Kalshi review: fees, legal status, referral terms and who it suits

Verdict: Kalshi has the longest record of the dedicated prediction-market exchanges we review. It has been CFTC-designated since November 2020, it lists contracts well beyond sports (politics, economics, weather, culture and crypto), and its help center documents more ways to deposit and withdraw than any rival we cover. It suits people who want one direct exchange account for several kinds of contract and who are comfortable with a fee that rises and falls with price. It is a weaker fit if you live where its sports contracts are blocked, if you mostly buy contracts near 50¢ (where its fee peaks), or if you need confidence that today’s availability will hold next month. Kalshi is the lead defendant in the state-law fight over sports contracts.

This is a documentary review based on Kalshi’s help center, CFTC records and court filings, all checked on October 4, 2026. We have not opened an account or moved money, and we do not assign a score.

Kalshi at a glance

Operator

KalshiEX LLC

Launched

Founded 2018; designated a CFTC contract market Nov 3, 2020; public launch 2021

Regulatory status

CFTC-designated contract market (DCM)

Availability

Available to US residents, but sports and other contracts are blocked or limited by court order in some states.

Minimum age

18+

Not available in

MA, MI, NV, UT, WA

Structure

Direct exchange account (DCM); also reachable through several broker partners

Market categories

Sports, Politics, Economics, Weather, Culture, Crypto

Trading fees

Transaction fee based on expected earnings: about 0.07 × contracts × P × (1−P) for takers, rounded up to the cent. Maker fees apply on some markets.

Minimum deposit

$10 minimum for debit-card deposits (a 2% processing fee may apply)

Settlement

Contracts pay $1 per winning contract and $0 per losing contract. Outcomes are set from the source named in each market's rules.

Funding methods

Debit card, Apple Pay / Google Pay, Bank transfer (ACH), Wire, Crypto, PayPal, Venmo, Cash App

Withdrawal methods

Debit card, Bank transfer, Crypto, PayPal, Venmo

Mobile apps

iOS: Yes · Android: Yes

Facts last verified

October 4, 2026

Still being verified: Exact fee coefficients from the official PDF schedule; Current sports availability in Ohio and Tennessee after the Sep 25, 2026 6th Circuit ruling. We leave these out until we can confirm them with a primary source.

Who Kalshi is for, and who should skip it

Kalshi fits you if you want sports, politics, economics and weather contracts on a single CFTC-regulated exchange, you value funding through PayPal, Venmo, Cash App or a bank transfer, or you trade low- and high-priced contracts, where its fee curve is cheapest.

Consider skipping it if you live in Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Utah or Washington and mainly want sports. Robinhood and Coinbase customers can reach Kalshi-listed markets through those brokers instead. Kalshi also has no fixed cash welcome offer: its referral credits vary by account, expire after seven days, and only the profits from them can be withdrawn.

Company, ownership and history

Kalshi’s operating exchange is KalshiEX LLC. According to Kalshi, the company was founded in 2018. The CFTC lists KalshiEX as a designated contract market (DCM) from November 3, 2020, and Kalshi opened to the public in 2021.

Three moments shaped the product you see today:

• September 6, 2024: a federal district court in Washington, D.C. ruled for Kalshi against the CFTC over congressional-control contracts, which opened the door to election markets.
• January 2025: Kalshi began listing sports event contracts, a month after a competitor did, according to the 3rd Circuit’s opinion.
• 2026: trade press reported a $1 billion funding round at a $22 billion valuation (May) and record weekly trading volume in late September. Kalshi’s help center now has a page on perpetual-futures fees; reports date the Bitcoin and XRP perpetuals to May and June 2026 and say Kalshi asked the CFTC in September to allow margin trading. The funding, volume and margin items come from secondary reporting, not Kalshi or CFTC filings.

Kalshi markets also reach users through broker partners, including Robinhood, Webull, Coinbase and Interactive Brokers, so you can trade Kalshi-listed contracts without a Kalshi account. The broker then adds its own fees on top.

Regulation and legal status

Federally, Kalshi is a regulated exchange. A DCM is an exchange the CFTC has approved to list futures and other derivatives, and Kalshi self-certifies each contract with the CFTC before listing it. The CFTC under Chairman Michael Selig has sided with Kalshi, including an August 11, 2026 emergency order directing it to keep operating after New York sued.

