PredictIt markets itself as the "stock market for politics." That framing is clever, but it's a little misleading — because no actual stock market takes 10% of your gains and then charges you again to withdraw your own money.

To be fair, the platform doesn't nickel-and-dime you on every trade. No per-trade commissions, no maker/taker fees, no deposit costs. If you're just browsing markets and moving money around, it feels almost free. That's partly the point. The real cost only shows up when you're right — and when you try to leave.

How much are PredictIt fees?

PredictIt doesn't charge you to trade. That sounds great until you realize how it actually makes its money.

The Math: A "Clean" Trade Breakdown – how much is the fee?

Take a simple example. You buy 100 YES shares at $0.40, the contract resolves in your favor, and you sell at $0.60. On paper that's a 50% return. Here's what actually happens:

Your apparent 50% return is really 37.75% once the platform collects its share. That gap matters a lot if you're making frequent trades, pricing in thin edges, or trying to compound returns over time.

The Withdrawal Fee Is the Sneaky One

Most people fixate on the 10% profit fee because it's the bigger headline number. But the withdrawal fee is the one that really changes your behavior, because it hits your entire balance — not just profits. That $58 sitting in your account after a winning trade? You're paying $2.90 to access money that was already yours.

The natural response, and what most experienced traders do, is just leave the money in. Treat the balance as rolling capital, let it compound across markets, avoid triggering the fee. That works fine — until you need the cash, or until PredictIt has another one of its regulatory near-death experiences with the CFTC and you're suddenly not sure whether you can get your money out at all. That's happened before. It's worth keeping in mind.

Spreads Are Doing Damage Too

Here's something that doesn't show up in any fee schedule: the bid-ask spread. On a thinly traded market, you might be looking at a $0.04 spread on a $0.40 contract — that's 10% in friction just on entry and exit, before PredictIt collects anything. Spreads tighten as events approach and volume picks up, but on obscure markets or anything long-dated, the liquidity cost alone can quietly eat an edge that looked solid on paper.

Stack that on top of the profit fee and the withdrawal hit, and the bar for a "profitable" trade is higher than most people realize going in.

The $850 Cap

The position limit — $850 per market per trader — doesn't get talked about as a cost, but it functions like one. It means you can't scale into a conviction trade. If you've done the research and you're confident, the platform structurally prevents you from acting on that in any meaningful size. And since the fee percentages don't change with scale, there's no way to grow your way into better economics. A trader who is right 60% of the time and sizing $850 per market is operating under the same cost structure as a casual user putting $20 on a lark. That's an unusual feature for something billing itself as a market.

The CFTC Arrangement: Why PredictIt Exists at All

Understanding PredictIt's fee structure requires understanding its legal situation, which the platform rarely explains clearly. PredictIt operates under a no-action letter issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in 2014. Normally, running a prediction market where real money changes hands would require exchange registration under U.S. commodities law. PredictIt got around that requirement by partnering with Victoria University of Wellington, a New Zealand academic institution, and framing the entire operation as a tool for political science research.

The CFTC's no-action letter came with conditions: no more than 5,000 traders per market, the $850 position cap, and a mandate that the platform be operated for academic rather than commercial purposes. Those constraints aren't arbitrary design choices — they're the legal scaffolding holding the whole thing up.

This matters for fee discussions in two ways. First, the position cap is a regulatory artifact, not a product decision, which means PredictIt can't simply remove it to attract more serious traders. Second, the platform's ongoing survival depends on maintaining that CFTC relationship. In 2022, the CFTC moved to rescind the no-action letter, which would have shut PredictIt down entirely. The platform fought back legally and ultimately survived, but the episode was a reminder that the regulatory ground under PredictIt is not stable. Traders who leave capital parked inside the platform to avoid the withdrawal fee are effectively taking on a low-probability but non-trivial counterparty risk.

Comparing PredictIt's Costs with Kalshi and Polymarket

PredictIt's model made sense in 2014 when it was the only legal venue in the United States for trading political outcomes with real money. That's no longer true, and the comparison against modern prediction exchanges is unflattering.

Kalshi has been a CFTC-designated contract market since November 2020, giving it a different regulatory footing from PredictIt’s no-action-letter model Its fee model reflects that maturity. As of 2026, Kalshi uses a maker/taker pricing structure: takers pay a transaction fee of roughly 1–3% of contract value, while makers pay significantly less and sometimes nothing at all. Critically, there is no profit skim on winnings and no fee to withdraw your own money. A trader who wins consistently on Kalshi pays less in fees at nearly every price point than the equivalent trade on PredictIt. Kalshi also carries no position cap, so traders who develop a genuine edge can actually size into it.

Polymarket operates on a different model entirely, using blockchain-based market infrastructure rather than PredictIt’s traditional account-and-withdrawal setup. As of Polymarket’s current fee documentation, Geopolitical & World Events markets are fee-free, with no Polymarket trading fee and no Polymarket deposit or withdrawal fee, although third-party on-ramp providers may charge their own costs. Polymarket does charge taker fees on certain market categories, and its March 30, 2026 fee update specifically applied to Sports markets, with future expansion expected to include other categories such as Finance, Politics, Economics, Culture, Weather, and Tech. Makers are not charged trading fees.

That means the cleaner comparison is not “Polymarket politics fees are around 1%.” It is: Polymarket’s political and geopolitical fee treatment depends on the market category and current fee settings, but it does not use PredictIt’s 10% profit skim or 5% withdrawal fee. For traders comfortable with crypto rails, wallets, and possible on-ramp costs, Polymarket’s all-in cost structure can be materially lower than PredictIt’s, especially for maker orders and fee-free world-event markets.

The honest summary: PredictIt's fee structure was designed for a platform that had no competition and operated under nonprofit-adjacent academic framing. Neither of those things is true anymore. Against Kalshi and Polymarket, it is the most expensive way to trade U.S. political markets.

For a deeper side-by-side look at market access, fees, liquidity, and regulation, see our full Kalshi vs PredictIt comparison.

Who Should Still Use PredictIt

None of this means PredictIt is useless. It remains a fine platform if you're treating it as a place to put money behind your political read, you're comfortable leaving capital parked for months, and you're not trying to extract a mathematical edge. The markets are liquid on major races, the interface is straightforward, and the platform has a long track record. For a casual user putting $50 on an election and checking back on election night, the fee structure is a minor annoyance, not a dealbreaker.

It's a poor fit if you want to scalp small edges, run arbitrage, or move in and out frequently. The fees aren't hidden, but their cumulative effect on anything resembling active trading is a haircut most strategies simply cannot survive.

For a legal breakdown on PredictIt: Is PredictIt Legal? Regulation, CFTC Status & U.S. Access 2026