What to use instead of Kalshi

The product

Kalshi is the oldest regulated venue in this category — KalshiEX LLC received its Order of Designation as a CFTC-designated contract market on 3 November 2020, and clearing came in-house when Kalshi Klear LLC was granted registration as a derivatives clearing organization in August 2024. Our card covers what it is and what it costs. This page is about the three ways people end up leaving, which are not the same problem and do not have the same answer.

You are outside the United States and the money will not move. This is the one that catches people after they have already been approved, because eligibility and funding are two different restrictions. Kalshi has served many countries since March 2026, subject to a member agreement whose restricted list — amended by an Exchange Notice effective 22 June 2026 — now runs to 55 jurisdictions. Clear that hurdle and a second one is waiting: ACH, PayPal and Venmo are not available to international users, so funding is a debit card, a wire with a $1,000 minimum, or crypto, and withdrawals are debit card or crypto only. Wire withdrawals are documented as not currently supported below $500,000. None of that is a geoblock; it is a banking relationship that your bank may decline on its own terms.

Note also what the jurisdiction restriction consists of. It is a representation and warranty you make at signup — that you are not domiciled, organized or located in a prohibited jurisdiction — rather than a documented technical block, and the agreement may be amended unilaterally on notice. The June 2026 notice added India, Ireland, New Zealand and Portugal to a list that had not included them in February. That is a venue you can be eligible for in one quarter and not the next, through no act of your own.

The question you want is not listed, and will not be. Kalshi lists broadly — aggregating the category field over 200 live open events on 19 September 2026 gives economics 57, sports 55, entertainment 22, elections 18, politics 15, science and technology 14, climate and weather 8 — but every one of those series exists because it was self-certified with the CFTC and survived review. A designated contract market does not list a question because three people are curious about it. This is a structural limit and not a backlog.

You do not want the exchange grading its own market. Kalshi's markets team determines the outcome, as the exchange, against the source named in each market's rules. There is no bond, no dispute window and no third-party vote: if the team reads the source differently from you, that is the answer. It is worth saying that Kalshi publishes more of this than anyone — every event exposes a machine-readable settlement_sources array of names and URLs through the public API — but publishing the source is not the same as handing the decision to someone else.

What to use instead

If the problem is the funding rail, the fix is a venue with no bank in the path. Polymarket is the obvious one for a non-US reader: collateral is pUSD, an ERC-20 backed one-for-one by USDC, an account is a wallet, and there is no identity check in the ordinary flow. Check its list against yours first, though — Polymarket blocks the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Brazil outright, and Kalshi restricts a different set, so a reader is quite often barred by exactly one of the two. Limitless is USDC on Base with a much shorter list — the United States, the "Republic of China", Ontario and Alberta, plus the sanctioned territories. Myriad names nineteen prohibited territories, several of them unexpected: France, Malta, Singapore and Switzerland, and the Cayman Islands where its own operator is registered. Futuur takes USDC or USDT where its Anjouan licence permits and play money everywhere else.

If the problem is jurisdiction rather than the rail, there is one route that stays regulated and cash-settled. ForecastEx has no direct accounts at all — Rule 301 bars individuals from membership — so access runs through a futures commission merchant, and Interactive Brokers' own disclosures name its Canada, Ireland, Hong Kong and Singapore entities among those whose eligible clients can trade forecast contracts. All four of those are on Kalshi's restricted list. The trade-off is the listing: macro releases, Fed policy, climate indicators and US elections, no sports, and US election contracts restricted to eligible US residents even inside a served country.

If the problem is the question set, split it by what kind of question it is. A short-cadence crypto question — BTC or ETH up or down over five minutes, fifteen minutes or an hour — is Limitless's core listing rather than an afterthought. A question about something nobody would self-certify belongs on Manifold, where anyone opens a market in about thirty seconds, the creator resolves it, and the currency is mana, which the documentation describes plainly as play money that cannot be converted to cash. A question you want answered rather than traded belongs on Metaculus: no balance, no position, nothing to sell, and a log-score-based record that is the point of being there. Polymarket sits in between on breadth, and it charges nothing at all to take a geopolitics market.

If the problem is who resolves, note first that no US exchange solves it. Polymarket US is worse on this axis, not better: Rule 10.4 lets named officers review any market at sole discretion, determine the final outcome and reverse an obvious error, and states that the company's determinations are final. ForecastEx narrows the discretion instead of moving it — the contract's own terms document names the source agency and the resolution time in advance, and the building-permits contract states that only the initial release counts and later revisions do not affect the outcome. Outside the US, Limitless resolves most markets automatically through Pyth at the deadline and the 5- and 15-minute crypto markets against a Chainlink time-weighted average, with only custom event markets going to its team; Polymarket hands the decision to the UMA optimistic oracle, where a proposal is bonded, challengeable for two hours and escalates on a second dispute to a vote of UMA token holders that the company cannot overturn. That is the one arrangement in the category where the venue is not the judge — and it is a vote of token holders, which some readers dislike more than they dislike an exchange.

