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Polymarket Perps vs Kalshi

Published 11 August 2026

Polymarket and Kalshi both started life selling contracts on whether a thing would happen, and both now sell contracts on where a price goes. The fact that decides between them is where you live.

Short answer

If you are in the United States or Canada, the comparison is already over. Polymarket does not permit Perps order placement from either country. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated US exchange and offers its perpetual futures to US residents who apply for and are approved for margin access.

Everywhere else, the trade-off is scope against oversight. Polymarket Perps lists 39 instruments across stocks, crypto, commodities and indices at up to 20x, settles funding hourly, and is open to anyone outside the blocked jurisdictions. Kalshi’s perps launched on crypto, sit inside a regulated clearing structure, and settle funding every eight hours.

Where you live decides this

Polymarket does not permit Perps order placement from United States, Canada, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Crimea, Donetsk or Luhansk. Market data is readable from anywhere; submitting an order is not.source Integrators are told to block submission outright rather than warn.

Kalshi is the opposite shape. It is a CFTC-regulated venue, its help centre says perpetual futures are available to US residents, and its own launch announcement frames the product as the first perpetual futures offered onshore in America. Access is not automatic — every user must apply for a margin account, not all applicants are approved, and approved users are required to complete product education before trading.

For a US reader this is not a tiebreaker. It is the whole decision, made before anyone mentions a fee schedule.

What each one lists

Polymarket Perps lists 39 instruments: 24 individual stocks, 9 crypto assets, 3 commodities and 3 indices, all matching orders continuously including overnight and at weekends.source The stock coverage is the unusual part — a perpetual on NVIDIA that keeps trading on a Sunday is a thing very few venues offer. The session mechanics behind it.source

Kalshi’s perpetual futures were announced on 29 May 2026 and launched on Bitcoin on 3 June 2026. Its announcement describes a plan to offer crypto perpetuals on more than a dozen currencies subject to regulatory review, and explicitly rules out agricultural commodities. Its help centre carries a dedicated “What perpetuals are available on Kalshi?” article whose framing is “available at launch, additional assets added over time”. That article is the only current list.

Kalshi’s event-contract business is entirely separate from its perps business, and the same is true at Polymarket: prediction markets and perps are different products with different mechanics on both venues. The difference between an event contract and a perp.

Two different regulatory bets

This is the axis the two venues genuinely diverge on, and it shows up in the plumbing rather than the interface.

	Polymarket Perps	Kalshi perps
US order placement	Not permitted	Offered to US residents, subject to approval
Oversight	None claimed; offshore-style venue	CFTC-regulated designated contract market
Where your collateral sits	pUSD, settling on Polygon	Segregated margin account at the clearinghouse
Getting an account	open, no code required	Margin application; not all applicants approved
Funding interval	Every 1 hour	Every 8 hours
Asset classes	Stocks, crypto, commodities, indices	Crypto

Kalshi figures from its help centre and announcement, read 11 Aug 2026.

The row worth sitting with is the third one. On Polymarket your collateral is pUSD on Polygon inside a hybrid exchange that runs its order book, matching, margin and funding off-chain and periodically commits state roots so the reported state can be checked.source On Kalshi, its help centre says margin is held in a customer-segregated account at the clearinghouse, separate from Kalshi’s operating funds as CFTC rules require, and earns interest while it sits there — the article puts the current rate at roughly 3.25% APY, subject to market conditions. Those are two genuinely different answers to “what happens to my money while I am not using it”.

Funding, margin and fees

Polymarket settles funding every hour against a premium index sampled off the book every 5 seconds.source Kalshi’s help centre states funding flows between longs and shorts every eight hours and is visible in transaction history. Eight hours is the convention almost everywhere; Polymarket is the outlier.

Hourly is not automatically better. It is smoother, more current, and harder to game around a settlement stamp — but it also means a resting cost that never stops accruing in recognisable chunks. On a perfectly fair Polymarket crypto market the formula still charges longs +0.0013% an hour, because the fixed interest leg survives even when the premium is zero. The funding page works that arithmetic through.

On fees, both venues charge on notional rather than margin, and both put maker below taker. Polymarket publishes its full ladder: 7 tiers on trailing 30-day volume, starting at 0.0400% taker and 0.0125% maker for a new account, reaching a maker rebate at the top.source Kalshi’s help centre says only that its perps rates are tiered by trading volume, and points at a separate fee-schedule document we could not load. It publishes no tier thresholds, no volume window and no rates in the article itself. Pull the live schedule and price your own size. Polymarket’s side has a calculator.

