How does Kalshi make money, and can you make money on Kalshi? The first question has a simple answer: Kalshi earns a fee on trades and doesn’t bet against its customers. The second is harder. This guide explains Kalshi’s business model, then the practical habits that separate careful traders from people who just pay fees, without promising anything a market can’t deliver.
How Kalshi makes money
Kalshi is an exchange: it matches buyers with sellers and takes a fee, rather than setting odds and taking the other side like a sportsbook. Its help centre says it makes money from transaction fees and has no stake in the outcome of any market.
- Taker fees on orders that fill immediately: $0.07 to $1.75 per 100 contracts on most markets, highest at 50¢. See Kalshi fees.
- Maker fees on some series, charged only when a resting order fills.
- Payment fees on some deposit methods, such as debit cards, which may carry a processing fee of up to 2%.
Because Kalshi earns on volume, not on who wins, it has an incentive to list markets people want to trade, which is why sports now make up a large share of its activity. On the other side of the ledger, it pays interest on eligible cash balances.
Funding and valuation
| When | Raise | Reported valuation |
|---|---|---|
| June 2025 | $185 million (Series C, led by Paradigm) | $2 billion |
| October 2025 | $300 million | $5 billion |
| Late 2025 | $1 billion | $11 billion |
| 2026 | $1 billion (Series F, led by Coatue) | $22 billion |
When it announced the Series F, Kalshi said its annualised revenue was above $1.5 billion. In autumn 2026 Bloomberg and Reuters reported talks on a further round at around $40 billion; it hadn’t been announced as closed when we checked. From company announcements and reporting, checked October 2026.
Can you make money on Kalshi?
Some traders do, but every contract has a winner and a loser, and fees come out of every taker trade, so the average trader loses a little. To come out ahead you need to be right more often than the price implies, by more than you pay in fees and spread. These habits help:
- Compare the price with your own estimate. A 40¢ contract is only a good buy if you think the chance is clearly above 40%. If you can’t say why the market is wrong, don’t trade.
- Use limit orders. On most markets, resting orders pay no fee, and you avoid crossing the spread.
- Trade what you know. Specialist knowledge, such as how a weather station reports or how a data agency rounds its numbers, matters more in niche markets than in heavily traded ones.
- Read the rules. Settlement is decided by the exact wording and source in each market’s rules, not by the headline.
- Size small. Even a good estimate loses often. Never stake money you can’t afford to lose.
- Compare venues. When the same question trades on Polymarket, our price-gap scanner shows where the price is better.
FAQ
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