# What to use instead of PredictIt

Leaving PredictIt over the $3,500 cap, the politics-only list or the no-action footing — which US venues take each of its jobs, and what the move costs.

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

## The subject

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

A US-only real-money market in political event contracts, run by a non-profit under CFTC staff no-action relief, with a $3,500 cap on any one contract.

## 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) — Election, Congress and policy contracts in dollars on a designated exchange rather than staff relief, with tax documents at year end as PredictIt has.
2. [Polymarket US](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us.md) — The political contracts in dollars on a designated exchange, with 1,167 open politics events in its API on 19 September 2026 — but US residents only.
3. [Robinhood Prediction Markets](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/robinhood-prediction-markets.md) — Kalshi's and ForecastEx's election contracts from a brokerage account you may already hold, traded in the mobile app only and with no tax form.
4. [ForecastEx](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/forecastex.md) — US election contracts beside the Fed and macro releases, through a broker, with interest paid on the cash that sits in an open position.
5. [Manifold](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/manifold.md) — Any political question, opened by anyone, with comments in its published data — the community half of PredictIt, in play money that never cashes out.
6. [Metaculus](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/metaculus.md) — Political questions you forecast rather than trade, scored into a public record — no money, no cap and no jurisdiction test.

## The product

PredictIt is a real-money market in political event contracts, open only to US persons, and our
[card](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/predictit) 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staff no-action relief first granted in Letter 14-130, withdrawn by the Division of Market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](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/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](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/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](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/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](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/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](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/coinbase-prediction-markets) lists politics too and publishes no fee schedule at
all. [Webull](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/webull-prediction-markets) 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](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/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](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/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](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/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](https://predictionmarkets.tools/guides/what-a-track-record-is-worth-off-venue).

## 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](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/kalshi) a taker pays $1.75 per 100 contracts at 50 cents
whether the position wins or not; on [Robinhood](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/robinhood-prediction-markets) and
[Webull](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/webull-prediction-markets) it is two cents a contract on the Kalshi route; on
[ForecastEx](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/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](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/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](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/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](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/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](https://predictionmarkets.tools/guides/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](https://predictionmarkets.tools/guides/who-sends-you-a-tax-form) has the detail for each.

## FAQ

### Can I move my PredictIt positions to Kalshi or Polymarket US?

No. There is no transfer between any two venues in this catalogue, and PredictIt's terms say every matched trade in its real-money markets is final. Leaving means selling at whatever the book pays or holding to resolution, withdrawing, and buying a new contract elsewhere that settles under its own rules against its own source.

### Does PredictIt still take 5 percent of a withdrawal?

Not from an active account. PredictIt's fee FAQ, updated on 22 September 2026, and its terms, read on 8 October 2026, say no processing fee is charged on standard withdrawals from active accounts. The 5 percent now applies to withdrawals from inactive accounts, meaning no login for twelve months, and the terms say logging back in first avoids it.

### I am a US citizen living abroad. Which of these can I use?

Fewer than you might expect. PredictIt counts a US citizen living anywhere as a US Person, but Robinhood requires a US residential address, Coinbase liquidates contracts if you move out of the US, and international Polymarket bars US persons. Kalshi serves many countries but restricts 55, so it depends on where you live. Metaculus and Manifold ask nobody where they are.

### Is there a US venue without a cap per contract?

Neither the Kalshi nor the Polymarket US card in this catalogue records a dollar ceiling per contract like PredictIt's $3,500, which is a condition of its no-action relief rather than a product choice. The exception among the brokers is Coinbase, which sets a per-market cap on how many contracts you may hold from the financial information you certify.