Kalshi Review

Kalshi is the first federally-regulated event exchange in the United States, licensed by the CFTC as a Designated Contract Market. It lets US residents legally trade yes/no contracts on real-world outcomes — elections, weather, economic data, sports and pop culture — with US dollar deposits and insured cash balances.

Kalshi charges variable per-contract fees that scale with price and volatility, and can reach roughly 2% at the extremes. Deposits and withdrawals via ACH are free; cards and wires may carry processor fees. Overall trading cost is higher than Polymarket but still competitive with legacy sportsbooks.

Kalshi's flagship markets — presidential outcomes, Fed decisions, macro data, major sports — hold healthy books and tighten around news events. Smaller markets can be thin, but a growing market-maker programme has narrowed spreads across most active listings during 2025 and 2026.

The Kalshi mobile app is genuinely best-in-class: fast onboarding, clean order tickets, push alerts on your positions and one-tap ACH funding. The web experience is equally polished. Signup requires standard US KYC and takes a few minutes.

Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated exchange, meaning it is legally supervised at the federal level in all 50 US states. Client cash is held in segregated bank accounts and covered by FDIC pass-through insurance up to standard limits. This is the strongest regulatory posture of any platform we cover.

Kalshi is US-focused: full access currently requires a US Social Security Number and US bank account. European users can read markets but generally cannot fund or trade. Kalshi has signalled international expansion but had not launched an EU-facing product at the time of writing.

Against Probly and Polymarket, Kalshi trades lower liquidity and higher fees for real regulatory protection and fiat rails. Against PredictIt, Kalshi wins on market breadth, position sizes and app quality. If you are a US resident and safety is your first filter, Kalshi is the default recommendation on this site.

The safest, most compliant way to trade prediction markets from the US — with a slick mobile app to match.