At the state level, Kalshi’s sports contracts are contested. Many states argue that a contract paying out on a game result is a sports bet that needs a state license. The federal appeals courts have split:

Our news coverage explains the 9th Circuit’s Nevada decision and the 6th Circuit’s Ohio and Tennessee ruling. New Jersey has asked the Supreme Court to take the question (Flaherty v. KalshiEX, No. 26-299), with a response due November 9, 2026; we summarize the three pending Supreme Court petitions separately.

Kalshi also faces state suits, including New York’s July 31, 2026 action seeking at least $36 billion, a Massachusetts injunction, a Michigan injunction with fines of up to $500,000 a day for non-compliance, and a Utah federal-court loss in August 2026. Not every ruling has gone against it: on October 2, 2026 a federal judge partly blocked Illinois’s new licensing and criminal provisions as applied to Kalshi-listed contracts, while the challenge to the state’s tax continues. Our state-by-state prediction market tracker keeps the details current.

Where Kalshi is available

As of October 4, 2026, Kalshi accepts US residents aged 18 and over. Based on court orders and the CBS Sports state tracker, sports contracts are blocked or limited in:

• Massachusetts: state-court preliminary injunction, January 20, 2026.
• Michigan: temporary restraining order on June 29, 2026, then a preliminary injunction on September 1, 2026 requiring geofencing.
• Nevada: the 9th Circuit ruled against Kalshi and a state-court order requires geofencing; sports, election and entertainment contracts are not offered.
• Utah: a federal court held in August 2026 that state anti-gambling law applies.
• Washington: a King County injunction bars sports, election, entertainment and several other categories; financial, economic and climate contracts are not covered.

Ohio and Tennessee are unconfirmed. The 6th Circuit ruling removed Kalshi’s protection there, and reports conflict on whether Kalshi now blocks sports in those states. Kalshi does not publish a single official state list we could access, so its in-app location check is the final word.

Opening an account: what Kalshi’s terms require

Kalshi’s help center does not publish a screen-by-screen signup guide we could cite, so we list only the requirements that its documentation and the sources we track state:

• Eligibility: US residents aged 18 or over.
• Referral timing: a referral code must be entered at signup or within 72 hours, and before your first deposit. Add the code before you fund the account.
• First deposit: debit-card deposits start at $10 and may carry a 2% processing fee. Check the fee shown for other methods before you choose one.
• Location: state restrictions are applied by location, so the markets you see depend on where you are when you trade, not only where you live.

Offer and referral program

There is no public Kalshi promo code. What Kalshi offers is a referral program, described in its official referral FAQ (verified October 4, 2026):

• The credit amount is not fixed publicly. It depends on the program shown in your account’s Rewards section.
• The program is for US users only.
• The referral code must be entered at signup or within 72 hours, and before your first deposit.
• Credits must be used within 7 days.
• Only profits earned from the credits can be withdrawn, not the credits themselves.
• There is a lifetime cap on referral rewards.

Affiliate sites advertise Kalshi codes worth “$25–$60” or “up to $2,000”. Those are third-party claims; we found nothing in Kalshi’s official terms that confirms those amounts. Read the Kalshi referral program FAQ before relying on any figure, and compare it with other platforms on our prediction market promotions page.

Markets and products

Kalshi lists contracts in sports, politics, economics, weather, culture and crypto. Each is a binary contract: a “Yes” contract pays $1 if the event happens and $0 if it does not, and a “No” contract pays the reverse. The price, anywhere from 1¢ to 99¢, is set by other traders on the order book and can be read loosely as the market’s implied probability: a 30¢ Yes price implies roughly a 30% chance. Fees and the gap between bids and offers make that reading approximate.

Settlement follows the source named in each market’s rules, such as an official league result or a government data release; our guide to how prediction markets settle explains what happens when an outcome is disputed. Liquidity, meaning how much you can trade near the displayed price, varies by market, and we have not measured Kalshi’s order-book depth.

Kalshi voluntarily pulled sports “mention” contracts (bets on whether someone says a word or phrase) in August 2026, per reports. On September 22, 2026 the CFTC issued a staff advisory warning that mention markets carry a “heightened risk of manipulation.”

