Cashing out on PredictIt just got cheaper as the prediction market operator looks for an edge. PredictIt announced Wednesday that it no longer charges its 5% fee for withdrawals and has moved to a simpler model where users are only charged when they make money.
The Washington, DC-based platform, which focuses primarily on election markets, said withdrawals by ACH or check now carry no charge. It is now also giving each user one credit card deposit with no fees, up to a maximum of $1,000. Per the new schedule, PredictIt keeps its 10% fee on profits from winning trades, but drops other charges traders faced simply for moving money in or out.
“Prediction markets work best when participation is accessible,” said John Aristotle Phillips, PredictIt’s co-founder. He said lowering barriers to funding and withdrawing accounts fits the platform’s goal of being “the people’s prediction market.”
PredictIt is making the change while trying to narrow a widening gap with much larger rivals. Kalshi and Polymarket have pushed aggressively into sports and other event contracts, generating billions of dollars in monthly trading volume. PredictIt has followed a very different path. Since launching in 2014, it has largely stuck to politics and public policy.
That focus is rooted in how the platform began. PredictIt started as an academic project tied to Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Then, in October 2014, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued the university a no-action letter that allowed PredictIt to operate for research purposes.
The arrangement came with strict limits. Individual positions were limited to a maximum of $850 per contract, while each market could have no more than 5,000 traders.
PredictIt makes smart move
PredictIt’s move doesn’t make it the cheapest platform outright — Polymarket’s fee-free categories and Kalshi’s free ACH withdrawals both compete on parts of the cost stack and the number of markets offered. However, PredictIt is now the only one of the three with a genuinely simple “you don’t pay unless you win” model, with no per-trade fee siphoning off each buy and sell along the way.
That’s a real differentiator for buy-and-hold political traders who might otherwise get nicked by Kalshi’s per-contract fee when entering a trade.
Here’s how the three stack up, based on current published fee schedules:
PredictIt (new structure)
- No withdrawal fee (ACH or check)
- Free ACH deposits; one fee-free credit card deposit up to $1,000; subsequent card deposits carry a 3% fee
- 10% fee, charged only on profits from winning trades
- No per-trade fee on entering or exiting a position
Kalshi
- Free ACH withdrawals
- No deposit fees on ACH; debit card deposits run about a 2% surcharge
- Charges a per-contract transaction fee on immediately matched orders, peaking around 1.75¢ per contract near 50-50 odds; some markets also charge lower maker fees
- No flat profit-only fee; costs are baked into each trade rather than assessed only on winnings
Polymarket (global)
- No deposit or withdrawal fees on USDC transfers themselves (third-party off-ramps like MoonPay or Coinbase may charge their own conversion fees)
- Geopolitical and world-event markets are fee-free; other categories, including crypto, sports and politics, carry variable taker fees that peak around 50-50 prices
- Makers pay nothing and can earn rebates
- Polymarket US uses a separate exchange-wide taker-fee formula, rather than the global platform’s category-based rates
PredictIt continues to rebound
Those restrictions nearly ended the platform. In August 2022, the CFTC withdrew the no-action letter and ordered PredictIt to close by February 2023. PredictIt and its backer, Aristotle Inc., sued the agency in federal court in Texas. A temporary injunction let the platform keep operating while litigation played out.
The company won that fight last year. In July 2025, the CFTC amended PredictIt’s no-action relief, allowing it to continue operating with far fewer restrictions. The $850 trading cap rose to $3,500, matching the federal contribution limit on individual campaign donations.
The 5,000-trader cap disappeared entirely. Separately, Aristotle Exchange DCM, Inc., an affiliate of Aristotle Inc., which operates PredictIt, gained approval to operate as a registered derivatives exchange in September 2025. Underdog acquired the exchange and its clearinghouse in March 2026 and launched prediction markets on its own exchange in July.
That footing still leaves PredictIt as the smaller player. The platform says it has processed more than $1bn in trades since 2014, a figure that Kalshi and Polymarket’s combined volumes now often exceed in a matter of weeks, according to industry data trackers.
PredictIt has also built a base of more than 160 data partners, including researchers at Harvard, Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who use its pricing as a running gauge of political expectations.
Removing friction from deposits and withdrawals is a low-cost way for PredictIt to retain that niche. Traders who once lost 5% on every withdrawal now keep the full amount. The company is betting that easier access, more than new markets or bigger prizes, will keep its research-driven audience from drifting toward rivals offering broader menus of contracts and fewer regulatory scars.