Kalshi Alternative: 6 Prediction Markets Compared (2026)

People search for a Kalshi alternative for one of two reasons, and they need different answers.

The first is access. Your state won a court fight and your sports markets vanished. You want a platform that still works where you live.

The second is price. Kalshi has the deepest books in US prediction markets and the highest taker fee of the major venues. You want the same contract cheaper.

Neither problem is solved by picking whichever platform a listicle ranks first, so this splits them.

The short version

If your problem is state access

Check this before anything else, because it decides the question for you.

Sports event contracts are restricted in a growing set of states while non-sports markets mostly are not. Massachusetts, Nevada, Michigan, New York, Utah, Connecticut and Ohio have all had courts side with them against Kalshi at some stage. Arizona and Minnesota tried and were blocked by federal injunctions.

The trap is assuming a competitor is unaffected. Most are not. Robinhood is open to members 18 and over in all 50 states, but Nevada and New Jersey residents cannot trade sports-based contracts, and Maryland residents may not be eligible for event contracts at all. Wisconsin's Department of Justice sued Kalshi, Robinhood, Coinbase, Polymarket and Crypto.com in a single April filing. Kentucky's Attorney General did much the same in June.

What does still work in a restricted state is the rest of the catalogue. Economics, weather and politics markets have stayed almost entirely clear of the litigation, because nobody has argued a CPI print resembles a parlay.

If your problem is price

Kalshi charges takers 0.07 × contracts × p × (1 − p), which peaks at 1.75¢ per contract on a 50¢ market. That is the highest of the major regulated venues, and Kalshi also charges makers 0.44¢ where several competitors pay makers instead.

Polymarket US is the direct substitute. Its taker coefficient is 0.06, so 1.50¢ at the midpoint, about 14% cheaper. The bigger difference is on the other side of the book: it pays a maker 0.31¢ per contract rather than charging 0.44¢. If you rest orders instead of crossing the spread, that 0.75¢ swing dwarfs the taker saving.

Polymarket International is cheaper still, with geopolitical and world-event markets entirely free and politics at 0.04. It is not available to US persons, and reaching it with a VPN breaks its terms rather than outsmarting them.

Be careful with rebate claims. Polymarket's flat 50% taker rebate ended April 30, 2026 and was replaced by a tiered program that starts at $250,000 of monthly volume. Any comparison quoting an effective rate roughly half of Kalshi's is describing a trader you are probably not.

The platforms

Polymarket

The closest thing to a like-for-like Kalshi replacement, and the only one that beats it on both sides of the fee schedule. Polymarket US did $5.0B in July 2026, up 54% month over month after its waitlist came off in May.

Robinhood

Launched its Prediction Markets Hub in 2025 through a partnership with Kalshi, and roughly 11 to 12 billion contracts traded through it in the first year. It has since built its own CFTC-licensed exchange with Susquehanna, operational in early 2026, and its event contracts now route through several venues including KalshiEX and ForecastEX.

Worth knowing that a Robinhood order may execute on Kalshi's exchange. If your objection to Kalshi is its pricing rather than its interface, this may not get you what you want.

Best if you already keep money at Robinhood and want event contracts beside your equities.

Crypto.com OG

A CFTC-regulated platform launched in February 2026, built around leaderboards, posts and comments rather than a plain order book. It is the strongest of the group for building parlays across multiple prediction markets. Robinhood has been in talks to integrate its contracts.

Best if you want prediction markets to feel social rather than like a trading terminal.

ProphetX and Novig

Both received CFTC approval in June 2026 and both come at this from sports betting rather than from finance. Newer, thinner books, but built by people who understand sports pricing.

Best if sports is the only reason you opened Kalshi in the first place.

PredictIt

Still running, politics only, under CFTC no-action relief rather than a full exchange registration. It survived the CFTC's 2022 shutdown attempt and got amended relief in July 2025. Fees are the harshest here at 5% on profits plus 5% on withdrawals, and per-contract position limits apply, so treat it as a supplement rather than a replacement.

A different way to frame the question

If what you actually want is the best available price on an outcome, the platform question is the wrong one. The right one is which venue is pricing that specific event best right now, and that changes market by market.

Bet Hero is not a prediction market and cannot be a Kalshi alternative in the sense above. What it does is sit across the venues: Kalshi and Polymarket prices are collected alongside 400+ sportsbooks, and Kalshi's fee formula is applied when computing adjusted odds rather than treating it as a flat percentage like a regular book. So a Kalshi contract and a DraftKings line on the same outcome can be compared after costs.

That is useful if you were going to shop prices anyway. It does not help at all if your state has taken your sports markets away.

Sources

• Kalshi Fee Schedule, July 2026
• Polymarket US Fee Schedule, effective July 1, 2026
• Polymarket Trading Fees documentation
• Kalshi and Polymarket July volume, The Block
• Robinhood event contracts overview
• Prediction markets legal timeline, RotoWire