Margin is where the two philosophies show. Polymarket sets maintenance margin as a flat per-market rate derived from that market’s maximum leverage — 2.5% of notional on a 20x market — regardless of the leverage you personally selected.source Kalshi describes initial margin as set by your chosen leverage and notional, and maintenance margin as the minimum balance to keep the position open, but the help articles we read do not publish per-asset numbers. It also warns plainly that losses in black swan scenarios can exceed posted margin.

What we could not verify

As of 11 August 2026: we could not load Kalshi’s fee-schedule document, so no Kalshi maker or taker rate appears above. We could not find a published per-asset maximum leverage in Kalshi’s help centre — it says only that its caps are lower than offshore platforms at launch. We did not verify Kalshi’s current live asset list, its liquidation mechanics, or its state-by-state availability.

Early volume figures are widely reported — CNBC put Kalshi’s perps past $1bn within a week of the 3 June 2026 Bitcoin launch — but volume is a headline, not a product fact, and it says nothing about what your trade costs.

Who each one is for

You are in the US or Canada. Kalshi, or nothing. Polymarket Perps will not accept your order.source
You want leveraged exposure to individual stocks or indices, at the weekend. That is Polymarket’s distinctive product, and Kalshi’s perps are crypto.
You want a regulated venue and segregated margin. Kalshi, unambiguously. Polymarket makes no such claim and does not operate under that structure.
You are comparing against an offshore crypto perp venue. Then neither of these is really your comparison — the Hyperliquid page is the closer match.

And the thing both venues share, which no comparison table captures: a perpetual future with leverage can be closed against your will at a price you did not choose. That risk does not care which regulator signed off on the contract. The full mechanics.

Questions people ask

Can I trade Polymarket Perps if I live in the US?

No. Polymarket does not permit Perps order placement from the United States, and the same restriction covers Canada, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. Reading market data is not restricted, but placing an order is. Kalshi, by contrast, is a CFTC-regulated US exchange and its perpetual futures are offered to US residents who apply for and are granted margin access.

Does Kalshi have perpetual futures?

Yes. Kalshi announced perpetual futures on 29 May 2026 and describes itself as the first venue to offer them in America, regulated by the CFTC. As of 11 August 2026 its help centre documents a live perps product with a margin account, an application process, and an asset list that started with Bitcoin and is being expanded. Check Kalshi's own page for the current list.

Which has more markets, Polymarket Perps or Kalshi perps?

Polymarket Perps lists 39 instruments spanning individual stocks, crypto, commodities and indices. Kalshi's perpetual futures launched on Bitcoin on 3 June 2026 and its published plan is expansion across crypto specifically, with agricultural commodities explicitly excluded. So Polymarket is currently broader across asset classes, while Kalshi is the one with US access.

How often does each venue charge funding?

Polymarket settles funding every hour. Kalshi's help centre states funding on its perpetual futures flows every eight hours, which is the industry-standard interval. Hourly funding is smoother and more current; eight-hourly funding means three settlement points a day rather than twenty-four.

Is Kalshi cheaper than Polymarket Perps?

Not comparable on the surface; price your own size. Polymarket publishes a 7-tier schedule on trailing 30-day volume, starting at 0.0400% taker and 0.0125% maker on notional. Kalshi charges perps fees on notional too, with maker below taker, but its help centre says only that rates are tiered by trading volume and points at a separate fee schedule document. Compare the live schedules.

Is Polymarket Perps regulated?

Not in the way Kalshi is. Kalshi operates as a CFTC-designated contract market and clears through its own clearing entity; its help centre says margin is held in a customer-segregated account, separate from Kalshi's operating funds, as CFTC rules require. Polymarket Perps is a hybrid offshore-style exchange settling on Polygon, open to anyone, and blocked for order placement in 9 jurisdictions including the US. Those are different products under different rules, not two flavours of the same thing.

How much leverage does each one offer?

Polymarket publishes up to 20x on its largest markets and 10x on smaller tokens and every individual stock, with per-market risk tiers that lower the cap as position size grows. Kalshi describes its leverage caps as lower than offshore platforms but publishes no headline number in the help articles we read.

Sources · checked 11 August 2026