How to Trade on PredictIt and Kalshi

To trade on either platform you open an account, verify your identity, deposit money, and buy contracts priced between 1 cent and 99 cents that pay out $1 if the event you picked happens and $0 if it does not. The core difference: Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated exchange that operates nationally but whose sports contracts are restricted or contested in a number of states, and which sets position limits per market rather than one account-wide cap. PredictIt operates under CFTC no-action relief with a per-market investment cap and a narrower, mostly political menu of questions.

Key takeaways

• A contract is a yes/no bet on a real-world event. It settles at $1 if you were right, $0 if you were wrong, so the price you pay reads like an implied probability (a 60c "Yes" price means the market prices the outcome at roughly 60 percent).
• Kalshi is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a Designated Contract Market. PredictIt runs under CFTC staff no-action relief granted for an academic research project, which is why it has tighter limits. Operational responsibility moved from Victoria University of Wellington to a US not-for-profit, the Prediction Market Research Consortium, under CFTC Letter 25-20 in July 2025.
• Both require identity verification (KYC) before you can trade. Neither is a crypto product: you fund with a bank transfer or debit card in US dollars.
• Kalshi charges a trading fee that peaks when a contract trades near 50 cents. PredictIt charges 10 percent on your profit plus a 5 percent withdrawal fee.
• PredictIt caps how much you can invest per contract question. The cap was raised from $850 and is now tied to the federal individual campaign contribution limit, $3,500. Kalshi has no single account-wide cap; individual markets set their own limits.

What you are actually buying

Think of an election bet with a friend where you agree the loser pays the winner one dollar. A prediction-market contract formalizes that bet and makes it tradable. Each contract on Kalshi or PredictIt is a claim that resolves to $1 or $0 depending on a stated outcome, for example "Will the Federal Reserve cut rates in March?"

Because the payout is fixed at $1, the price behaves like a probability. If "Yes" trades at 70 cents, buyers are collectively pricing the event at about 70 percent likely. You profit by buying below where the outcome eventually settles, or by selling your contract before resolution to someone who values it higher. That is the whole engine.

Opening an account and placing your first trade

The mechanics are close to opening a brokerage account. On Kalshi you register, complete identity verification, and link a funding source. Kalshi's own documentation lays out how an order moves from placement to payout, which we walk through in how Kalshi works, from order to payout. The sequence on both platforms is the same:

1. Create an account and complete KYC (name, address, date of birth, and usually the last four digits of a Social Security number).
2. Fund the account. Both use US dollars via bank transfer or debit card, not tokens or wallets.
3. Pick a market, choose "Yes" or "No," set a price and quantity, and submit the order.
4. Wait for settlement, or sell your position early into the open market if the price has moved your way.

On PredictIt the flow is nearly identical, with two constraints to remember before you trade: the per-question investment cap, now $3,500 rather than the long-standing $850, and a menu of questions that is smaller and mostly political because of the terms of its regulatory exemption.

The fees, with real numbers

Fees are where the two platforms diverge sharply, and where new traders most often misjudge their break-even. PredictIt is simple: it takes 10 percent of your net profit on a winning position and 5 percent of any amount you withdraw. Kalshi's fee is less intuitive because it is calculated from the contract price and quantity, and it peaks when the price sits near 50 cents.

The reason is arithmetic. Kalshi's trading fee scales with price times (one minus price), a product that is largest at 0.50 and shrinks toward either end. A contract at 90 cents or 10 cents carries a smaller fee than the same-size trade at 50 cents. We break the formula down in why Kalshi's cost peaks near 50 cents.

Here is a like-for-like comparison on a hypothetical order of 100 contracts, held to a winning settlement of $1 each. Kalshi figures below follow its published fee structure; treat them as illustrative rather than a live quote.

Two patterns matter. Kalshi's fee is a curve that maxes out mid-book, so a 50-50 toss-up is the most expensive place to trade. PredictIt's fee falls as the contract gets more expensive, because it is charged only on the profit, and a 90c contract has just 10c of upside to tax. The takeaways are opposite, which is why quoting a single "fee number" for prediction markets is misleading.

