# Kalshi direct or through Coinbase, Webull, Robinhood or PrizePicks Four apps in front of one KalshiEX order book. The contract and its resolution are the same; the fee, markets, states, account and tax form are not. *https://predictionmarkets.tools/compare/kalshi-through-a-broker* - https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/kalshi.md - https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/coinbase-prediction-markets.md - https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/webull-prediction-markets.md - https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/robinhood-prediction-markets.md - https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/prizepicks-predict.md ## One order book, four doors The five cards above look like five venues. They are one venue and four brokers. KalshiEX is the designated contract market and Kalshi Klear its clearing house; [Coinbase](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/coinbase-prediction-markets), [Webull](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/webull-prediction-markets), [Robinhood](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/robinhood-prediction-markets) and [PrizePicks](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/prizepicks-predict) each run a [futures commission merchant](https://predictionmarkets.tools/glossary/futures-commission-merchant) that sends your order to it: - **Coinbase Financial Markets, Inc.** is a member of the Kalshi exchange and clears through an omnibus account at Kalshi Klear, so Klear sees one Coinbase account rather than you by name. - **Webull Futures LLC** (NFA ID 0568685) is the name on Webull's product page, although Webull's 2025 annual report names Webull Financial LLC as the entity that facilitates the trading. - **Robinhood Derivatives, LLC** routes to KalshiEX, ForecastEx or Rothera Exchange and Clearing — the former MIAXdx, 90% of which a joint venture of Robinhood and Susquehanna bought on 20 January 2026. Robinhood is the one broker here where your contract may not be Kalshi's at all. - **Performance Predictions II, LLC**, doing business as PrizePicks Predict (NFA ID 0571411), is a clearing member of Kalshi Klear and self-clears. PrizePicks announced a Polymarket partnership in November 2025; its FCM disclosure of 16 June 2026 names Kalshi only. None of what this page compares touches the contract. On a KalshiEX fill the rules, the settlement source and the resolution are Kalshi's whichever app carried the order, and all four broker cards say the same thing in their own words: Coinbase "cannot manually override outcomes", Webull and PrizePicks resolve nothing, and Robinhood resolves nothing on any of its three routes. A dispute about an outcome ends at Kalshi's markets team, and on the brokered routes you reach it with no direct relationship. The settlement source is published per event through [Kalshi's API](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/kalshi-api) as a name and a URL, and that field is the same for every customer of every route. What differs is the layer in front: the fee, which markets the app shows, which states it shuts, which account and identity check it puts you through, who sends a year-end form, and what its own terms add. Those are below, in that order. **The cards were read on different days, and the page rests on that.** Kalshi's fees on 20 September 2026 and its availability on 19 September; Robinhood's on 19 September, with its tax wording re-read on 4 October; Coinbase, Webull and PrizePicks on 3 and 4 October, with their tax pages re-read on 9 October. The documents behind them are older still: Kalshi's fee schedule is dated 7 July 2026, Robinhood's commission formula took effect on 1 June 2026, and PrizePicks' fee schedule is stated as of 27 October 2025. ## The fee, and what each number leaves out The catalogue's fee fields hold the [effective fee at fifty cents](https://predictionmarkets.tools/glossary/effective-fee-at-fifty-cents): what one contract costs a taker at 50 cents, as a percent of the $1 it pays out. On these five cards: - **Kalshi: 1.75 taker, 0 maker.** The taker fee is `0.07 × contracts × price × (1 − price)`, rounded up to the cent on the order. Makers pay nothing except on the series the schedule lists, 160 of the 11,078 Kalshi published on 19 September 2026. - **Webull: 2 and 2.** A cent of Webull commission and a cent of Kalshi exchange fee, per contract, on opening and on closing trades, at every price. It is the only broker figure on this page where both layers are published. - **Robinhood: 2 and 2, on the KalshiEX route.** A commission of 10% of price times one minus price (5% with the $5-a-month Gold subscription), capped at a cent a contract, plus KalshiEX's exchange fee of a cent per side. For ForecastEx and Rothera the schedule points at each exchange's own document instead of a number, so on those routes the second layer is unquoted. - **PrizePicks: 2 and 2, commission only.** Its schedule charges 2 cents a contract per side from 4 cents to 99 cents, and less below that. It quotes no separate exchange fee and reserves the right to pass on execution and clearing costs; the card found no exchange-fee line on any PrizePicks page. The 2 is what is published, not necessarily everything you pay. - **Coinbase: absent.