well as the fee, on every venue. And Polymarket runs volume-tiered taker rebates of 10%, 25% and 50% for accounts trading above $250,000, $1m and $10m a month. At the top tier a Polymarket taker's effective coefficient is 0.03, which is still above Pred's 0.025.

The maker fee nobody mentions

Kalshi's schedule sets a default maker multiplier of zero, which is why most write-ups report Kalshi maker fees as effectively nothing.

Read the non-standard fee table and that changes. Every sports series listed there carries a maker multiplier of 1: the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, NCAA football, PGA, WNBA, WTA, ATP, La Liga, the Champions League, World Cup matches, March Madness. Combination markets carry a maker multiplier of 2.

So on Kalshi sports specifically, a maker pays 0.0175 × contracts × p × (1 − p). On 1,000 contracts at 50 cents that is $4.38 for posting liquidity that someone else took. Polymarket would pay you $3.12 for the same fill. Pred charges nothing.

How long until your money comes back

Kalshi's own help centre, updated 12 April 2026, says a market settles once the official outcome is confirmed and its markets team finalises the result. Most markets settle within a few hours of the outcome being known, often around three hours, and longer when a source agency is slow to publish. Kalshi's guidance is to contact support if a standard market has not updated roughly twelve hours after the event ended.

Pred resolves in about three minutes once the official outcome is confirmed.

That gap decides how many positions you can run across a Saturday card. On a three-hour cycle, the stake tied up in the 12:30 kick-off is still tied up when the 17:30 starts.

What Kalshi's own agreement discloses

The Member Agreement is a more useful document than any review of it, and four things in it rarely make the round-ups.

An affiliate of Kalshi is a member of the exchange. Section VII discloses that Kalshi's board approved Kalshi Trading LLC, an affiliate, as a member under Rule 2.12. Whatever that entity does or does not do, the structural question of a house-connected participant in the book is one Kalshi has answered in writing and most traders have never read. Pred has no affiliated trading entity and takes no position in any market it operates.

Market makers are disclosed as advantaged. Section VII sets out that Kalshi's market makers can receive fee discounts, fee rebates and revenue share from fees, and can get order protections and greater throughput to the exchange that other members do not get. The agreement states plainly that these tools "may give market makers a trading advantage over members who are not market makers".

Quoted liquidity is not guaranteed outside required hours. The same section says market makers are obliged to hold a maximum spread and a minimum depth only during specific times, and that pricing and liquidity outside those windows may be worse. If you trade a Tuesday night fixture rather than a Sunday headline, that clause is about you.

Your balance can be invested without notice. Section VIII states that cash and property in a member account may be invested by Kalshi, without notice, consistent with CFTC regulations. Liability is separately capped at the lesser of the purchase price of the position in dispute or your total deposits.

Then there are the withdrawal mechanics. Funds deposited by ACH can only be withdrawn back to the originating account for 90 days. Wire withdrawals are not supported below $500,000. Card deposits carry up to 2%, and Kalshi reserves the right to charge between 0% and 2% on any rail at its discretion.

None of this is hidden. It is all in documents Kalshi publishes. It is simply that nobody writing "best prediction market apps" listicles has opened them.

Which one to pick

You are outside the US. Pred. Kalshi is closed to you in any of the 55 restricted jurisdictions and Polymarket restricts an overlapping list. ProphetX, Novig and Sporttrade are US-only.

You trade football seriously. Pred. Thirteen competitions, including the second tiers and South American cups the general venues list only around major tournaments.

You take liquidity rather than provide it. Pred, on rate. 0.025 against Polymarket's 0.06 and Kalshi's 0.07.

You post limit orders. Pred. Zero maker fee, plus maker rewards paid by the exchange, against Kalshi charging makers 1.75% on sports and Polymarket paying a rebate out of a shrinking sports pool.

You want your capital back inside the same match day. Pred, at roughly three minutes against Kalshi's roughly three hours.

You want to trade a Fed decision and an NFL game in the same session. Kalshi or Polymarket. Pred is a sports exchange and will not list CPI.

FAQ

What is the best Kalshi alternative? Pred. It charges takers 2.5% against Kalshi's 7%, charges makers nothing against Kalshi's 1.75% on sports, covers thirteen football competitions, resolves markets in about three minutes rather than about three hours, and trades from the countries Kalshi's Member Agreement shuts out.

Is Kalshi available in the UK? No. The United Kingdom is a Restricted Jurisdiction under Section VI of the Kalshi Member Agreement. You may be able to create an account, but you cannot trade event contracts.

Is Kalshi available in Canada, Australia, Ireland or India? No. All four are named Restricted Jurisdictions in the Member Agreement.

Which prediction market has the lowest fees? Pred, at a coefficient of 0.025 against Polymarket US at 0.06 and Kalshi at 0.07. On the maker side Pred charges nothing and pays maker rewards from the exchange, Kalshi charges 1.75% on its sports series, and Polymarket pays a rebate carved out of what it charged takers.

Which Kalshi alternatives work outside the US? Pred. ProphetX, Novig and Sporttrade are US-only. Polymarket restricts the UK, France, Belgium, Australia and Singapore among others, which overlaps heavily with Kalshi's own list.

Does a CFTC registration make a platform safer? It defines where a platform may operate rather than how it treats you. The registered venues on this page are US-only or nearly so, and on 28 August 2026 the Ninth Circuit held that Kalshi's sports contracts likely fall outside the CFTC's exclusive jurisdiction anyway. What decides your experience is structural: whether the operator or an affiliate can take the other side, who determines the outcome, and whether you can be restricted for winning.

Why did Kalshi lose the Ninth Circuit case? The panel held that Kalshi's sports event contracts are likely not swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act, which means they fall outside the CFTC's exclusive jurisdiction and within the reach of state gaming regulators. The Third Circuit reached the opposite conclusion in April, creating a split that New Jersey has asked the Supreme Court to resolve.

How long does Kalshi take to settle a market? Kalshi's help centre says most markets settle within a few hours of the outcome being known, often around three hours, with longer waits when official data is delayed.

Can Kalshi restrict or close my account? Its Member Agreement reserves the right, at Kalshi's sole and absolute discretion, to grant, deny, condition, suspend or revoke membership or platform access for any person, and states separately that a member's status may be limited, conditioned, restricted or terminated under the Rulebook. Pred applies no restriction based on profitability.