Kalshi Glossary: Slippage, Volume, Positions & More Explained

New to Kalshi and not sure what “slippage”, “resting order” or “open interest” mean? This glossary explains the terms you’ll see in the Kalshi app in plain English, with how each one affects what you pay. Definitions follow Kalshi’s own help centre where it has one, checked October 2026.

The basics

Term	What it means
Contract	One share in an outcome. A “Yes” contract pays $1 if the outcome happens; a “No” contract pays $1 if it doesn’t.
Yes and No	The two sides of every market. Their prices roughly add up to $1: if Yes trades at 62¢, No trades near 38¢. Buying Yes and selling No are closely related; Kalshi’s help centre has a page explaining the difference in how they fill.
Market	A single yes/no question, such as whether one team wins a championship.
Event	A group of related markets. “Who will win the 2027 Pro Football Championship?” is one event with a market for each team.
Price	What one contract costs, in cents. It doubles as the implied chance: 25¢ means about 25%.
Position	The contracts you currently hold in a market, shown in your portfolio with what you paid and what they’re worth now.
Volume	How many contracts have traded in a market. High volume means it’s easy to get in and out.
Open interest	How many contracts are still held and not yet settled. Volume counts every trade; open interest only counts positions that remain open.

Orders

Term	What it means
Quick order (market order)	An order to buy a set number of contracts immediately at the best prices available. If there aren’t enough contracts at the best price, the rest fills at the next price levels, and the app shows your average price before you confirm.
Slippage	The difference between the price you see and the average price you actually pay. Kalshi’s example: buying 1,000 contracts when 500 are offered at 10¢ and 500 at 12¢ gives an average of 11¢. Small orders on busy markets rarely slip; big orders on thin markets can slip a lot.
Limit order	An order with a maximum price. It fills only at your price or better, so it protects you from slippage, but it may never fill.
Resting order	A limit order, or the unfilled part of one, that waits on the order book until someone trades against it. Cancelling a resting order is free.
Order book	The list of resting buy and sell orders at each price. The gap between the best bid and the best offer is the spread.
Auto sell (take profit)	An optional sell order at a target price, placed after your buy fills. It rests on the exchange, so it can fill while the app is closed, possibly only in part.
Flip selling	Selling more contracts than you hold: Kalshi sells your position, then buys the opposite side for the rest. For example, selling 10 No when you hold 5 sells the 5 and buys 5 Yes.
Block trade	A very large trade agreed between two qualifying institutional-size traders and recorded under Kalshi’s block-trade rules. The minimum is 25,000 contracts, so it doesn’t apply to most users.

Fees

Term	What it means
Taker	An order that trades immediately against an order already on the book. Kalshi charges its trading fee on these.
Maker	An order that rests on the book and is filled later. Some markets charge makers a smaller fee, only when the order actually trades; many charge nothing.
Trading fee	Kalshi’s fee depends on the price, and it’s highest at 50¢. See our Kalshi review for the formula and a worked table, and check the fee preview before you confirm an order.

Settlement

Term	What it means
Rules	Every market’s Rules section names the official source and exactly what counts as yes. Read it before you trade: two markets with similar titles can settle differently.
Source agency	The outside authority whose published result settles the market, such as a league, a government statistics office or an index provider.
Close time	When trading stops. It isn’t always the same as when the result is known.
Determination and settlement	Determination is when the outcome is confirmed; settlement is when winning contracts are paid into your cash balance. Kalshi says this usually takes about three hours after the outcome is known, but it can take longer while it waits for official data.
Accelerated determination	Some markets, like election races, can settle early once a consensus of media organisations projects the result, instead of waiting for the formal event (such as a swearing-in).
Did not play (DNP)	What happens if a player or team doesn’t take part. Each market’s rules set it; some settle at a fair market value.
Fair market value	A settlement price between $0 and $1 set under the rules when a market can’t settle cleanly, for example after a cancellation.

Other market types

Term	What it means
Combo	Kalshi’s version of a parlay: one contract that pays only if every leg comes true. Combos are created through a request-for-quote process and are their own markets. See Can you parlay on Kalshi?
Ranges and ladders	Many economics and crypto events have one market per range or price level, such as each possible size of a Fed move.
Ladder and escalator markets	NFL player markets that pay between $0 and $1 depending on the player’s stats, reaching $1 at the market’s maximum. Ladders pay the same for each unit; escalators pay more for each step near the top.
Collateral return	An optional setting, off by default, that frees up cash early when your positions in a group of related markets are hedged, because your maximum loss is smaller than what you paid.

FAQ

What does slippage mean on Kalshi?

Paying a worse average price than the one shown, because your order was bigger than the contracts available at the best price. Use a limit order to cap the price you pay.

What does volume mean on Kalshi?

How many contracts have changed hands in that market. Each contract settles at $1 or $0, so volume in contracts is roughly comparable to dollars at stake.

What does “positions” mean on Kalshi?

The contracts you currently own, across all markets, with their cost and current value.