It's an exchange, not a bookmaker
This is the distinction that changes how you should trade it. A sportsbook takes the other side of your bet and builds a margin into the odds. Kalshi matches you against another trader and charges a fee. There's no house rooting against you, no limits on winners, and prices move because participants disagree — not because a risk desk shaded the line.
Contracts and pricing
- Every contract pays $1 if its condition is met, $0 otherwise. Prices run from 1¢ to 99¢.
- A 23¢ contract is a market estimate of a 23% chance. Buy it and you risk 23¢ to win 77¢.
- You can sell before settlement at any time the book has a bid, so you can trade the move rather than the outcome.
- Many events are offered as a ladder of strikes — e.g. CPI above 2.7%, above 2.9%, above 3.1% — which lets you express a view on a range, not just a direction.
Fees
Kalshi charges a trading fee that scales with the contract's price and is largest around 50¢, where uncertainty peaks. Practically: fees are cheap on lopsided markets and meaningful on coinflips. Before you enter a near-50¢ market, subtract the round-trip fee from your estimated edge. If what's left is under a cent or two, it isn't a trade.
Settlement
Each market names a specific settlement source and time in its rules — a government data release, an official scoreboard, a named agency. Settlement is mechanical against that source. Read the rules page before entering: the most expensive mistakes in event trading are disagreements with the rulebook, not with reality.
What Kalshi is unusually good for
US economic data
CPI, unemployment, Fed decisions and GDP have deep, purpose-built markets with unambiguous settlement. If you follow macro closely, this is the cleanest place to express a view — and the market is often slower to reprice forecast revisions than professionals assume.
Weather and climate
Temperature and rainfall markets settle against official station data. Public forecast models are free, so this is one of the few markets where a diligent retail trader has genuinely equal information to everyone else.
Regulated sports exposure
Exchange-style sports contracts behave differently from a sportsbook line — see sports prediction markets vs sportsbooks.
A sensible first-month routine
- Trade one category only until you know its rulebook cold.
- Cap any single position at 1–2% of your bankroll while you calibrate.
- Log every trade with your estimated probability and the price you paid. After 50 trades you'll know whether your estimates are actually better than the market's.
- Compare each price against the same event on another venue before entering — see the Kalshi vs Polymarket guide.