** Not zero — absent. Coinbase publishes no fee schedule for event contracts: its help centre says a breakdown appears on the order confirmation screen, and its futures account agreement says you pay exchange and regulatory fees on top of commissions posted on a page that served a sign-in wall. The listing prints a dash because there is no number, and a dash is not a claim that nothing is charged. Kalshi's own schedule adds the sentence that explains all of this: customers coming through an FCM may be charged different fees by that FCM. **At 50 cents the gap is a quarter of a cent, and on a one-contract order it is nothing.** Kalshi rounds the taker fee up to the cent, so a single contract at 50 cents costs 2 cents direct as well; the curve separates from the brokers' flat 2 cents once an order is more than a contract or two, and at 100 contracts it is $1.75 against $2.00. **Away from 50 cents it widens, because three of the brokers are flat and Kalshi is a curve.** At 10 cents Kalshi charges a taker 0.63 cents a contract. Webull and PrizePicks charge 2 cents there, and Robinhood about 1.9 — 1.45 with Gold, since Gold halves the commission and leaves the exchange cent alone. [Kalshi, Polymarket US and Robinhood](https://predictionmarkets.tools/compare/us-event-contract-venues) prices the Robinhood curve point by point, and the [fee calculator](https://predictionmarkets.tools/calculators/prediction-market-fees) runs Kalshi, Webull, Robinhood and PrizePicks at your own price and size. Coinbase is not in it, for the same reason its field is empty. **The maker side is where going direct pulls furthest ahead.** A resting order that fills on a standard Kalshi series pays nothing. Webull and Robinhood make no maker-taker distinction, so a resting order pays the same 2 cents. PrizePicks orders cannot rest at all. **Closing early pays again on every route.** The brokers' fees apply on both sides, so a round trip before settlement is 4 cents a contract on Webull, Robinhood's Kalshi route and PrizePicks, against $3.50 per 100 contracts for a taker round trip on Kalshi at 50 cents. Held to settlement, each is paid once: Kalshi charges no settlement fee on a yes-or-no market, and PrizePicks charges nothing for holding a pick to its closing date. [What a trade actually costs](https://predictionmarkets.tools/guides/what-a-trade-actually-costs) covers why these numbers arrive in different units in the first place. ## Which markets each app shows you Kalshi's own catalogue is the widest of the five on the Kalshi side: economics, sports, entertainment, elections, politics, science, climate and weather, financials and more, across four exchange shards. Each broker shows part of it, and none says which part in a list you can check. - **PrizePicks shows two kinds.** Team Picks are winners, spreads, totals and futures on sporting events; Culture Picks are one-of-two outcomes on non-sports events such as award shows and music charts. Nothing else — no economics, crypto or politics contracts. - **Webull shows "a selection"**, in its own words, and describes the selection three ways. Its product page groups it as sports, crypto, financials, economics, culture, climate and science; its help centre adds companies, weather and index contracts; politics appears only in its API documentation. Desktop trading is limited to index and crypto hourly contracts; the rest is mobile only. - **Coinbase groups its listing as sports, crypto, politics and culture**, with weather and economic data added in its help centre, plus Sports Combos priced by request for quote. The card does not establish whether that is all of Kalshi's catalogue or a cut of it. - **Robinhood shows the widest set in this group**, because it aggregates three exchanges. The breadth is the same fact as the routing: some of what you see there is not a Kalshi contract. If a market is on Kalshi and not in your app, the app is the limit, and the only way to it is another door. ## Which states each app shuts All four brokers are US-only; Kalshi direct is the one route on this page that serves traders outside the United States, with 55 restricted jurisdictions in its member agreement since the notice effective 22 June 2026. Inside the US the brokers publish four different kinds of map: - **Coinbase:** every state except Nevada, where a temporary restraining order obtained by the Nevada Gaming Control Board halted it. The test is residency, not location — a customer travelling abroad keeps trading, and one who moves abroad has open contracts liquidated. - **Webull:** sports contracts are not offered in Nevada, Maryland, Connecticut or Michigan, worded as residents on one page and as customers located there on another. Non-sports contracts are not excluded there by name, and Webull reserves further restrictions by contract type. - **Robinhood:** no published list. Maryland is excluded — for sports contracts on one help page, for all event contracts on another — Nevada residents cannot open new sports contracts since 1 December 2025, and the block follows your physical location as well as your residence. - **PrizePicks:** Team Picks in 34 states and Culture Picks in 46 plus DC, on its eligibility page of 14 September 2026. Neither in Arizona, Nevada, New York or Washington; Michigan, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Ohio