# What to use instead of Polymarket

Three reasons people leave Polymarket — a blocked country, the UMA oracle, or a US address — and which venue in this catalogue answers each one.

*https://predictionmarkets.tools/alternatives/polymarket-alternatives*

## The subject

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Product | Polymarket |
| Status | live |
| Our card | https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket.md |
| Category | Prediction Market Venues |

The international Polymarket — a self-custody order book on Polygon, collateralised in a USDC-backed token and resolved by the UMA optimistic oracle rather than by the venue itself.

## Replacements

*Ordered by how much of the original’s job each one covers, closest first. Paid placement does not affect this order.*

1. [Kalshi](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/kalshi.md) — Dollars on a CFTC-designated exchange, and it serves Germany, the Netherlands and Japan — three countries Polymarket blocks outright.
2. [Polymarket US](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us.md) — The same brand's US exchange. It will open an account for an American, in dollars, with identity verification before the first deposit.
3. [Limitless](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/limitless.md) — The closest mechanism — an on-chain order book, USDC collateral, a wallet for an account — with a far shorter restricted list.
4. [Myriad](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/myriad.md) — An AMM that quotes both sides when nobody else is around, on four chains, under a prohibited list that does not match Polymarket's.
5. [ForecastEx](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/forecastex.md) — Macro and climate contracts whose settlement source is fixed per contract, reached through a broker in Canada, Ireland, Hong Kong or Singapore.
6. [Futuur](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/futuur.md) — Play money is open worldwide, so it is the only venue on this list a reader in a fully blocked country can still keep a record on.

## The product

Polymarket is the venue most readers of this catalogue arrive already holding, and the brand
covers two products: the international platform on Polygon, which is the subject here, and
[Polymarket US](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us), which is a different operating company under a different
regulator. Our [card on the international platform](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket) describes what it is. This
page is about the three ways people end up wanting out of it, because they are three different
problems with three different answers.

**Your location is blocked, or close-only.** This is the common one, and it is worth reading the
mechanism rather than the headline. Polymarket's geographic-restrictions page, last updated
14 August 2026, states that permissions follow **physical location rather than residency** — so
travelling changes your status in both directions — and names 39 restricted countries plus four
Canadian provinces and three regions of Ukraine. Three statuses exist and they are not the same
restriction. Fully blocked covers the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy,
the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Brazil, among others.
Close-only — existing positions may be closed, nothing new opened — covers Singapore, Poland,
Thailand and Taiwan. Germany appears twice: blocked from opening and required to hold to
resolution, so its capital is locked for the life of the contract. Using a VPN to get round any of
it is prohibited, and the stated consequence is that the wallet is put into close-only mode.

Two of Polymarket's own current documents disagree about who is on the list — the Terms of Use
effective 11 August 2026 name Hungary and Slovenia, the help centre names Brazil, Japan, Malta and
Burundi and not the other two — so check the help centre, on the day, before you conclude you have
been shut out.

**You do not want a token-holder vote deciding your contract.** Polymarket resolves nothing
itself. An outcome is proposed against a bond, typically 750 pUSD, with a two-hour challenge
window; one dispute sends it to a second proposal round and a second dispute escalates to the UMA
Data Verification Mechanism, a vote of UMA token holders. That vote is the final word and there is
no route from it back to the company. Some readers leave over exactly this. Read *What you give
up* before you do, because the alternative on most of this list is not a better appeal, it is no
appeal.

**You are in the United States and want an account rather than a read-only page.** The terms bar
US trading in capitals, with the sentence "THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS". Nothing about the
international platform is negotiable here, and the answer is a different venue, not a different
approach to this one.

## What to use instead

**If you are fully blocked and outside the US**, start with the venue whose restricted list does
not overlap Polymarket's. [Kalshi](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/kalshi) is the sharpest case: Germany, the Netherlands,
Spain, Japan and South Korea are absent from the 55 jurisdictions its member agreement restricts,
and three of those five — Germany, the Netherlands and Japan — are on Polymarket's blocked list.
It settles in
dollars on a CFTC-designated exchange, so the trade is a regulated event contract rather than an
on-chain position. Check the list rather than the continent — Kalshi restricts the United Kingdom,
Canada, Australia, France, Italy, Ireland, India and China, all of which Polymarket also blocks,
and for a reader in any of those neither venue is the answer.

**If you are one of the close-only four**, Kalshi is not the escape: Singapore, Poland, Taiwan and
Thailand are all on its restricted list too. The on-chain venues are, because their own lists are
much shorter. [Limitless](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/limitless) bars the United States, the "Republic of China" and
the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Alberta from trading and nothing else beyond the sanctioned
territories, which leaves Poland, Thailand and Singapore served. [Myriad](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/myriad) names
nineteen prohibited territories — including France, Malta, Singapore and Switzerland, which a
reader may not expect — and does not name Poland, Thailand or Taiwan. A Singapore reader has a
third route as well: [ForecastEx](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/forecastex) is reached through a broker rather than
directly, and Interactive Brokers' own disclosures name its Singapore, Hong Kong, Ireland and
Canada entities among the ones whose eligible clients can trade forecast contracts.