Why the two platforms live under different rules

This is the part outsiders most often get wrong. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated Designated Contract Market, the same category of registration used by futures exchanges. That standing is why Kalshi can list event contracts nationally and why its recent expansion into election markets has been litigated rather than quietly permitted. Whether these products count as regulated event contracts or as prohibited gaming has been contested state by state, which we cover in what the law says about Kalshi and gambling and, for one active flashpoint, whether Kalshi is legal in California.

PredictIt is different. It operates under CFTC staff no-action relief issued for an academic research project and is now run by the Prediction Market Research Consortium, which is the source of both its investment cap and its narrow question list. That relief was the subject of almost three years of litigation over whether the CFTC could withdraw it; PredictIt prevailed, and the CFTC amended the letter in July 2025. The practical result for a trader: PredictIt is smaller and more restricted by design, and Kalshi is the larger, more openly regulated venue.

Neither of these is legal or investment advice. The regulatory picture is genuinely unsettled and moves in court, so check the current terms on each operator's site before funding an account.

Reading the market from the outside

You do not have to trade to care about these prices. Newsrooms and researchers increasingly cite prediction-market odds as a real-time read on political and economic events, which raises a data question: how much of the price is set by how many participants? The two venue models answer it differently. On centrally operated venues like Kalshi and PredictIt, the operator publishes its own trade record. On crypto-based prediction markets the record sits onchain, meaning on a public blockchain ledger, and anyone can query it directly.

That open record is where a normalization problem appears. To reconstruct how a price formed, an analyst has to resolve every trade into consistent fields (market, outcome, price, size, wallet, timestamp) and follow the same wallet across markets. Allium normalizes onchain prediction-market records into that structure. For the underlying tables, Allium publishes prediction-market datasets, including a Kalshi trades schema.

Allium is a data layer, not a venue, broker, or exchange, and it does not offer trading advice. It is the read layer that lets an outsider check the numbers rather than take a headline odds figure on trust.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need cryptocurrency to trade on Kalshi or PredictIt?

No. Both are US-dollar platforms. You fund your account with a bank transfer or debit card, and payouts are in dollars. They are not crypto products and do not require a wallet. Some newer prediction markets, such as Polymarket, are crypto-based, but Kalshi and PredictIt are not.

What is the minimum amount I can trade?

On both platforms you can buy a single contract, so effectively you can start with as little as a few cents to a few dollars depending on the contract's price. PredictIt additionally caps how much you can invest per contract question, now $3,500, while Kalshi sets limits per market rather than a single account-wide cap.

How and when do I get paid?

A contract settles once the underlying event resolves. If you hold the winning side, each contract pays $1 and the money lands in your account balance; the losing side pays $0. You can also sell your position before resolution into the open market if the price has moved. Withdrawals go back to your linked funding source, and PredictIt charges a 5 percent withdrawal fee.

Is trading on Kalshi legal in my state?

Kalshi is registered with the CFTC as a national exchange, but several states have obtained court orders restricting its sports-outcome contracts, and federal appeals courts have split on whether those contracts are sports gambling. A petition asking the Supreme Court to resolve the split was filed in September 2026. Availability of specific markets differs by state and is changing. Check Kalshi's current terms and any state notices before you fund an account, and treat this as a description of the state of play rather than legal advice.

Why does Kalshi's fee peak near 50 cents?

Kalshi's trading fee scales with the contract price multiplied by one minus that price. That product is largest at 0.50 and shrinks toward both ends, so a trade at 50c carries the highest fee for a given size, while trades at 10c or 90c cost less. It is a mathematical property of the fee formula, not a surcharge on toss-up markets.

Can I see historical prices and trades before I commit?

Yes. Both platforms display order books and price history for active markets, and past resolved markets can be reviewed. For structured historical trade data suitable for analysis, Allium publishes prediction-market datasets including a Kalshi trades schema, which resolve trades into consistent fields like market, outcome, price and size.

Interested in learning more about Allium’s prediction market data? Speak to someone on the team.

Informational only. Not investment, legal, accounting or tax advice. Allium has commercial relationships with companies named in this post.