Kalshi Alternative: 9 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. As of September 24, 2026, court orders block Kalshi's sports contracts in Nevada, Washington and Michigan, and courts have sided with the state in Ohio, New York, Connecticut, Utah, Iowa and Maryland. Arizona, Minnesota, New Jersey and Tennessee are blocked from enforcing by federal court orders for now. Our Kalshi legality page tracks each state.

The trap is assuming a competitor is unaffected. Most are not. Robinhood's own support page says Maryland residents can't trade sports event contracts and Nevada residents can't open new ones, and Robinhood agreed with Michigan regulators on September 9 to stop taking new sports positions there. Wisconsin's Department of Justice sued Kalshi, Robinhood, Coinbase, Polymarket and Crypto.com on the same day in April. Missouri's September cease-and-desist letters went to six operators at once: Kalshi, Polymarket, Robinhood, Crypto.com, Novig and Underdog.

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

Robinhood launched its Prediction Markets Hub in 2025 through a partnership with Kalshi. Its event contracts are offered by Robinhood Derivatives through one of three CFTC-regulated exchanges: KalshiEX, ForecastEX, or Rothera Exchange and Clearing. You need to be 18 or older.

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. It also does not escape the state fight: Robinhood is restricted on sports contracts in Maryland, Nevada and Michigan, and it has its own Supreme Court petition pending against Nevada's win in the Ninth Circuit.

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

FanDuel Predicts

Built with CME Group and launched in December 2025. Per FanDuel's June 2026 announcement, financial contracts on benchmarks like the S&P 500, oil, gold, crypto and CPI are available in all 50 states. Sports and entertainment contracts are only offered in states where FanDuel does not run a sportsbook, and they are listed on CME Group's and Crypto.com's exchanges.

That design cuts both ways. If you live somewhere without legal online sports betting, it is a real alternative from a brand you may already know. If you live in a sportsbook state, you get the financial markets and nothing on sports.

Best for finance and economics contracts anywhere, or sports in states FanDuel's sportsbook does not reach.

DraftKings Predictions

DraftKings' standalone app, run as a CFTC-registered introducing broker. At launch the company said event contracts would be available across 38 states, with sports contracts in certain states such as California, Florida, Georgia and Texas, and with CME Group as the first exchange. It also owns Railbird, a CFTC-designated exchange it acquired ahead of the launch, and planned to route contracts there as well.

The logic mirrors FanDuel's: sports contracts go where DraftKings cannot offer a sportsbook. Check the app for your state, because the list is the part most likely to have changed since launch.

Best if you are in one of the large states without legal sports betting and want a sportsbook-style interface.

Manifold Markets

Manifold is the odd one out, and worth including because it shows up in a lot of lists of Kalshi alternatives. It runs on mana, a play-money currency that cannot be converted to cash. New users get Ṁ1,000 free. Manifold does run free prize drawings paid in USDC, but those are void in Delaware, Idaho, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Washington and Washington, D.C. under its official rules.

Because it is play money, Manifold is not a CFTC-regulated exchange and none of the state cases above involve it. Anyone can create a market on almost anything. The flip side is that trading pays out nothing real, so it replaces Kalshi only if what you wanted was the forecasting rather than the profit.

Best for practising, or for questions too niche for any regulated venue to list.

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. Its exchange also supplies sports and entertainment contracts to FanDuel Predicts.

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
• FanDuel Predicts expands through Crypto.com and OG, June 9 2026
• DraftKings debuts Predictions app
• Manifold prize drawing official rules
• Manifold Markets, about
• Robinhood agrees to halt sports contracts in Michigan, Michigan Gaming Control Board, September 9 2026
• Missouri Attorney General cease-and-desist letters, September 18 2026
• Prediction markets legal timeline, RotoWire