What to use instead of PredictIt

The product

PredictIt is a real-money market in political event contracts, open only to US persons, and our card covers what it is. It is not a designated contract market: it runs on CFTC staff no-action relief first granted in Letter 14-130, withdrawn by the Division of Market Oversight on 4 August 2022 with every open position ordered closed by 15 February 2023, and reissued in amended form as Letter 25-20 on 14 July 2025, under which the Prediction Market Research Consortium, a US non-profit, now holds it. This page is about the four reasons people leave, which are mostly conditions of that letter rather than decisions anyone at PredictIt can reverse.

The cap. $3,500 per contract, held at any one time, tied to the Federal Election Campaign Act individual contribution limit and adjusted only when the FEC adjusts that limit every two years. PredictIt's own FAQ, updated 15 July 2025, says you cannot place an offer that would take you over it if matched. The amendment that set it also scrapped the old 5,000-trader limit per contract, so the crowding problem is gone; the size problem is not.

The question set. Politics only, by the terms of the relief: elections, nominations, confirmations and departures, non-criminal court decisions, legislative action, regulations and executive orders, international agreements not involving war. No sports, no macro releases, no crypto prices, at any price.

The fee. Ten percent of the profit on every share sold above cost or redeemed at $1, and nothing on a break-even or losing sale. The second half of this complaint has partly gone away: the 5 percent withdrawal fee on our card, verified 19 September 2026, was changed after it. PredictIt's fee FAQ, updated on 22 September 2026, and its terms, read on 8 October 2026, now say no processing fee is charged on standard withdrawals from active accounts, that the 5 percent applies to withdrawals from inactive accounts, and that credit-card deposits carry a 3 percent processing fee. If the withdrawal fee was your reason for leaving, re-read the schedule before you go.

The footing. Letter 25-20 says the relief "will not transfer to a different entity by virtue of any future sale or other transfer of operations", and 2022 showed that staff relief can be withdrawn with a closing date attached. A reader who was in a position on 4 August 2022 does not need the risk explained.

What to use instead

Start with jurisdiction, because PredictIt's test is unusual. Its terms limit participation to US Persons — a US citizen living anywhere, or a resident alien — so every reader of this page is American, and the one venue most people name first is not available to any of them: international Polymarket bars US persons and offers them a read-only page. Everything below is open to a US resident. A US citizen living abroad has a narrower list, covered in What you give up.

If what you traded was federal elections and congressional control, the two direct replacements are designated exchanges settled in dollars. Kalshi is the older, designated on 3 November 2020; elections and politics together made up 33 of 200 live open events when its API was sampled on 19 September 2026, against 55 for sports, so the political list is a section of the site rather than the whole of it. Its resolution source is a field — each event carries a settlement_sources array of names and URLs — where PredictIt's is the Rules text on the market page. Polymarket US returned 1,167 open politics events through its public API on the same day, although its own getting-started page still describes it as sports only. Both resolve as the exchange with no appeal; on Polymarket US, Rule 10.3 also lets the company modify a contract's specification after you hold it.

If you wanted the same contracts from an account you already have, the brokers put Kalshi's listing inside their own apps. Robinhood Prediction Markets routes to Kalshi, ForecastEx and Rothera and lists elections and politics, but trades in the mobile app only, offers no API, and publishes no list of the states it serves. Coinbase lists politics too and publishes no fee schedule at all. Webull carries a selection of Kalshi's catalogue in which politics appears in only one of its three published descriptions of that selection.

If you traded policy as much as elections, ForecastEx lists US elections beside the releases politics moves — the Fed funds target, CPI, payrolls, the national debt — with each contract's settlement source fixed in its own terms. There is no direct account: access runs through a broker, at 21 through Interactive Brokers and 18 through Robinhood, and US election contracts are restricted to eligible US residents.

If what you had was the cheap small account, note that the replacements charge on the fill rather than on profit. The cheapest way to use them is usually to rest an order rather than take one: Kalshi's maker multiplier defaults to zero and was non-zero on 160 of 11,078 series on 19 September 2026, and Polymarket US pays a maker $0.31 per 100 contracts at 50 cents. If what you wanted was a small stake on a political question with no money at all, that is the next paragraph.

