Polymarket alternatives: what to trade instead, and why 39 countries have to

Polymarket's help centre lists 39 countries where the platform is completely restricted. The United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Malta, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Singapore are all on it. So is the United States, on the international platform. Most people searching for a Polymarket alternative are not comparing features. They opened the site, found they could not place an order, and went looking for somewhere that would take it.

For sports, Pred is the best of them. Taker rate of 2.5% against Polymarket's 5% on sports, nothing charged to makers, thirteen football competitions, settlement in about three minutes rather than two hours, and no restriction on profitable accounts. The other venues are below, including the ones that solve a different problem than the one you probably have.

Every figure here comes from the venue's own published documentation. Sources are listed at the end.

Why people look for an alternative to Polymarket

1. Polymarket is shut in most of Western Europe

The Geographic Restrictions page in Polymarket's help centre gives the list in full. Alongside the sanctioned jurisdictions you would expect, it names Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Singapore, Slovakia, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. Four Canadian provinces are blocked separately: Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec.

Two details in that document are worth reading closely, because they change what you should do about it.

The page says 39 countries. The table underneath it has 40 rows. And Poland, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand appear both in the blocked table and again in the close-only section further down, which describes a softer restriction where you can exit an existing position but not open a new one. The two lists disagree with each other. Check what your own account can do in the app rather than trusting any list, including this one.

The restriction is enforced on physical location rather than residency, so a UK trader keeps access while abroad in an unrestricted country and loses it on landing at Heathrow. Polymarket's terms prohibit using a VPN to get around any of this, at section 2.1.4.

2. There are two Polymarkets, and they charge different rates

This is where most fee comparisons go wrong, including the ones that rank.

Polymarket US operates under CFTC registration and publishes a single exchange-wide schedule, effective 1 July 2026. Taker coefficient 0.06. Makers receive a rebate at 0.0125, credited at the point of the fill. Takers doing more than $250,000 a month get 10%, 25% or 50% of their fees back depending on tier.

The international platform prices by market category. Crypto sits at 0.07. Sports sits at 0.05. Geopolitics is free. Makers pay nothing and instead share a rebate pool, which on sports is 15% of the taker fees collected in that market, split between every maker in it.

So "Polymarket charges 6%" and "Polymarket charges 7%" are both wrong for sports, and so is "Polymarket is free." If you trade football, the number that applies to you is 0.05, and the maker rebate you have heard about is 15% of somebody else's fee, divided by however many other makers were quoting alongside you.

3. Settlement runs on a two-hour clock at best

Polymarket does not decide its own outcomes. Resolution goes through the UMA Optimistic Oracle: somebody proposes the result, posts a bond of around $750, and a challenge window opens. Polymarket's developer documentation publishes the timings.

The docs summarise it as roughly two hours for an undisputed resolution and four to six days for a disputed one. There is one more outcome in the table that rarely gets quoted: if the vote lands on Unknown, the market resolves 50/50 and every token redeems for 50 cents. You can read the result correctly, hold the winning side, and be paid half.

Polymarket's help centre also states that it cannot alter or reverse a resolution once UMA has finalised it. Immutability is the design goal and it is a real one. It also means the only route open to you, if you think a result is wrong, is to post $750 of your own money inside a two-hour window. On a $60 position that is not a remedy.

4. Sports is one shelf in a very large shop

Polymarket lists eleven fee-bearing categories: crypto, sports, finance, politics, economics, culture, weather, mentions, tech, general and geopolitics. Breadth is the product. If you trade a Fed decision on Wednesday and an election in March, that breadth is exactly what you want.

If you only trade football, you are competing for the roadmap against CPI prints, and the market depth on a Tuesday night Championship fixture reflects that.

The alternatives

Pred

A peer-to-peer sports prediction exchange built on Base and settling in USDC. Traders buy and sell contracts against each other on a shared order book. Pred runs the venue and never takes the other side of a position, which is also why it has no reason to care whether you win.

Coverage 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 further 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. Deposits work in fiat or crypto, so no wallet is required to start.

Against Polymarket the trade is straightforward. You give up politics, crypto and everything else. You get half the sports taker rate, forty times faster settlement, and access from the countries on that list of 39.

Kalshi

The closest structural match if breadth is what you are after, and a worse answer if geography is the problem. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated designated contract market with twelve categories and a comparable range to Polymarket's.

Section VI of its Member Agreement names 55 restricted jurisdictions, and the overlap with Polymarket's list is heavy: the UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand appear on both. Its taker coefficient is 0.07, the highest of the major venues, and its help centre says most markets settle within a few hours of the outcome being known.

We have a longer piece on Kalshi alternatives covering what its Member Agreement discloses.

Betfair Exchange

Licensed in the UK and Ireland, which puts it in a category of one for readers Polymarket has blocked. Deep football liquidity, twenty-five years of it, and no crypto anywhere near the flow.

The catch is written into Betfair's own charges page. Commission runs on net winnings at a market base rate, and above that sits the Expert Fee, which replaced the Premium Charge in January 2025. Once your gross profit over the last 52 active weeks passes £25,000, Betfair tops your fees up to 20% of weekly gross profit. Above £100,000 the rate is 40%. Betfair states that fewer than 0.5% of customers are affected and that the calculation kicks in after 100 markets.

A venue that raises your rate as you get better at it is solving a different problem from the one Polymarket users have. Our Betfair alternatives piece goes through the exchange field on that specific question.