What you give up

The settlement source as a field rather than a sentence. Kalshi publishes a machine-readable settlement_sources array on every event — a name and a URL, live examples including NATO's own site, a specific NASA GISS data file and democrats.org — and some markets require several named outlets to agree. Nothing else in this category comes close. On Myriad the API returns a resolution-source URL per market, which is the nearest equivalent; on Polymarket and Limitless the market page is the authoritative rule and you read it by hand, one market at a time. You are trading an un-appealable decision that is fully documented for one that is less documented and, on most of this list, also un-appealable.

The dollars, and everything attached to them. Kalshi settles in US dollars, fully collateralised and cleared through its own clearing house, issues tax documents electronically at year end, makes trade history downloadable with every transaction itemised, and updates a profit-and-loss statement on the first of each month. Polymarket, Limitless and Myriad give you none of that: a wallet you have to fund for gas, a stablecoin whose accounting is yours to do, and a tax conversation you will be having with your own records. Myriad goes further — 31 of the 70 open markets returned by its public API on 19 September 2026 were denominated in PTS season points rather than in money, and they look identical to stablecoin markets in the interface.

The most complete developer surface in the category, and the only rehearsal. REST, WebSocket and a FIX session for institutional flow, first-party Python and TypeScript SDKs, subaccounts, RFQ and block trades, historical endpoints — and a demo environment with separate credentials that lets you run a strategy against the real shape of the exchange without funding anything. There is no demo environment anywhere else in this category. Limitless and Myriad each ship a documented API and an MCP server, Polymarket has the deepest third-party ecosystem, and ForecastEx publishes no public API, no WebSocket feed and no SDK at all — what you get there is whatever your broker's platform offers. If your position is placed by code, price that difference before the fee difference.

A maker side that is free almost everywhere. Kalshi's maker multiplier defaults to zero, and reading the fee_type field across every series it publishes on 19 September 2026 finds a maker fee on 160 of 11,078 — 1.4%. Taking costs $1.75 per 100 contracts at the midpoint, which is dearer than Polymarket's $1.25 for most categories, so a taker generally saves by leaving and a resting maker usually does not. Limitless charges makers nothing either but takes 3.00% on an order-book buy at any price up to 50 cents, which is exactly where a longshot position lives. ForecastEx charges a flat cent per contract per side — 1% of the payout at every price rather than only at the midpoint, so it is cheaper than Kalshi in the middle of the range and dearer at the ends.

Interest, in the one direction it exists. This one is a gain rather than a loss, and it is the only place on this list where leaving pays you something: ForecastEx's Rule 612(c) requires the clearing house to pass the interest earned on collateral accounts back to members monthly, and Interactive Brokers quoted 3.38% APY on 19 September 2026. Kalshi's collateral earns you nothing. Treat the rate as a dated observation — the rule is durable, the number is not, and whether you see any of it depends on your broker.

Migration notes

Work out which restriction bit you before you pick a replacement. A declined signup, a declined card and a trade blocked at the order ticket are three different failures with three different fixes, and only the first is about jurisdiction. If Kalshi approved you and your money will not move, an on-chain venue solves it outright; if the member agreement names your country, check whether ForecastEx reaches you through a broker before assuming you need a wallet.

Nothing transfers, and the contracts are not the same contracts. There is no position transfer between any two venues in this category. Moving means closing at whatever the book will pay, withdrawing, funding elsewhere and buying a contract that settles under different rules against a different source. A market on the same event is not the same market: read the replacement's resolution criteria before you assume the trade survived the move.

The withdrawal is the slow half. Wire withdrawals are documented as not currently supported below $500,000, so in practice money leaves Kalshi by ACH if you are American and by debit card or crypto if you are not, and Kalshi reserves the right to charge between 0% and 2% on all rails. Plan the exit before you close the positions, not after.

Custody replaces onboarding. Kalshi's identity check is specific — a driver's licence or passport photographed live in the app, no camera-roll upload and no photograph of a screen, with proof of address, employment information and source of funds possible on top. What replaces it on Polymarket, Limitless or Myriad is a private key, gas on a chain you have to fund, and a lost key that nobody can mail back to you. Futuur sits in between, asking for identity and address once lifetime deposits pass the equivalent of 2,000 USD, and requiring a deposit to be staked at least once before it can be withdrawn.

Read the resolution mechanism you are moving to, not just the one you are leaving. Limitless refunds a misresolution at your cost basis rather than the dollar the correct side should have received, while the wrongly paid side keeps the money, because the payout settled on-chain. Myriad voids an unresolvable market at its market value at the moment of cancellation, which can be less than you paid. Polymarket US can change a contract's specification — including the settlement date and the payout condition — under Rule 10.3 after you hold the position, and cancels every resting order on the exchange during its Thursday 02:00 to 04:00 ET maintenance window. Each of those is a rule you will only meet once, on the day it costs you something.

If what you actually wanted was to be right rather than to be paid, the move is cheaper than it looks. Metaculus is free, open worldwide, needs no identity check and scores you on a proper rule; Manifold publishes its own platform-wide calibration curve and lets you write the question yourself. Neither asks your country, and neither has a funding rail to refuse you.