How Kalshi works: accounts, orders, fees, and settlement

Kalshi is a US exchange, regulated by the CFTC as a designated contract market, where contracts on future events trade at prices from 1 to 99 cents and pay $1 when they settle. You deposit dollars, buy YES or NO on a question, and receive $1 per contract if your side is right.

The venue's fee schedule, deposit methods, and market list all change. The mechanics below are stable; the figures carry a date. Check the venue's own page before relying on it.

Opening and funding an account

Kalshi accounts are for US customers and require identity verification, the same know-your-customer step as a brokerage. Funding is by bank transfer, debit card, or wire, with deposits landing in a dollar balance. As of September 2026 bank transfers carry no deposit fee, while card and wire deposits can carry a charge. Whether your state permits every contract type is a separate question, covered in Are prediction markets legal in your state.

The order book

Every market is a list of resting orders. Buyers post what they will pay for YES; sellers post what they will accept. The highest bid and lowest ask are the quote, and the gap between them is the spread. A market showing YES 43 bid, 45 ask has a two-point spread, and the price we report as 44% is the midpoint, a number nobody can actually trade at.

Kalshi shows both sides as YES and NO, but a NO order is the same thing as a YES order from the other direction: buying NO at 56 is buying the right to $1 if the event fails, and the person who sold it to you is the one holding YES at 44. How yes/no contracts work covers why the two sides always sum to about 100.

Limit orders and market orders

A limit order names a price and waits on the book until someone takes it. A market order takes whatever is resting on the other side right now. On a deep market the difference is a point; on a thin one, a market order can walk through several price levels and fill at an average far from the displayed number.

The distinction also decides your fee. An order that rests and gets filled is a maker; an order that hits a resting order is a taker. Kalshi charges takers by the formula below and charges makers a lower rate or nothing on many markets.

The fee formula

As of September 2026, Kalshi's taker fee on a filled order is:

fee = 0.07 × contracts × price × (1 - price), rounded up to the next cent

with price written as a decimal. The price × (1 - price) term peaks at 50% and shrinks toward either extreme, so the fee is largest on exactly the contracts where the outcome is least certain.

Price	Cost of 100 contracts	Fee	Fee as share of cost	Fee as share of max profit
10%	$10.00	$0.63	6.3%	0.7%
50%	$50.00	$1.75	3.5%	3.5%
90%	$90.00	$0.63	0.7%	6.3%

Read the last two columns together. At 10% the fee is small against the $90 you could win but large against the $10 you put up. At 90% it is small against your stake and large against the $10 you can win. The fee is charged when the order fills, not at settlement, and some market series carry their own rate. Kalshi fees explained goes through the schedule line by line; Payout versus profit covers how fees and spreads combine.

How a position settles

Every contract has a rule page naming the settlement source, the date, and the exact condition. When the source publishes, Kalshi declares the result and credits $1 per winning contract to the holder's balance, usually within hours. Losing contracts go to zero. There is no action to take; the balance updates. The Fed decision market settles on the FOMC statement and the CPI market on the Bureau of Labor Statistics release, and How Fed and CPI markets work covers the rounding rules that decide close calls.

You do not have to wait. A position can be sold back into the book at any time before settlement at whatever the bid is. On a long-dated market like NFL MVP, which settles months out, most positions are closed this way rather than held to the end.

A worked example

Fifty YES contracts on the Fed cutting at its next meeting, with the book at 39 bid, 41 ask.

Step	Amount
Limit order to buy 50 YES at 40%	rests on the book
Filled by a seller (you were the maker)	pay $20.00
Maker fee on a market that charges none	$0.00
Fed cuts: 50 contracts settle at $1	receive $50.00
Profit	$30.00
Fed holds: 50 contracts settle at 0	lose $20.00

Had the order taken the 41 ask instead, the cost would have been $20.50 and the taker fee 0.07 × 50 × 0.41 × 0.59 = $0.85, so the same win would have returned $28.65. One point of price and one fee make a $1.35 difference on a $30 profit, and that is the whole case for the limit order. The cost of the discipline is that the order may never fill.

Withdrawing

Withdrawals go back to a linked US bank account by transfer, or by wire for larger sums. As of September 2026 bank withdrawals are free and take a few business days; wires are faster and carry a fee. Money in open positions cannot be withdrawn until the position is sold or settles, and the venue's page lists the current limits.

Taxes and the 1099

Kalshi profits are taxable income. The venue issues a Form 1099-MISC to US users whose net profit for the year clears the federal reporting threshold, and reports the same figure to the IRS. Whether event contracts qualify for Section 1256 treatment is unsettled, and Prediction market taxes covers what is known. Ask a tax professional about your own return.

What to check before you trade

• The rule page for the exact contract, not the market title. How settlement works covers why.
• The bid and ask, and how many contracts are resting at each.
• Whether your order will be a maker or a taker, and the fee either way.
• The settlement date, because your money is committed until then unless you sell.
• The venue's current fee page and your state's status, both of which change.

Nothing on this page is investment advice, and the venue's current rule text and fee page are the only things that pay.