Polymarket Fee Calculator
Calculate taker fees on any Polymarket trade by market category, size, and share price. Maker orders pay $0.
Taker Fee
$2.50000
Fee as % of amount paid
2.50%
Maker Fee
$0.00
Only taker orders pay fees. Market orders are always takers. Limit orders are makers only when they sit on the book and get filled by someone else — a limit order priced to cross the spread fills as a taker and still pays. 15% of collected taker fees in Sports markets are redistributed daily to market makers via the Maker Rebates Program.
Sportsbook Comparison
Polymarket Fee
$2.50
Typical Sportsbook (~5% vig)
$5.00
You Save
$2.50
View full fee table for Sports (100 shares)
| Price | Trade Value | Fee (pUSD) | Effective Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0.01 | $1 | $0.05 | 4.95% |
| $0.05 | $5 | $0.24 | 4.75% |
| $0.10 | $10 | $0.45 | 4.50% |
| $0.20 | $20 | $0.80 | 4.00% |
| $0.30 | $30 | $1.05 | 3.50% |
| $0.40 | $40 | $1.20 | 3.00% |
| $0.50 | $50 | $1.25 | 2.50% |
| $0.60 | $60 | $1.20 | 2.00% |
| $0.70 | $70 | $1.05 | 1.50% |
| $0.80 | $80 | $0.80 | 1.00% |
| $0.90 | $90 | $0.45 | 0.50% |
| $0.95 | $95 | $0.24 | 0.25% |
| $0.99 | $99 | $0.05 | 0.05% |
Sports markets: max taker fee $1.25 per 100 shares (at 50%). Makers pay $0. Fee formula: fee = C × 0.05 × p × (1 - p). Fees effective July 2026.
Two ways to express the same fee. As a share of the amount you pay, the rate falls as the price rises (it equals feeRate × (1 − p), so crypto peaks near 7% on very cheap shares). Polymarket's own documentation quotes fees the other way — as a share of the payout at 50% probability — which is why you'll see "peak 1.75%" for crypto and "peak 1.25%" for sports. Those figures are identical to the max fee per 100 shares, because 100 shares pay out $100.
Polymarket Fees by Category (2026)
Polymarket charges a dynamic taker fee based on market category and share price:
fee = C × feeRate × p × (1 - p)C is the number of shares, p is the share price. Fees peak at a 50% share price and fall toward both extremes. Makers pay zero fees.
| Category | Taker Fee Rate | Maker Fee Rate | Maker Rebate Share | Max Fee (100 shares) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Politics | 0.04 | 0 | 25% | $1.00 |
| Finance | 0.04 | 0 | 25% | $1.00 |
| Tech | 0.04 | 0 | 25% | $1.00 |
| Mentions | 0.04 | 0 | 25% | $1.00 |
| Sports | 0.05 | 0 | 15% | $1.25 |
| Economics | 0.05 | 0 | 25% | $1.25 |
| Culture | 0.05 | 0 | 25% | $1.25 |
| Weather | 0.05 | 0 | 25% | $1.25 |
| Other / General | 0.05 | 0 | 25% | $1.25 |
| Crypto | 0.07 | 0 | 20% | $1.75 |
| Geopolitics | 0 | 0 | — | $0.00 (fee-free) |
The max fee occurs at p = $0.50 and equals 25 × feeRate per 100 shares. Politics, finance, tech and mentions are the cheapest fee-bearing categories at $1.00; sports is not the cheapest — it sits mid-table alongside economics, culture, weather and other.
Sports fees rose in July 2026. The sports taker rate moved from 0.03 to 0.05, lifting the max fee from $0.75 to $1.25 per 100 shares, and the sports maker rebate share fell from 25% to 15%. Sports was previously the cheapest fee-bearing category.
Between 15% and 25% of collected taker fees are redistributed daily to market makers through the Maker Rebates Program. Fees are effective July 2026.
Worked Examples
What a real trade actually costs, across sizes and categories:
| Trade | Category | Size | Share Price | Trade Value | Fee | Fee as % of amount paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sports | Sports | 100 shares | $0.50 | $50.00 | $1.25 | 2.50% |
| Sports | Sports | 1,000 shares | $0.50 | $500.00 | $12.50 | 2.50% |
| Politics | Politics | 100 shares | $0.60 | $60.00 | $0.96 | 1.60% |
| Crypto | Crypto | 500 shares | $0.50 | $250.00 | $8.75 | 3.50% |
| Geopolitics | Geopolitics | 1,000 shares | $0.50 | $500.00 | $0.00 | 0% |
| Small trade | Sports | 100 shares | $0.10 | $10.00 | $0.45 | 4.50% |
| Large trade | Sports | 10,000 shares | $0.50 | $5,000.00 | $125.00 | 2.50% |
For comparison, a $500 stake at a traditional sportsbook carries roughly $20–50 of implied vig (4–10%). The same $500 on Polymarket costs $0–17.50 depending on category.
