About Kalshi Prediction Market

In virtually all industries, there are so-called disruptors, their numbers growing as the world becomes more technologically sophisticated and connected. And in sports betting, there can be no doubt that Kalshi has been one of the U.S. sector's biggest game-changers – even if Kalshi doesn't consider its product to be tantamount to placing a wager.

Unlike traditional sportsbooks, which are regulated on a state-by-state basis, Kalshi is a legal prediction market that functions like a stock exchange and is regulated at the federal level by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). While critics have argued that how Kalshi offers event contracts is a clever end-around to avoid state regulation and taxes, as of late 2025, only seven jurisdictions – Arizona, Illinois, Maryland, Montana, New Jersey, Nevada, and Ohio – had successfully managed to deter Kalshi from operating within their boundaries.

Hence, Kalshi is available 24/7 – save for a two-hour site maintenance window in the wee hours of each Thursday morning – in 43 states to anyone age 18 and up. Functioning along the lines of peer-to-peer or parimutuel horse betting platforms, where users play against each other instead of the house, it offers the ability to make trades in a variety of markets, including politics, weather, pop culture, business, health, and sports. While its sports offerings may not be as robust or dynamic as those at traditional sportsbooks, Kalshi has been expanding its portfolio in this area and remains a viable, legal alternative for people who live in states where sports betting is still outlawed.

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Kalshi Prediction Market Review

4.5 out of 10

Who can trade in Kalshi's prediction market

While the minimum age to bet on sports in most states is 21, people who want to buy and sell sporting event contracts on Kalshi's platform are only required to be 18 years of age. They must, however, sign up for and fund their accounts before they can start trading and swapping contracts  of any kind with fellow users.

Funding your Kalshi account

Compared to legal sportsbooks – and, again, that's not what Kalshi purports to be – deposit and withdrawal options for Kalshi accounts are rather limited. Account holders may deposit funds through bank transfer, debit card, wire transfer, and cryptocurrency. They may withdraw funds through the same methods, save for wire transfer.

Featured Kalshi signup bonus: Make 100 trades, get $10 added to your account.

After signing up for and funding their Kalshi account, a new user can get $10 added to their account by trading 100 event contracts. Bear in mind that these contracts can be consistently traded for less than a dollar and for as low as a penny, making the threshold to earn the $10 bonus rather modest from a financial standpoint.

Kalshi Rewards Programs

Kalshi offers incentive programs to users based on both volume and size of trades – or liquidity – over set periods of time. It also offers bonuses to users who recruit other users to sign up, provided those users meet minimum trading thresholds.

Sporting events available at Kalshi

While Kalshi's menu of sporting events is not as robust as at traditional sportsbooks, it's nothing to sneeze at and will undoubtedly evolve. As of late 2025, users were able to swap contracts on events involving American football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, tennis, golf, chess, esports, and motorsports.

How sports event trading works at Kalshi

The first key difference between trading sports-event contracts on Kalshi's exchange and betting on a legal sportsbook platform is that all Kalshi trades are yes or no propositions. For instance, if you think the Eagles are going to beat the Bears, you can either press "yes" for the Eagles to win or "no" for the Bears to win.

Which brings us to the second key difference: Kalshi's "odds" are viewable only in percentages and cents. So in that hypothetical Eagles-Bears matchup, if the Eagles have a 70 percent chance of winning, you'll be staking 70 cents to win $1, equaling a base profit of 30 cents. That would extrapolate out to staking $7 to get back $10 (for a $3 profit), and so on and so forth. If you like the Bears to win, a 30-cent – based on odds of 30 percent – stake would yield $1, meaning a 70-cent profit.

In the above scenario, you're staking your money on the equivalent of a moneyline bet, which is a wager – or, in Kalshi's case, a trade – that simply requires you to back the team you think is going to win. But Kalshi also offers the trading equivalent of spreads and totals – aka over-unders.

Whereas a legal sportsbook might put +110 odds on Philadelphia winning by more than 4.5 points in the Eagles' matchup with Chicago, Kalshi would have a customer stake 48 cents to gross $1 on Philadelphia covering that margin of victory. And whereas a sportsbook might put -110 odds on the two teams combining to exceed 47.5 points, Kalshi would offer its users the opportunity to stake 52 cents to gross a dollar on the two teams going over that total.

As for parlays, Kalshi calls them "combos." Figuring out how to make such a trade involves entering "combo" into the Kalshi search bar, but you're essentially taking the "yes" or "no" side of whether two separate events will happen, like backing the "yes" for the Eagles to win AND the total exceeding 47.5 points. It would not be surprising to see Kalshi fine-tune and expand its combo feature going forward and, as with all Kalshi markets, you can suggest a combo and wait to see if enough users are willing to participate in that market to give it the requisite liquidity for Kalshi approval.

While there is no equivalent to microbetting – i.e., betting on who will make the next basket in an NBA game or who will win the next point in a tennis match – on Kalshi's exchange, customers can typically buy into or sell out of a position while a sporting event is in progress, and Kalshi's percentages are updated in real time to reflect the current likelihood of certain results. In a sense, if someone were to sell out of a position for a profit or small loss before the conclusion of an event, that would be the equivalent of the cash-out option seen at most major online sportsbooks.

Kalshi does offer a reasonable number of futures contracts, like whether Oklahoma City will repeat as NBA champion, Nikola Jokic or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will be MVP, or University of Kansas point guard Darryn Peterson will be the top pick in the next NBA draft over Cameron Boozer or AJ Dybantsa. You can also take the yes or no side of, for example, whether the Milwaukee Bucks will exceed 45 wins over the course of the regular season.

Again, if history is any indication and Kalshi further solidifies its legal footing, it wouldn't be surprising if the number of sports contracts available to trade on the exchange inches closer to the sort of wagering menu offered by a traditional sportsbook.

As with stock exchanges, there are more sophisticated orders, like limit orders, available on Kalshi's platform, but in the interest of keeping things simple here, we'll recommend visiting the "trading" tab in Kalshi's help center for an explanation of how to execute such trades.

Kalshi Prediction Market Pros & Cons

Pros:

Markets that extend far beyond the sports world.
Customers trade with each other versus playing against the house.
Ability to buy into and sell out of contracts as often as one wants.
High trading limits.
Ability to create markets that don't already exist.
Resembles a stock exchange for users familiar with them.

Cons:

For users unfamiliar with exchange trading, interface can be intimidating.
Odds of something happening expressed in percentages/cents versus American odds.
Limited signup bonuses and promotions.
Parlay options limited.
Withdrawal and deposit methods somewhat limited.

Kalshi Customer Support

Kalshi's easy-to-navigate online help center provides answers to common customer questions about virtually everything the exchange has to offer. Should customers need more personalized assistance, Kalshi encourages them to email support@kalshi.com. Customers can also interact with the prediction market via its social-media accounts on Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Discord, and TikTok, with @kalshi being the most common handle.

Responsible trading at Kalshi

While most legal sportsbooks engage in responsible gambling initiatives and best practices to keep their customers from going overboard, there is nothing of that nature on Kalshi's platform. If responsible gambling advocates were to look at Kalshi with a critical eye, they might not be thrilled with the platform's high limits on trades – which is something Kalshi's higher-volume traders undoubtedly consider an asset.

The lack of microbetting and parlay options would likely find favor with RG professionals, who consider those types of wagers to be among the slipperiest of slopes on the descent toward addictive behavior. But while federal oversight has its advantages, RG professionals would likely bemoan the lack of enhanced scrutiny that state regulation might offer, and Kalshi's age minimum of 18 would not be ideal from a consumer protection standpoint.