**If your objection is the oracle**, the honest split is between venues that resolve
mechanically and venues where a person decides. On [Limitless](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/limitless) most markets are
resolved automatically by Pyth at the deadline, and the 5- and 15-minute crypto markets by a
Chainlink time-weighted average, which takes both the operator and the vote out of it; custom
event markets still go to the team, 24 to 72 hours after close. [ForecastEx](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/forecastex)
is the other end of the same idea inside a regulated exchange: each contract's own
terms-and-conditions document names the source agency in advance, and the building-permits
contract says in as many words that **only the initial release counts and later revisions do not
change the outcome**. That is a rule you can read before you take the position, which is the
property people actually want from an oracle. What none of them give you is somebody to argue
with.

**If you are in the United States**, the list is short and it is all cash-settled and
identity-verified. [Polymarket US](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us) is the same brand — QCX LLC, designated
as a contract market on 9 July 2025, clearing through QC Clearing — and it is the only one where
the interface will feel familiar; note that the maker side is *paid* there, a $0.31 rebate per
100 contracts at the midpoint, rather than merely not charged. [Kalshi](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/kalshi) is the
older venue with the broader series list and the more complete API.
[ForecastEx](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/forecastex) is the odd one out and worth a look if what you traded was macro:
no sports at all, no direct account, and interest paid on your collateral while the position is
open — Rule 612(c) requires the clearing house to pass it through, and Interactive Brokers quoted
3.38% APY on 19 September 2026.

**If every real-money venue bars you**, [Futuur](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/futuur) still takes your forecast: the
play-money side, denominated in Ooms, is open worldwide, and the same questions run in USDC for
everyone the licence permits. A record is not a position, but it is more than a read-only page.

## What you give up

**The book.** This is the loss, and every migration guide written by a competitor skips it.
Polymarket is the deepest venue in the category, and depth is not a feature you can list — it is
whether there is a price on the other side at the size you want, on a question three people care
about. [Limitless](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/limitless) and [Kalshi](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/kalshi) both run real order books and
both have markets where the book is empty; the AMM venues, [Myriad](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/myriad) and
[Futuur](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/futuur), always quote, and charge you for it in slippage. On Myriad the volume on
a sampled open Linea market was under 10,000 USDC against several million on the featured BNB
Chain ones, which is the shape of the problem rather than an exception to it.

**An appeal, such as it was.** If you are leaving because a token-holder vote decided your
contract, count what replaces it. [Kalshi](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/kalshi)'s markets team determines the outcome
and there is no bond, no dispute window and no third-party vote. On
[Polymarket US](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us), Rule 10.4 lets named officers review a market at sole
discretion and states that determinations are final, and Rule 10.5 makes its own determinations
"not subject to review". [Limitless](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/limitless) will accept that a market misresolved and
refund you **what you paid for the shares** — your cost basis, not the dollar the correct side
should have paid — while the side that was wrongly paid out keeps the money, because the payout
already settled on-chain. [Myriad](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/myriad) voids an unresolvable market at its market value
at the moment of cancellation, which can be less than you paid. UMA's bonded proposal and
challenge window are slow, public and occasionally infuriating. They are also the most process
anybody in this category offers.

**A fee schedule with a free category in it.** Polymarket charges takers a coefficient times price
times one-minus-price, never charges makers, and sets the coefficient to **zero on geopolitics** —
an entire category that costs nothing to take. Kalshi's zero-fee series exist but are enumerated
in a table of 155 exceptions rather than granted to a subject area, and its standard taker
coefficient is 0.07 against Polymarket's 0.05 for most categories. Limitless charges **3.00%** on
an order-book buy at any price up to 50 cents, which is precisely where a longshot position sits.
Read the schedule against the prices you actually trade, not at the midpoint.

**The tooling.** This is the catalogue-specific loss and it is larger than it looks. Something
a quarter of the cards in this catalogue are built on Polymarket and only on Polymarket — the
[Gamma](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-gamma-api) and [CLOB](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-clob-api) APIs, the
[Python client](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-client), wallet and trader analytics at
[Polymarket Analytics](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-analytics), [Polysights](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polysights),
[OrcaLayer](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/orcalayer) and [Convexly](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/convexly), the
[Dune dashboards](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/dune-polymarket-dashboards) over its on-chain record. None of that
follows you. The cross-venue clients — [Polyrama](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polyrama),
[Synthesis](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/synthesis), [pmxt](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/pmxt) — reach Kalshi as well, and
[Limitless](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/limitless) and [Myriad](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/myriad) each ship their own API and MCP server,
but a Polygon-native analytics stack has no counterpart on a CFTC exchange whose order flow is not
on a public chain.