and Maryland get Culture Picks only. Enforced by physical location. Kalshi's own documents name no US state. That does not make it the open door where a broker is shut: the Kalshi card records that Arizona, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey and Ohio have been named in state regulators' own orders, and the Webull card notes a Massachusetts court injunction against Kalshi's sports contracts from 6 February 2026 that Webull's list does not mention. Whatever Kalshi cannot offer, no broker can route. The broker's map is Kalshi's reach with the broker's own exclusions laid on top, and the app's refusal is the list that applies to you. [Why a venue is unavailable where you are](https://predictionmarkets.tools/guides/why-a-venue-is-unavailable-where-you-are) covers the mechanics. ## The account, and the check it takes This is the real thing a broker sells, and it is not the same thing in all four. **Kalshi direct is a new account and a new identity check.** A driver's licence or passport photographed live through Kalshi's app — not an upload from the camera roll, not a picture of a screen — with name and date of birth matching the document exactly and no PO boxes, and the CFTC may require proof of address, employment or source of funds on top. **On the brokers you keep your login, but you still apply.** - **Webull** asks for a separate Event Contract account, with its own account number, applied for from an existing Individual Cash or Individual Margin account. The identity check is the one you passed when the brokerage account opened, buying power is shared, and sports contracts need an extra agreement signed. - **Robinhood** asks for a separate Robinhood Derivatives account, approved on trading experience, investment profile and state of residence; repeated failed applications can mean a 30-day wait. - **Coinbase** asks for a separate CFM predictions account, and it is an application with a suitability review — age, trading experience, occupation, income and net worth — that can end in a rejection. Three attempts a day, then seven days' wait. - **PrizePicks** requires a fantasy account with SidePrize LLC first, then a second verification proving a valid Social Security number. A taxpayer identification number is not accepted, even from a member who passed the first check. So "no second account" is true of none of them. What you avoid on a broker is the second login and the second document photograph; what you do not avoid is an application. [What you have to prove to trade](https://predictionmarkets.tools/guides/what-you-have-to-prove-to-trade) sets these checks beside the rest of the category. Webull adds one detail for a reader who already has both: if you hold a Kalshi account directly, it asks you to tell its event contract team and Kalshi. ## Who sends a tax form The party that holds your account is the party that produces year-end paperwork, and on a brokered route that is the broker, not Kalshi. The five answers, from each one's own pages: - **PrizePicks** issues a Form 1099-B for Team and Culture Picks the following February — a different form from the 1099-MISC its fantasy side sends. - **Webull**: no live page says which form, if any, it issues for event contracts. Its help-centre FAQ 11052, as archived on 11 September 2026, said it would report "as required, using necessary tax forms such as Form 1099 or any other relevant documents"; the article now served under that number has no tax question, and Webull's list of the forms it issues has no row for event contracts. The card's tax-reporting flag is off. - **Robinhood** says it issues no 1099 for event contracts and reports none of them to the IRS. It sends an annual statement of transactions, costs, proceeds and fees, which it calls "not a substitute tax reporting form". - **Coinbase**: no page the card found says which form, if any, it issues for event contracts. Its daily statement is the official record of settled payouts. The card's tax-reporting flag is off. - **Kalshi direct** issues documents at year end and a downloadable profit-and-loss statement, refreshed monthly. Its help centre lists four forms — 1099-INT, 1099-MISC, 1099-B and 1099-DA — and none is described as covering the proceeds of event-contract trades. [Who sends you a tax form](https://predictionmarkets.tools/guides/who-sends-you-a-tax-form) reads all five routes' documents in full, including the PrizePicks, Webull and Coinbase pages behind the bullets above. What any of these documents means for a return is a question for an adviser, not this page. ## What each app's own terms add The contract is Kalshi's; the order ticket, the money rail and the small print are the broker's. - **Coinbase.** Funding in USD or USDC moved into a separate predictions balance, settled funds only. A per-market cap on contracts held, set from the financial information you certify. You cannot hold both sides of one open market. Payouts swept to your main balance every two hours from 6 AM to 4 PM ET on business days only. Trading stops from 3 AM to 5 AM ET on Thursdays. Its 15-minute crypto contracts settle on a CF Benchmarks index, not on the Coinbase price beside them — a Kalshi term, but the app is where the gap is easiest to miss. - **Webull.