Polymarket's 0.3% Blended Take
Polymarket at $375M/year
The fee gap shows Polymarket is still buying liquidity and habit, not harvesting the market like a mature exchange. On roughly $8.9B of May 2026 volume, a blended take near 0.3% means most trading is still flowing through low fee categories, especially sports, while Kalshi’s roughly 1.2% effective rate reflects a more monetized U.S. exchange model with retail fees and market structure built to earn on each trade.
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Polymarket only started charging traders in January 2026, after years of conditioning users to expect near zero cost trading. That matters because prediction markets live or die on liquidity. Lower fees attract more orders, tighter spreads, and deeper books, which then make the venue more useful and pull in still more traders.
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Kalshi’s higher rate comes from a very different setup. Retail users pay variable trading fees, while market makers can trade free and even earn rebates for posting liquidity. That is closer to a traditional exchange playbook, where the platform deliberately charges one side of the market and subsidizes the other to keep contracts tradeable.
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Category mix also pulls Polymarket’s blended rate down. Sports has become the largest share of volume on both platforms, and sports contracts resolve fast, so the same dollar can be turned over again and again. High turnover lets the platform grow revenue even with a lower take per dollar of volume.
From here, the key move is gradual fee normalization without breaking liquidity. If Polymarket keeps compounding sports volume, expands its U.S. footprint, and proves traders stay active after fee increases, its take rate can climb toward Kalshi’s model while preserving the scale advantage that comes from a larger global order flow.