ProphetX, Novig and Sporttrade

Three US sports exchanges, each with real merits and none of them available outside the United States. ProphetX is dual registered as a designated contract market and clearing organisation and quotes an average match time of 0.4 seconds. Novig runs a no-commission model for retail with fees charged to institutional makers instead. Sporttrade licenses state by state, which gives it the narrowest footprint of the three.

If Polymarket blocked you because you live in Manchester, Dublin or Melbourne, none of these help.

Robinhood and Crypto.com

Both list sports event contracts through registered venues, both are US-facing, and both lost their Ninth Circuit appeals alongside Kalshi on 28 August 2026. Same geography problem, plus an unsettled legal one.

What each one charges on a sports position

Taker fee on 1,000 contracts, calculated from each venue's published coefficient. All three use the same equation: fee = coefficient × contracts × p × (1 − p), where p is the contract price in dollars.

As a share of stake at the most expensive point on the curve: Polymarket sports 2.50%, Polymarket US 3.00%, Pred 1.25%.

Two things this table leaves out, in both directions. Takers cross the spread as well as paying the fee, on every venue, so none of these is the total cost of a round trip. And Polymarket US pays back 10%, 25% or 50% of taker fees above $250,000, $1m and $10m of monthly volume. At the top tier a Polymarket US taker's effective coefficient is 0.03, still above Pred's 0.025, and that tier requires ten million dollars a month.

The maker rebate is funded by the taker

Polymarket US pays makers a flat 0.0125 rebate at the fill. That is a genuine edge over a zero fee, and a market maker running size on Polymarket US is better off than one on Pred. Anybody comparing the two should know that.

Sports on the international platform works differently, and the difference gets lost in most write-ups. Makers there pay nothing and receive a share of a pool worth 15% of the taker fees collected in that market, split by how much of your resting liquidity was taken. Your ceiling is the whole pool. So the best possible outcome on Polymarket sports, if you were somehow the only maker in the book, is 15% of 0.05, or an effective 0.0075. With other makers quoting alongside you it is a fraction of that.

Pred charges makers nothing and funds maker rewards from the exchange rather than by redistributing what takers were charged. Two different philosophies, and the second one does not require a taker to lose for a maker to be paid.

How long your money is tied up

That gap decides how many positions you can run across a Saturday. On a two-hour cycle the capital committed to the 12:30 kick-off is still committed when the 17:30 starts, and if a proposal is disputed on Saturday afternoon you may not see it back until Thursday. On a three-minute cycle you are into the next fixture before the pundits have finished.

Sport is unusual among prediction market subjects in that the answer is known instantly and publicly. Nobody needs 48 hours of deliberation to establish that Arsenal won 2-0. The reason Polymarket takes two hours is that its oracle is built to settle questions where the answer is contested, ambiguous or slow to publish, which describes almost every category it runs except this one. We wrote about why sports is two speed problems rather than one.

Which one to pick

You are in the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Australia or New Zealand. Pred, or Betfair if you want a licensed UK operator and are comfortable with the Expert Fee once you start winning. Kalshi restricts most of the same countries. The US exchanges 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. Pred, at 0.025 against Polymarket's 0.05 on sports and 0.06 on Polymarket US.

You post limit orders and run size. Polymarket US, if you can access it. A flat 0.0125 rebate paid at the fill beats a zero fee, and it beats a 15% share of a pool.

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

You want to trade the Fed, the Oscars and the Champions League in one session. Polymarket, if it is open where you are. Pred is a sports exchange and will not list CPI.

FAQ

What is the best Polymarket alternative? For sports, Pred. It charges takers 2.5% against Polymarket's 5% on sports markets, charges makers nothing, covers thirteen football competitions, settles in about three minutes rather than about two hours, and trades from the countries Polymarket's help centre blocks.

Is Polymarket available in the UK? No. The United Kingdom appears in the completely restricted table on Polymarket's Geographic Restrictions page. Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Malta are on the same list.

Is Polymarket available in Australia, New Zealand or Canada? Australia and New Zealand are both on the restricted list. Canada is partially blocked: Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec are named individually, and the rest of the country is not.

How much does Polymarket charge on sports? The international platform applies a taker coefficient of 0.05 to sports markets. Makers pay nothing and share a pool equal to 15% of collected taker fees in that market. Polymarket US runs a separate schedule with a 0.06 taker coefficient and a 0.0125 maker rebate, effective 1 July 2026.

How long does Polymarket take to resolve a market? Around two hours after an outcome is proposed, if nobody disputes it. Polymarket's developer documentation puts a disputed resolution at four to six days, covering a 24 to 48 hour debate period and a UMA token holder vote of around 48 hours.

Can a Polymarket market resolve against the actual result? Resolution follows the market's written rules rather than the event, and a UMA vote can return Unknown, in which case the market settles 50/50 and every token redeems at 50 cents. Polymarket states that it cannot alter or reverse a resolution once UMA has finalised it.

Do I need crypto to use a Polymarket alternative? Not on Pred, which accepts fiat and crypto deposits. Polymarket charges nothing to deposit or withdraw but notes in its own help centre that intermediaries such as Coinbase or MoonPay may charge their own fees, which is where the cost sits for anybody starting without USDC.

Which prediction market has the lowest fees for sports? Pred, at a coefficient of 0.025, against 0.05 on Polymarket's international sports markets, 0.06 on Polymarket US and 0.07 on Kalshi. On the maker side Pred charges nothing and pays maker rewards from the exchange.