Polymarket is best known for binary prediction markets — you buy Yes or No shares on an event and they settle at $1 or $0. Alongside that, the platform now runs a full perpetual futures exchange.
Perps are leveraged contracts that track an underlying asset — a crypto asset, stock, index or commodity — with no expiry. You hold a long or short position, post margin, and can be liquidated. There is no resolution event, no $1/$0 payout, and no waiting for an outcome.
This guide covers how they work, what it costs, and where they’re available.
Open Polymarket PerpsWhat’s Available to Trade
The Perps exchange covers four broad groups:
- Crypto — BTC, ETH, SOL and a long tail of others
- Stocks — large caps including META, MSFT, TSLA, ORCL, PLTR and more
- Indices — S&P 500, Nasdaq 100
- Commodities — gold, silver, Brent and WTI crude
That breadth is the main thing to understand if you’re coming from prediction markets: this isn’t only a crypto venue. It runs continuously, including outside the hours when the underlying cash market is closed.
Leverage and Margin
Leverage goes up to 20x on crypto, the S&P 500, oil, gold and silver, and up to 10x on other real-world assets. Not every market supports every configuration — some are isolated-margin only and will reject cross margin.
Isolated vs cross margin:
| Isolated | Cross | |
|---|---|---|
| Collateral | Dedicated per position | Shared across the account |
| Liquidation scope | Affects only that position | Can unwind the whole cross account |
| PnL netting | None | Unrealised PnL on one position offsets margin on another |
| Default | Yes — the web app opens new positions isolated | Opt-in via the API |
Maintenance margin is flat per market at MMR = 0.5 ÷ max leverage — so 2.5% on a 20x market. That’s half the initial margin rate at maximum leverage, which means a max-leverage position is liquidated only after losing roughly half its posted margin. At lower leverage the buffer between your entry margin and liquidation is wider.
Three states are evaluated continuously:
| State | Condition | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Healthy | Equity ≥ IM | Normal trading |
| Margin call | MM ≤ Equity < IM | Reduce-only: close exposure or deposit collateral |
| Liquidation | Equity < MM | The system closes the position |
Depositing during a margin call instantly increases equity and can restore healthy status. You can also withdraw collateral while a position is open, as long as equity stays above the required initial margin afterwards.
Fees
Perps fees use a different formula from prediction markets:
fee = abs(Price × Quantity) × RateThat is a flat percentage of notional value, tiered by your trailing 30-day trading volume and re-evaluated every UTC day:
| 30-Day Volume | Taker | Maker |
|---|---|---|
| $0 | 0.0400% | 0.0125% |
| $1M | 0.0370% | 0.0100% |
| $5M | 0.0350% | 0.0080% |
| $25M | 0.0300% | 0.0050% |
| $100M | 0.0270% | 0.0020% |
| $500M | 0.0250% | 0.0000% |
| $1B | 0.0200% | −0.0050% (rebate) |
Two things follow from the formula that are easy to miss:
- The effective rate is the same at every price and every size — unlike prediction markets, where the effective rate falls as the price rises.
- Fees are charged on notional, not on the margin you post. A $10,000 position at 10x leverage uses $1,000 of margin but attracts a fee on the full $10,000. Leverage increases your fee bill without increasing your deposit.
At the top tier the maker rate turns negative: makers receive 0.0050% of notional rather than paying it.
Work out your exact numbers with the Perps fee calculator.
Funding
Funding keeps the contract price close to the underlying’s spot price. When a market trades above its index price, longs generally pay shorts; when it trades below, shorts generally pay longs.
- A premium index is sampled every 5 seconds by walking the book for 1,000 of quote-asset notional on each side.
- Samples are averaged over a one-hour charge window, run through an eight-hour formula with a fixed interest leg and a clamp, then capped at ±4% per hour.
- Settlement happens once per window.
- Polymarket takes no cut — funding is a payment between traders, not a fee.
A rolling 5-second premium sample and its implied eight-hour rate are published continuously, so you can see funding pressure building between settlements rather than being surprised by it.
Placing a Trade
Orders work as limit or market-style, with GTC, IOC and FOK time-in-force values. Two useful tags:
- Post-only on a GTC order rejects it if it would take liquidity — useful if you want to guarantee maker pricing.
- Reduce-only prevents an order from increasing exposure, which is how you close.
Self-trade prevention is always on and cannot be disabled. If you would match your own resting order, the conflicting resting maker is cancelled and your taker order continues matching against other makers.
Worth knowing: pre-trade margin uses the worst-case position size from your existing exposure plus all resting orders on each side, not just your current position:
WorstCaseSize = max(|Position + OpenBuys|, |Position - OpenSells|)That’s why an order can be rejected even when your current equity looks comfortable — the check is against what your position could become.
How Perps Differs From Prediction Markets
| Prediction markets | Perps | |
|---|---|---|
| Instrument | Binary Yes/No share, $0–$1 | Perpetual future, tracked to a spot price |
| Expiry | Resolves on an event | None |
| Leverage | None | Up to 20x (10x on some RWA) |
| Downside | Capped at what you paid | Can be liquidated; losses can exceed your margin |
| Funding | None | Paid or received each window |
| Fee basis | C × feeRate × p × (1 − p) | abs(Price × Quantity) × Rate |
| Settlement | $1 or $0 at resolution | Marked to market continuously |
If you want bounded downside and no liquidation risk, the prediction markets are the right instrument — see trading Bitcoin without liquidation risk. If you want leverage, Perps is the venue.
Geographic Restrictions — Different From Prediction Markets
Perps order placement is not permitted from the United States, Canada, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Crimea, Donetsk or Luhansk. Read-only market data is unrestricted.
⚠️ This list is not the same as Polymarket’s prediction-market restrictions. The clearest example is Canada: Perps order placement is blocked nationwide, while prediction markets are only close-only in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta and Quebec. Check the country availability guide for the prediction-market picture, and treat Perps separately.
The Perps Referral Program
Perps runs its own referral program, separate from prediction markets:
- 20% of the trading fees paid by traders you refer
- No cap on how much a single referred trader can earn you
- Paid weekly
For comparison, prediction-market referrals pay 10% of net fees and end after 30 days or when the referral reaches Platinum. The two programs use different codes and track earnings independently.
Getting Started
- Open Polymarket Perps
- Fund your account — see how to deposit
- Check the Perps fee calculator before sizing a position
- Start with isolated margin at low leverage to understand the mechanics before scaling
Related Guides
- Polymarket Perps Fee Calculator — Your exact fee by notional and tier
- Polymarket for Crypto Traders — The 10-minute setup
- How to Trade on Polymarket — Order types and the order book
- Trading Bitcoin Without Liquidation Risk — The bounded-downside alternative
- Polymarket Fees Explained — Prediction-market fees
- Polymarket vs Hyperliquid — How Perps compares to a dedicated perp DEX