** Buy to open and sell to close only. GTC and GTD orders are available, as are an API, an official Python SDK and an MCP server whose order tool needs confirming in the app — the only programmatic route among the four. Event contract accounts are not SIPC-protected, and Webull offers a voluntary opt-out that blocks new positions. - **Robinhood.** Mobile only for trading. Limit orders only, immediate-or-cancel or good-til-date expiring at 3 AM ET the next calendar day, so nothing rests longer than a night. You do not choose the exchange, and the exchange decides the rules and half the fee. No API. - **PrizePicks.** Every order is a limit within 5% of the current market price, with no partial fills and no resting. An affiliate, Performance Predictions III LLC, may make markets in the same contracts and take the other side of your order on better fee terms. Cash moved back from the event account to the fantasy balance loses CFTC segregation. Funding is debit card, instant bank transfer or Apple Pay, with a $10 minimum and one withdrawal in 24 hours. On Kalshi direct the corresponding list is the exchange's own: ACH free both ways, debit card deposits up to 2%, a full order book, resting orders, a demo environment and the [Kalshi API](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/kalshi-api). ## Which to use, and when to switch **Open a Kalshi account directly, unless your reason for not doing so is that you will not go through a second identity check.** It is the same contract at the lowest published fee on this page at every price once an order is more than a contract or two, free to rest on most series, the full catalogue rather than a selection, an API, and the only route open outside the United States. The cost is one more application and one more ID photograph. **If the second check is the reason, choose the broker by its restrictions, not by its logo:** - **Webull** is the one to use if you already have it. Its fee is the only broker fee here that is published in full on every route, it is flat and predictable, and it is the only broker with an API. You pay a quarter of a cent a contract over Kalshi at 50 cents and more away from it. - **Robinhood** costs the same as Webull on the Kalshi route at 50 cents, but you do not choose the route, you cannot rest an order past the next morning, and no 1099 arrives. - **PrizePicks** only if what you want is a Team or Culture Pick, in a state where that pick type is offered, and you accept a 5% price band, no partial fills and an affiliate that may be on the other side. - **Coinbase** only if funding from a USD or USDC balance you already hold there is the point, and only after reading the fee breakdown on the confirmation screen, because that is the first place the price exists. Not in Nevada. **Switch to Kalshi direct the moment any of these is true:** you want an order to rest, you trade away from 50 cents or in size, you want a market your app does not carry, you want programmatic access outside Webull, or you are no longer in the United States. On every one of those the broker layer either costs more or cannot do it at all, and the contract you would be holding is the same. ## FAQ ### Is a Kalshi contract bought in Coinbase, Webull, Robinhood or PrizePicks the same contract as one bought on Kalshi? Yes, with one exception. All four apps are futures commission merchants in front of KalshiEX, so the contract, its rules and the team that resolves it are Kalshi's, and none of the four resolves anything itself. The exception is Robinhood, which also routes orders to ForecastEx and to Rothera, the exchange its joint venture with Susquehanna part-owns, and does not let you choose which. ### Which route is cheapest? Kalshi direct, among the fees anyone publishes, at every price once an order is more than a contract or two. At 50 cents a taker pays 1.75 cents a contract there, and a resting order pays nothing on most series. Webull and Robinhood charge 2 cents on the Kalshi route, PrizePicks quotes a 2-cent commission and no exchange fee line, and Coinbase publishes no fee at all. Away from 50 cents the gap widens, because three of the brokers charge flat cents and Kalshi charges a curve. ### Which of these sends a tax form for event contracts? Going by each one's own pages, PrizePicks says it issues a Form 1099-B for Team and Culture Picks, the following February. Robinhood says it issues no 1099 for event contracts and sends an annual statement instead. No live Webull or Coinbase page says which form, if any, it issues for them; Webull's help centre carried a sentence about reporting on Form 1099 until at least 11 September 2026, and the article now under that number does not. Kalshi issues year-end documents and a profit-and-loss statement, but none of the four forms its help centre lists is described as covering event-contract proceeds. ### When is a broker app the better door to Kalshi? When the reason is that you will not open and verify a second account, you take a few contracts near 50 cents, and you hold them to settlement. In that narrow case Webull, or Robinhood on its Kalshi route, costs about a quarter of a cent a contract more, or nothing more on a single-contract order. Want to rest orders, trade away from the midpoint, trade from code outside Webull, reach markets the app does not carry, or trade from outside the US, and Kalshi direct is the answer.