Kalshi Review 2026: The Platform That Lets You Trade the Weather (And Almost Anything Else)

If you have been following prediction markets at all over the past few years, you have almost certainly come across Kalshi. It is the first CFTC-regulated prediction market exchange in the United States, and it has grown aggressively since launching in 2021. But the question most traders actually want answered is straightforward: is Kalshi worth trading on in 2026?

We trade on Kalshi every day. Not a few casual bets here and there — we run automated trading bots that execute hundreds of contracts across weather, economics, crypto, and financial markets. This review comes from that experience: thousands of trades, real P&L, and dealing with the platform’s strengths and limitations firsthand.

What Is Kalshi?

Kalshi is an event contract exchange. You buy and sell binary contracts that pay out $1 if an event happens, and $0 if it does not. The price of a contract reflects the market’s implied probability of that event occurring. If you buy a contract at 35 cents, you are effectively saying there is a greater than 35% chance the event happens. If it does, you collect $1 per contract. If it does not, you lose your 35-cent stake.

This is the same fundamental mechanic as other prediction markets, but Kalshi has one critical differentiator: it is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. That matters. It means your funds are held in segregated accounts, the exchange follows real compliance rules, and you have legal recourse if something goes wrong. For US-based traders, this is the single most important factor when choosing a prediction market.

CFTC Regulation: Why It Matters

Unregulated prediction markets — including popular crypto-based platforms — carry counterparty risk that most traders underestimate. Funds can be frozen, markets can be resolved incorrectly with no appeal, and you have no regulatory body to escalate to. Kalshi operates under CFTC oversight, which means it must comply with capital requirements, audit standards, and dispute resolution processes.

In practice, this means your deposits are protected, market resolution rules are clearly defined in advance, and the exchange cannot simply change the rules after the fact. For anyone trading with meaningful capital, this is not a nice-to-have. It is a requirement.

Getting Started: Account Setup and Deposits

Signing up for Kalshi takes about five minutes. You will need to provide standard KYC information: name, address, Social Security number, and a government-issued ID. Verification is typically completed within minutes, though it can occasionally take up to a day.

Once verified, you can deposit funds via bank transfer (ACH), wire transfer, or debit card. ACH deposits are free and usually settle within one to two business days. Debit card deposits are instant but carry a small processing fee. Withdrawals are free and process within a few business days via ACH.

The minimum deposit is low enough that you can start with as little as a few dollars, though to trade at any meaningful scale, you will want at least a few hundred dollars in your account.

One important limitation: Kalshi is only available to US residents. If you are based outside the United States, you cannot legally trade on the platform.

Available Market Types

This is where Kalshi has improved significantly over the past year. The market selection has expanded well beyond the political event contracts that originally put prediction markets on the map. Here is what you can trade in 2026:

Weather Markets

Kalshi offers daily and weekly temperature markets for major US cities — will the high in Chicago exceed 45 degrees tomorrow, for example. These are genuinely interesting from a trading perspective because weather forecasts provide a quantifiable edge. If you can model forecast uncertainty better than the crowd, there is money to be made.

The weather markets settle based on official NOAA data, so resolution is clean and unambiguous. We actively trade these with automated models, and the key challenge is not the forecasting — it is the liquidity and fee structure, which we will get into later. If weather trading interests you, check out our detailed guide on how to trade weather markets on Kalshi.

Economics Markets

Will the Fed cut rates at the next meeting? Will CPI come in above 3%? Will initial jobless claims exceed 220,000? Kalshi has contracts on all of the major economic indicators. These markets tend to see the most liquidity around event dates and can move sharply on data releases.

For traders who follow macroeconomic data, these are some of the most intellectually honest markets on the platform. The outcomes are objective and based on official government data releases.

Financial Markets

Kalshi has rolled out a significant number of financial markets, including daily and weekly contracts on the S&P 500 (SPX), Nasdaq, and other indices. You can trade range contracts (will SPX close between 5,800 and 5,900 today?), above/below contracts, and end-of-day settlement contracts.

These markets are essentially an alternative to options for making short-term directional or range-bound bets on equities indices. The structure is simpler than traditional options — no Greeks to manage, no expiration curves to navigate — though the tradeoff is less flexibility.

