What Is Kalshi

Kalshi is an exchange for event contracts: yes-or-no questions that settle at $1 or $0. You trade with other participants. The price is the market's implied probability of the rules being met. KalshiEX LLC is regulated by the CFTC as a designated contract market, and its affiliate Kalshi Klear clears the contracts.

This page is the Kalshi overview. For the shared mechanics, read what prediction markets are, how prices work, and how markets resolve. The side-by-side is Kalshi vs Polymarket. The research steps are the same on every platform: How to Research a Prediction Market Before You Trade.

What you actually trade

Kalshi's description in a 2026 CFTC filing is the clean version. Event contracts are binary and fully cash-collateralized. They settle at $1.00 if the event occurs and $0.00 if it does not. Prices run from 1¢ to 99¢ and are the market-implied probability. Trades clear through Kalshi Klear, which the filing describes as holding fully collateralized positions.

The contract is not the headline. Each market has terms that name:

• the condition that counts as Yes
• the reference source (a government release, a league, a filing)
• the expiration time
• any special settlement, such as a fair-market-value payout when the source cannot answer

The help center tells you to read the rules summary and then the full rules. The summary is not the contract.

You can sell before settlement. A contract bought at 40¢ and sold at 55¢ realizes the difference without waiting for the source to publish. If you hold to settlement, a winner pays $1 into your balance after Kalshi determines the outcome.

How a market settles

Kalshi determines the outcome. It does not ask token holders to vote.

The help center's account:

• The source and the criteria are in the contract terms.
• After the contract expires, Kalshi applies those rules to the source.
• Determination often finishes within a few hours (the FAQ says often about three) and can take more than twelve hours when the agency or league is late.
• A market can remain open while Kalshi waits. That is not a signal that the event failed the rules.
• You can send a "request to settle" from the market menu. The markets team reviews it.

Some contracts also bar people who could know the result early: league employees, people with pre-publication data, and, in the examples published with specific contract terms, household members of those groups. Persons under 18 cannot open an account. Those lists are contract-specific. Read the one attached to the market.

Fees

Kalshi's general event-contract trading fee, effective July 7, 2026, applies to orders that match immediately against the book:

fee = round up(0.07 × contracts × price × (1 − price))

Price is in dollars, so 50¢ is 0.5. The schedule's own table shows the result at 50¢: $1.75 per 100 contracts. At 10¢ or 90¢ the same 100 contracts cost far less, because the formula peaks at even odds.

Maker fees are separate. The schedule charges them only on series it lists, using:

maker fee = round up(0.0175 × contracts × price × (1 − price))

with a multiplier that is 0 unless the series says otherwise. In plain language from the help center: a resting order pays a maker fee only when that market has one, and only if the order actually trades. Canceling a resting order has no fee.

Two other schedules exist and are easy to mix up with the event-contract formula:

• Perpetual futures use a volume-tiered fee in basis points of notional, not the 0.07 event-contract formula. Taker tiers in the July 7, 2026 schedule run from 12.0 bps down to 2.6 bps.
• Specific series and RFQs can have their own amendments. Kalshi files those with the CFTC. The PDF on Kalshi's site is the checklist, not this article.

Deposits depend on the rail. The help center points you at the full schedule rather than a single number. Do not assume a card deposit is free.

Who can use it

Kalshi's help center says an individual account requires you to be 18 or older and to pass document verification if asked. Kalshi collects identity information because CFTC rules require it.

The member agreement updated October 1, 2026 prohibits event-contract trading from a list of restricted jurisdictions. The list includes, among others, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and France, plus sanctioned territories. The agreement says the restriction is yours to comply with, and that it applies to event contracts specifically. International access exists outside that list. Kalshi's help center says it does not provide individual legal advice, and that regulations differ by country.

Nothing here is a statement that a particular state politics fight is over. Sports event contracts have been contested by some state regulators even when the exchange is federally registered. If you need a legal conclusion, that is a lawyer, not a market write-up.

What Kalshi is good at, and what to watch

Kalshi lists politics, macro data, culture, and sports, among other categories. The useful habit is the same in all of them: name the source before you name your opinion. A CPI market that resolves on the first published number is a different trade from one that follows revisions.

Watch for:

• Maker-fee series. The headline fee is the taker formula. Your market might add a maker fee.
• Settlement lag. Being right on election night does not put cash in the account until the source in the rules has spoken and Kalshi has determined the market.
• Thin books. A 30¢ price with no size behind it is not a 30% probability you can trust. See how prices work.

BetScan can take a Kalshi market link, pull the recent reporting and the context around the rules, and return a probability range with the sources attached. You still read the contract.

Sources

• Fee schedule effective July 7, 2026: kalshi.com/docs/kalshi-fee-schedule.pdf
• Fee overview: Kalshi Help Center
• Contract description: CFTC filing, April 2026
• Eligibility: Signing up as an individual
• Restricted jurisdictions: Member agreement, October 1, 2026
• Settlement: Market outcomes, Market FAQs, Market rules