If what you had was the community and the record, no venue card here replaces it. PredictIt offers a Disqus comment thread on every market page, per its own FAQ. Manifold is the closest: anyone opens a political question in about thirty seconds, comments are part of the data it publishes, and its calibration page reported a platform-wide Brier score of 0.17475 on 27 September 2026 — in mana, which its terms say cannot be cashed out. Metaculus is the record without the trade: you enter a probability, it is scored on a proper rule, and the record is public. For what such a record is worth anywhere else, see what a track record is worth off the platform.

What you give up

A fee that only winners pay. PredictIt takes nothing on a fill, nothing on a losing or break-even sale, and — since the 22 September 2026 change — nothing on a standard withdrawal from an active account. On Kalshi a taker pays $1.75 per 100 contracts at 50 cents whether the position wins or not; on Robinhood and Webull it is two cents a contract on the Kalshi route; on ForecastEx a cent per contract from each side, independent of resolution, so the losing side pays too. For a trader whose positions mostly lose or are held flat, the move costs more than the 10 percent ever did. The trade-off cuts the other way for a trader who is flat overall: PredictIt charges each winning sale and refunds nothing on the losing one, so being even across two positions still costs 10 percent of the winner's gain.

The conversation under the price. The Disqus thread at the foot of every PredictIt market is moderated for abuse but not for accuracy, and its own disclaimer says not to rely on it when buying or selling — but it is a room full of people trading the same question. None of the US exchange or broker cards in this catalogue records anything like it, and Manifold, the one card whose published data includes comments, has no money in it.

A US-person test that follows a citizen abroad. PredictIt asks whether you are a US Person, not where you live, so a US citizen in Berlin or Tokyo is served. The brokers ask the opposite question: Robinhood requires a US residential address, Webull's event accounts are for US residents only, and Coinbase says it will liquidate your contracts if you move out of the US. Polymarket US makes no claim to serve anyone outside the US, and its funding rails are US cards, ACH and domestic wires. Kalshi is the exception that depends on the country: it serves many, restricts 55 — the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France and Italy among them, not Germany, the Netherlands, Spain or Japan — and asks you to warrant at signup that you are not domiciled or located in one of them.

Migration notes

Nothing transfers, and the contracts are not the same contracts. PredictIt's terms say every matched trade is final, and there is no position transfer between any two venues here. A Kalshi or Polymarket US market on the same race carries its own rules text and its own resolution authority, and on Kalshi its own named source. Read the replacement's resolution criteria, as you learned to read PredictIt's Rules rather than its headline question. ArbiTrack puts PredictIt's price beside Kalshi's and Polymarket's for the same event, which is the quickest way to see what closing here and reopening there would cost.

Closing a linked position can cost money. PredictIt margins multiple-contract markets on worst-case exposure, so selling one leg of a set of "No" positions can debit your cash rather than credit it. Download the market's payout table before you start unwinding, and close the legs in an order you have checked.

Get the money out in the right order. Withdrawals are held for 30 days after your initial deposit — the terms also phrase it as 30 days after the deposit date of the funds in question — and PredictIt may ask for more identification before releasing them. If you have not logged in for twelve months, log in before you withdraw: the 5 percent fee now applies only to inactive accounts, the terms say reactivating avoids it, and a $2 monthly inactive fee has been running against the balance meanwhile. The account itself closes only by email once the ledger is at zero. How money gets out sets these clocks beside the other venues'.

The cap disappears, mostly. Neither the Kalshi nor the Polymarket US card records a dollar ceiling per contract. Coinbase sets its own per-market cap on contracts held, from the financial information you certify, and it can change with market conditions.

Expect a heavier identity check, earlier. PredictIt verifies age and identity through Aristotle International and asks for an SSN or ITIN only once your profit passes the federal reporting threshold. Kalshi wants a driver's licence or passport photographed live in its app, and warns that proof of address, employment and source of funds may follow. Polymarket US requires verification to finish before your first deposit, with manual review quoted at three to five business days where the automatic check fails. Robinhood asks for a Social Security number up front and approves a separate derivatives account on trading experience and state of residence.

The tax paperwork changes shape. PredictIt's FAQ, updated 22 September 2026, says it issues a Form 1099 to a US-resident trader above a net-profit figure it names, and that withdrawal fees were counted in that net profit through tax year 2025 and are excluded from 2026 — so your last PredictIt form and your next one are computed differently. Kalshi issues tax documents electronically at year end. Robinhood says in as many words that it does not provide a 1099 for event contracts. Polymarket US publishes no page saying what it issues. Who sends you a tax form has the detail for each.