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PredictIt Review

3.6

The veteran US political market — beloved community, painful fee structure.

Affiliate disclosure: some outbound links on this page may be referral links. If you sign up through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This never influences our ratings or reviews, which are based on independent testing. Read our full disclosure.

Key facts

Type
Regulated US exchange
Founded
2014
Fees
10% fee on profits + 5% withdrawal fee
Minimum deposit
No minimum; $850 cap per contract per question
Payments
USD — card or bank transfer
Availability
United States

Our scores

Liquidity3.0
Fees & costs2.0
Market variety3.0
Ease of use3.0
Trust & regulation4.0

What we like

  • Longest track record of any US political market — operating since 2014
  • Active comment-section community with genuine political insight
  • Simple yes/no contract structure that’s easy to understand
  • Operates under academic no-action framework with real-money stakes

What could be better

  • Brutal fees: 10% on profits plus 5% to withdraw
  • $850 position cap per contract limits serious bankrolls
  • Politics-only lineup; dated interface
  • Fee structure causes persistent mispricings vs other venues

The fee problem

PredictIt keeps 10% of your winnings on each trade and another 5% of anything you withdraw. Combined, a strategy needs roughly a 12% edge just to break even — which is why PredictIt prices often diverge from Polymarket and Kalshi on identical events. Treat those divergences as a fee artifact, not free money: the cost of arbitraging them away is exactly what created them.

Position caps

The $850-per-contract-per-question cap, a condition of its original academic no-action letter, keeps stakes small. It democratizes the market but also caps the incentive for sharp money to correct prices, so long-shot bias is more visible here than anywhere else.

Community and longevity

What PredictIt does have is history and people. It has operated through multiple election cycles, survived a CFTC withdrawal attempt that was resolved in court, and maintains comment sections that are arguably the best free source of granular US political handicapping anywhere.

Our verdict

PredictIt survives on community and nostalgia more than economics. The 10%-plus-5% fee stack and $850 cap make it hard to recommend for profit-focused traders, but its political markets and comment threads remain genuinely fun.

Best for: Political junkies who value the community over raw economics

Some links on this page may be referral links — see our disclosure.

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