Fee by Share Price — 100 Shares, Sports Rate
| Share Price | Trade Value | Fee | Fee as % of amount paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0.01 | $1.00 | $0.05 | 4.95% |
| $0.05 | $5.00 | $0.24 | 4.75% |
| $0.10 | $10.00 | $0.45 | 4.50% |
| $0.20 | $20.00 | $0.80 | 4.00% |
| $0.30 | $30.00 | $1.05 | 3.50% |
| $0.40 | $40.00 | $1.20 | 3.00% |
| $0.50 | $50.00 | $1.25 | 2.50% |
| $0.60 | $60.00 | $1.20 | 2.00% |
| $0.70 | $70.00 | $1.05 | 1.50% |
| $0.80 | $80.00 | $0.80 | 1.00% |
| $0.90 | $90.00 | $0.45 | 0.50% |
| $0.95 | $95.00 | $0.24 | 0.25% |
| $0.99 | $99.00 | $0.05 | 0.05% |
The dollar fee peaks at 50% probability and falls symmetrically toward the extremes. The percentage rate does not peak there — it falls steadily as the price rises. The calculator above labels its percentage explicitly as “fee as % of amount paid” for exactly this reason.
Maker vs Taker
- Takers fill immediately against existing book orders. Market orders are always takers, and a limit order priced aggressively enough to cross the spread is a taker too. Takers pay the fee.
- Makers post limit orders that rest on the book and get filled by someone else. Makers pay $0.
Maker Rebates Program
On top of paying nothing, makers receive a share of the taker fees collected in the markets they quote. The pool is distributed fee-curve weighted using the same formula as the taker fee — C × feeRate × p × (1 - p) — calculated per market, paid daily in pUSD, with a $1 minimum accrued before a payout is made.
The “Maker Rebate Share” column above is the share of collected taker fees redistributed to makers, not a discount on maker fees. Makers owe nothing, so there is nothing to discount.
Posting resting limit orders also makes you eligible for Liquidity Rewards, which pay separately on top of the maker rebate. The market-making guide covers how the two stack.
How Fees Are Collected
- Buy orders: collected in shares — you receive slightly fewer shares than a fee-free fill would give.
- Sell orders: collected in pUSD — you receive slightly less pUSD.
- Fees are rounded to 5 decimal places; the smallest fee charged is 0.00001.
- Trades small enough to round below that incur no fee at all.
- The trading currency is pUSD. Polymarket charges no fee to deposit or withdraw.
Fees apply only to markets deployed on or after a fee activation date; pre-existing markets are unaffected. Markets carrying fees have feesEnabled set to true.
A Note on the “Effective Rate”
Two different numbers both get called the effective rate, and both are arithmetically correct:
| Convention | Formula | Crypto peak at $0.50 |
|---|---|---|
| Share of payout ← the one to quote | feeRate × p × (1 - p) | 1.75% |
| Share of amount paid | feeRate × (1 - p) | 3.50% (approaching 7% as p → 0) |
Polymarket’s own documentation quotes the share-of-payout convention, and it agrees with the max-fee-per-100-shares figures in the table above: $1.75 per 100 shares is 1.75% of the $100 payout. Use that one for headline percentages. The calculator’s own output is the share-of-amount-paid figure, labelled as such.
Comparison
| Platform | Typical Fee Range | Model |
|---|---|---|
| Polymarket | $1.00 – $1.75 per 100 shares (geopolitics free) | Category-based, varies by price |
| Kalshi | Varies by market; makers charged on many markets | Per-contract, rounds the fill total up to the next cent |
| PredictIt | 10% on profits + 5% withdrawal fee | Fixed percentage, non-profit project |
| Traditional sportsbooks | 5% – 15% margin (vig) | Built into the odds |
| Stock brokers | $0 – $0.65 per contract | Per trade or per contract |
Reducing What You Pay
- Quote instead of taking. Maker orders pay $0 and earn a rebate share. On crypto (0.07) and sports (0.05) the gap between taking and making is the widest.
- Trade geopolitics markets. They are fee-free.
- Prefer the 0.04 categories. Politics, finance, tech and mentions share the lowest taker rate of any fee-bearing category.
- Size matters less than price. The fee scales with shares and with
p × (1 - p), so trading near the extremes is cheap per dollar of exposure. - Sell orders are collected in pUSD, buy orders in shares. Rounding to 5 decimal places cuts both ways on very small orders.
See Polymarket Fees Explained for the short version of how the fee is derived, and Polymarket Rebates & Rewards for the taker rebate ladder, Liquidity Rewards and Holding Rewards.