Crypto Price Markets

Bitcoin and Ethereum price contracts are available, structured similarly to the financial markets. Will BTC be above $95,000 at the end of the day? These markets are popular and generally have decent liquidity, though spreads can widen during quiet periods.

Politics and Events

The original prediction market bread and butter. Presidential election markets, congressional races, Supreme Court decisions, and various other political events. These tend to be the most liquid markets on the platform, especially as elections approach.

Sports

Following the regulatory green light in late 2024, Kalshi added sports event contracts. These have quickly become a major volume driver. Sports markets brought a significant influx of new users to the platform and have meaningfully improved overall exchange liquidity.

Fee Structure: The Critical Detail

Fees are the single most important factor that determines whether a trading strategy is viable on Kalshi. Understanding the fee structure is essential before you start trading.

Kalshi uses a maker-taker fee model. The fees are calculated using a formula based on the number of contracts and the contract price:

Taker fee: Calculated as ceil(0.07 * C * P * (1 - P)), where C is the number of contracts and P is the price. The maximum taker fee is approximately 1.75 cents per contract, which occurs when the contract is priced near 50 cents.
Maker fee: Calculated as ceil(0.0175 * C * P * (1 - P)). Maker fees are roughly one-quarter of taker fees.

In practice, this means:

A contract priced near 50 cents costs about 1.75 cents per contract as a taker.
A contract priced near 10 cents or 90 cents costs significantly less — often under a penny.
Maker orders (resting limit orders that provide liquidity) pay substantially lower fees.

There are no withdrawal fees, which is a genuine positive. Some competing platforms charge withdrawal fees or have minimum withdrawal thresholds that can trap small balances.

Why Fees Matter More Than You Think

Here is the honest truth from someone running automated strategies: fees eat into thin edges ruthlessly. If you find a contract mispriced by 3 cents, your round-trip fee cost (buying and then selling, or buying and holding to settlement) can consume half of that edge or more.

Market making — the strategy of placing both buy and sell orders to capture the bid-ask spread — does not work on Kalshi because of the fee structure. On a traditional exchange with zero or near-zero maker fees, a market maker profits from the spread. On Kalshi, the maker fee, while lower than the taker fee, still eats into the spread enough to make pure market making unprofitable in most markets.

This is the single biggest limitation of the platform for sophisticated traders. Your strategies need to have real directional or informational edge, not just liquidity provision edge. The fees force you to be selective and to only trade when your model gives you a meaningful probability advantage.

The Trading Interface

Kalshi’s web-based trading interface is clean and functional. The order book is displayed clearly, you can place market and limit orders, and the portfolio view gives you a reasonable overview of your open positions and P&L.

That said, the interface is designed for casual and intermediate traders. If you are used to professional trading platforms like ThinkOrSwim or Interactive Brokers’ Trader Workstation, Kalshi’s interface will feel basic. There are no advanced charting tools, no custom watchlists with alerting, and limited order types beyond basic limit and market orders.

For most retail prediction market traders, the interface is perfectly adequate. For power users, the API is where you will spend your time.

Mobile App

Kalshi has a mobile app for both iOS and Android. It covers the basics: browsing markets, placing orders, checking your portfolio, and depositing funds. The app is stable and responsive, and for quick trades or checking positions on the go, it works well.

It is not a replacement for the desktop experience if you are doing serious analysis or managing a large number of positions, but it is a solid companion app.

API Access: Where Kalshi Shines for Serious Traders

This is where Kalshi earns real points. The REST API is well-documented, reliable, and covers everything you need for automated trading: market discovery, order placement and management, position tracking, and portfolio queries.

Key highlights of the API:

RESTful design with clear endpoint structure
WebSocket support for real-time order book and trade data
Reasonable rate limits that accommodate automated trading without excessive throttling
Good documentation with examples and clear error codes

We run trading bots against the Kalshi API daily, and the experience is generally positive. Orders execute reliably, market data is timely, and the authentication system is straightforward. There are occasional hiccups — brief periods of elevated latency, or the rare 500 error during high-traffic periods — but the overall reliability is solid for a platform of this maturity.

If you are a developer or quantitative trader, the API alone is a strong reason to choose Kalshi over competitors that either lack API access entirely or offer poorly documented, unreliable endpoints. We walk through the full technical setup in our guide to building a trading bot with prediction market APIs.