Kalshi fees

Kalshi’s help center says it charges a transaction fee “on the expected earnings” of a contract. Maker fees apply only on some markets and only when an order executes, and special events can carry custom fees. The official PDF fee schedule blocked our access, so the coefficients below are the widely reported figures, matched by Crypto.com’s identical official formula:

Taker fee = 0.07 × contracts × P × (1 − P), rounded up to the next cent, where P is the price in dollars.

Worked example: 100 Yes contracts at 50¢

At 10¢ the same 100 contracts carry a $0.63 fee (0.07 × 100 × 0.10 × 0.90), and at 90¢ the fee is also $0.63, because the formula is symmetrical. On markets that charge makers, the widely reported maker coefficient is 0.0175, which works out to $0.44 on 100 contracts at 50¢ ($0.4375 rounded up).

How Kalshi’s 50¢ taker fee compares (100 contracts)

Our prediction market fees guide runs the same comparison at other prices.

Separately, debit-card deposits may carry a 2% processing fee, according to Kalshi’s card-deposit article.

Deposits and withdrawals

Kalshi’s help center lists these funding methods:

• Deposits: debit card, Apple Pay and Google Pay, bank transfer (ACH), wire, crypto, PayPal, Venmo and Cash App.
• Withdrawals: debit card, bank transfer, crypto, PayPal and Venmo.

Debit-card deposits have a $10 minimum and may incur a 2% fee. Kalshi notes that security holds can apply to withdrawals. We have not made a withdrawal, so we do not quote processing times.

Mobile apps

Kalshi has apps on iOS and Android, according to our brand record verified October 4, 2026. We have not assessed app performance.

Safety and customer protections

Kalshi’s main credential is its CFTC designation: it lists contracts under a rulebook filed with the CFTC and is subject to CFTC oversight and enforcement. A standard binary position is fully paid for up front, so you cannot lose more than its price plus fees. Kalshi has reportedly asked the CFTC to allow margin trading; we have not seen an approval, and this review assumes fully paid positions.

Regulation does not protect you from a court order that switches off a market in your state, as happened in Michigan and Washington in 2026, or from a disagreement over how a market settles. We have not verified the name of Kalshi’s affiliated clearinghouse or its customer-fund arrangements in official documents, so we do not describe them. Read each market’s rules before you trade.

Pros and cons

Alternatives to Kalshi

• Polymarket US charges takers slightly less ($1.74 against $1.75 on 100 contracts at 50¢) and pays makers a rebate of about $0.31 on the same order instead of a fee. It also has a fixed $25 credit for a $10 deposit, but publishes no state list. See our Polymarket US review and the Kalshi vs Polymarket comparison.
• Robinhood routes some orders to Kalshi from a brokerage account you may already have. Its commission is capped at 1¢ per contract, but with the exchange fee the total can reach $2.00 per 100 contracts. See the Robinhood prediction markets review and Robinhood vs Kalshi.
• FanDuel Predicts offers sports in 18 states and a dated offer of up to $100 that ends October 20, 2026, but its 2%-of-payout fee costs more than Kalshi’s at every price. See the FanDuel Predicts review and FanDuel Predicts vs Kalshi.
• Novig charges no fee on pre-game straight sports trades, but it is sports-only and launched in August 2026. See our Novig review.

For the full field, see the best prediction markets.

How we reviewed Kalshi

This is a documentary review. On October 4, 2026 we read Kalshi’s help-center articles on fees, perpetual-futures fees, card deposits and referrals; the CFTC’s list of designated contract markets and its mention-markets advisory; the 3rd, 9th and 6th Circuit opinions; the Supreme Court docket in No. 26-299; and state attorney-general releases. Where we relied on secondary reporting (state availability, funding rounds, volume, the Illinois ruling), we name it above.

We have not opened a Kalshi account, deposited, traded or withdrawn. A hands-on testing log covering signup and verification time, real fee receipts and withdrawal timing will be added to this page once that work is done, and the page will say when. Until then Kalshi has no score. Read our methodology for how platforms are compared.

Visit Kalshi (opens the operator's site in a new tab)