**A wallet instead of an onboarding.** There is no identity check in Polymarket's ordinary flow —
an account is a wallet and a click-through attestation. Both US exchanges require verified
identity before your first deposit, and on Polymarket US withdrawals return **only to the original
funding source**, first-in-first-out against the deposits that funded them, after a three-to-four
day clearing wait on cards and ACH. That is a slower, more traceable relationship with your own
money, which is the point of it and also the cost.

## Migration notes

**Get out before the status changes, not after.** The close-only and hold-to-resolution rules are
applied to the wallet, not negotiated. A German holder cannot sell out early at all, and the four
close-only countries can close but not re-enter, which means a hedge that needs both legs is not
something you can run there any more. If your jurisdiction is drifting towards the list, the
cheapest moment to leave is while the book will still take the other side of you.

**Nothing transfers, and the contracts are not the same contracts.** Closing and re-opening costs
you the spread twice plus both fees, and the new contract settles under different rules against a
different source decided by a different authority. Read the replacement's resolution criteria
before you assume it is the same question. On Kalshi that reading is easy — every event exposes a
machine-readable `settlement_sources` array of names and URLs through the public API — and on the
on-chain venues it is the market page, which is the authoritative rule there.

**Your collateral changes shape.** Leaving for a US exchange means off-ramping pUSD or USDC into
dollars at a clearing house, with the tax conversation that goes with a disposal in most
countries; leaving for [Limitless](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/limitless) or [Myriad](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/myriad) keeps you in
stablecoins but moves you to a different chain, with its own gas and its own bridge. Myriad adds a
flat 0.0085 USD per transaction to cover gas, and **31 of the 70 open markets there on
19 September 2026 were denominated in PTS season points rather than in money at all** — they look
identical to stablecoin markets in the interface, so check the token before you take the position.

**Budget for the identity check, and for its timing.** Kalshi wants a driver's licence or passport
photographed live in the app — an upload from the camera roll or a photograph of a screen is
rejected — and its help centre warns that the CFTC may require proof of address, employment
information and source of funds on top. Polymarket US requires verification to complete before you
can deposit or trade at all, with manual review quoted at three to five business days where the
automatic check fails. [Futuur](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/futuur) sits in between: no check to start, then proof of
identity and address once lifetime deposits pass the equivalent of 2,000 USD.

**Check the funding rail separately from the eligibility rule.** They are different facts and the
second one is discovered after the deposit. Kalshi serves many countries but ACH, PayPal and Venmo
are US-only, so an international account funds by debit card, by wire with a $1,000 minimum, or by
crypto — and withdraws by debit card or crypto only. Futuur requires a deposit to be staked at
least once before it can be withdrawn. ForecastEx has no account at all: you reach it through a
futures commission merchant, under that broker's own onboarding, and the age floor is 21 through
Interactive Brokers against 18 through Robinhood.

**If you are leaving for a regulated exchange, read what is fixed and what is not.** On
[Polymarket US](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us), Rule 10.3 permits the company to modify contract
specifications — including the settlement date and the payout condition — after you hold the
position, and every Thursday between 02:00 and 04:00 ET the maintenance window cancels every
resting order on the exchange. Neither has an equivalent on a Polygon order book, and neither is
visible unless you go looking for it.

## FAQ

### Why can I read Polymarket but not trade on it?

Because the restriction is written against trading rather than against access. Polymarket's terms bar residents of restricted jurisdictions from the trading platform and say explicitly that restricted users may still use the content features. A US visitor is told trading is blocked and pointed at polymarket.us. The prices on the screen are real; the order ticket is what is closed to you.

### My country is close-only. What does that actually mean?

You can close positions you already hold and open no new ones. Singapore, Poland, Thailand and Taiwan sit there on Polymarket's own geographic-restrictions page. Germany is the stricter case — blocked from opening, and required to hold existing positions to resolution before withdrawing rather than selling out early. Blocked and close-only are answers to two different questions, and a country can get one answer to each.

### Is there a venue where I can appeal a resolution I think is wrong?

Not really, anywhere. Polymarket's UMA process at least gives you a bonded proposal, a two-hour challenge window and escalation to a token-holder vote. Kalshi and Polymarket US both resolve as the exchange with no dispute window and no vote; Limitless returns your cost basis rather than the payout if it accepts a misresolution; Myriad voids at market value. If UMA is your reason for leaving, read that list before you go.

### Can I move an open position to another venue?

No. There is no transfer of any kind between these venues, and a contract on one is not the same contract on another even when the event is identical — different rules text, different settlement source, different resolution authority. Moving means closing at whatever the book will pay, withdrawing, funding somewhere else and buying the new contract at its own spread.