One practical note: the API allows you to build strategies that would be tedious or impossible to execute manually. Scanning hundreds of weather or economics markets for mispriced contracts, placing limit orders across dozens of markets simultaneously, and automatically managing exit strategies — all of this requires API access, and Kalshi makes it feasible.

Liquidity: The Honest Assessment

Liquidity on Kalshi is a mixed bag, and being honest about this matters more than giving it a blanket rating.

Where liquidity is good:

High-profile political markets (elections, major policy decisions)
Sports markets
Daily S&P 500 above/below contracts near the money
Major economic indicator markets close to data release dates

Where liquidity is thin:

Niche weather markets for smaller cities
Far-out-of-the-money financial contracts
Economics markets well before the event date
Markets in their first few days of trading

When liquidity is thin, bid-ask spreads widen, and you either have to cross the spread (paying taker fees on an already wide spread) or place a maker order and wait. For time-sensitive strategies, this can mean missed opportunities.

The good news is that liquidity has been on a clear upward trajectory. The platform is growing, more traders are joining, and Kalshi has been actively adding market maker partnerships. Compared to where things stood in 2024, the improvement is substantial.

Deposits and Withdrawals

This is one area where Kalshi is genuinely hassle-free:

ACH deposits: Free, settle in 1-2 business days
Wire transfers: Available for larger amounts
Debit card: Instant deposits with a small fee
Withdrawals: Free via ACH, typically process within a few business days

No withdrawal fees is a meaningful advantage. Some competing platforms make it expensive or inconvenient to get your money out, which should always be a red flag. Kalshi does not play those games.

Pros and Cons

Pros

CFTC-regulated — your funds are protected and the exchange operates under real oversight. This is the safest prediction market available to US traders.
Wide market selection — weather, economics, financials, crypto, politics, and sports. You are not limited to just election betting.
Strong API — well-documented, reliable, and fully featured for algorithmic trading.
Growing liquidity — noticeably better than a year ago, with more improvement expected.
No withdrawal fees — you can move your money freely.
Clean settlement rules — markets resolve based on objective, pre-defined data sources (NOAA, BLS, official government data).

Cons

Fees erode thin edges — the taker fee structure makes market making unviable and requires strategies to have substantial edge to be profitable. This is the platform’s biggest weakness for active traders.
Thin liquidity in niche markets — if you are trading anything outside the most popular markets, expect wide spreads and slow fills.
US residents only — no international access. If you are outside the US, Kalshi is not an option.
Basic trading interface — adequate for casual traders but lacking for professionals who want advanced tools.
Limited order types — no stop-loss orders, no conditional orders, no bracket orders. Risk management beyond basic limit orders has to be handled on your end via the API.

Who Should Use Kalshi?

Kalshi is a good fit if you:

Are a US-based trader looking for a regulated prediction market
Have a quantitative or informational edge in weather, economics, or financial markets
Want API access for automated or semi-automated trading
Are interested in prediction markets beyond just political event betting
Want the safety of CFTC regulation and segregated funds

Kalshi is not a good fit if you:

Are looking to market make or scalp thin spreads (fees make this unviable)
Need deep liquidity for large position sizes in niche markets
Are based outside the United States
Want a full-featured professional trading platform with advanced charting and order types

Verdict: 7.5 / 10

Kalshi is the best regulated prediction market exchange in the United States, and for many traders, it is the only serious option. The CFTC regulation provides genuine safety, the market selection is broad and growing, and the API is strong enough to support real algorithmic trading.

The fee structure is the platform’s Achilles’ heel. It is not unreasonable for casual traders making a handful of bets, but for active traders trying to grind out consistent profits, the fees are a constant headwind. Every strategy you build has to account for fees as a first-order concern, not an afterthought.

Liquidity is the other area that still needs improvement, though the trajectory is positive. As the platform grows and attracts more participants, this should continue to get better.

If you are a US-based trader with genuine edge in any of the markets Kalshi offers, the platform is worth your time. The regulatory safety, market variety, and API access make it the clear leader in the US prediction market space. Just go in with realistic expectations about fees and liquidity, and build your strategies accordingly. To see how Kalshi stacks up against the competition, read our Kalshi vs Polymarket comparison.