# Polymarket

Self-custody event contracts on an on-chain order book, resolved by the UMA oracle.

*https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket · Prediction Market Venues*

## Facts

### At a glance

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Vendor | Polymarket |
| Category | Prediction Market Venues |
| Job | event_trading |
| Website | https://polymarket.com |
| Pricing model | commission |
| Free tier | false |
| Open source | false |
| Licence | none |
| Self-hosted | false |
| Tested hands-on | false |
| Last updated | 2026-09-19 |

### Availability

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Jurisdictions | asia, latam |
| Open to US persons | false |
| KYC required | false |

### Markets

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Subjects | politics, sports, macro, crypto, science, culture, business |
| Settlement | crypto |
| Resolved by | The UMA optimistic oracle — a bonded proposal, a two-hour challenge window, and escalation to a vote of UMA token holders if it is disputed twice. Polymarket itself resolves nothing and cannot overturn the vote. |

### Economics

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Taker fee | 1.25 |
| Maker fee | none |
| Liquidity model | clob |
| Platforms | web, ios, android |
| AI features | none |

### Interfaces

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| API | true |
| WebSocket | true |
| Scripting | none |
| Python | true |
| MCP server | false |
| Export | csv, api |

### Capabilities

Yes: charting, order_book, automation, live_trading, portfolio_tracking

No: screening, backtesting, paper_trading, calibration_scoring, cross_venue, alerts, news, tax_reporting

*Verified: pricing 2026-09-19; availability 2026-09-19.*

## What it is

Polymarket is the largest prediction-market brand, and the first thing to understand about it is
that the brand covers **two products that share a name**. This card is the international one. The
American one is [Polymarket US](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us) — a different operating company, a
different regulator, dollars instead of a stablecoin, and an exchange rather than an oracle
deciding how a market ends — and almost nothing you learn here transfers to it.

**The international platform** is a self-custody central limit order book running on Polygon,
operated by Adventure One QSS, Inc. Collateral is pUSD, an ERC-20 backed one-for-one by USDC and
enforced on-chain; outcome shares are ERC-1155 tokens minted through the Gnosis Conditional
Token Framework, so one Yes plus one No always redeems for a dollar and the winning side redeems
for a dollar after resolution. You trade against other users, not the house. An account is a
wallet — there is no identity check in the ordinary flow.

Categories listed here include politics, sports, crypto, economics, weather, culture, technology
and geopolitics.

## Availability

This is the field that decides whether the rest of the card matters.

**The United States is blocked.** The Terms of Use, effective 11 August 2026,
bar trading by anyone resident, located or incorporated in the United States and a long list of
other jurisdictions, in capitals, with the sentence "THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS". Reading is
explicitly still permitted — restricted users may use the content features and not the trading
platform — and the live site tells a US visitor that trading is blocked and to switch to
polymarket.us.

**What the restriction actually is, precisely.** Polymarket's own geographic-restrictions help
page, last updated 14 August 2026, states that permissions are based on **physical location
rather than residency**, so a user from a restricted country who travels can trade and a
resident abroad is judged by where they are standing. It names 39 restricted countries plus the
Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec and the Crimea, Donetsk and
Luhansk regions of Ukraine. Three different statuses exist, and they are not the same
restriction. Read them as two questions rather than as one list: whether you may open a position,
and what happens to one you already hold.

- **Fully blocked** — no access to trading at all. This is where the United States sits, along
  with the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Australia,
  New Zealand, Japan and Brazil, among others.
- **Close-only** — Singapore, Poland, Thailand and Taiwan. Existing positions can be closed; no
  new ones can be opened.
- **Hold to resolution** — Germany. Existing positions must be held until the market resolves
  before funds can be withdrawn.

**Germany appears twice on purpose**, and the overlap is the part worth reading. It is blocked
from opening anything, and unlike the close-only four it is not allowed to exit early either, so
a German holder's capital is locked for the life of the contract rather than released on a sale.
Blocked and close-only are answers to different questions, and a country can be given one answer
to each.

VPN use to circumvent any of this is prohibited and the stated consequence is that the wallet is
put into close-only mode.

**Two of Polymarket's own current documents disagree**, and a card that quoted only one would be
wrong. The Terms of Use list names Hungary and Slovenia and the four Canadian provinces; the
help-centre list names Brazil, Japan, Malta and Burundi and not Hungary or Slovenia. The Terms
also delegate the authoritative list to a documentation URL that now redirects to an unrelated
page. Read the help centre, and read it on the day.

**There is no identity check at signup here.** What exists instead is a click-through
attestation that you are not a US person, not located in a restricted jurisdiction and not using
a VPN, plus a reactive certification path — an ID and a proof of address in a non-restricted
jurisdiction, within 14 days — used when an account is flagged. The mandatory-KYC half of the
brand is [Polymarket US](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us), which is the card to read if you are American.

## Pricing

No subscription. The fee is a coefficient times the number of contracts times price times
one-minus-price, so the charge peaks at the 50-cent midpoint and falls to almost nothing at the
extremes.

**Makers are never charged.** Only takers pay, and the coefficient depends on the category:

| Category | Taker coefficient | Maker rebate |
|---|---|---|
| Crypto | 0.07 | 20% |
| Sports | 0.05 | 15% |
| Economics, culture, weather, other | 0.05 | 25% |
| Finance, politics, mentions, tech | 0.04 | 25% |
| Geopolitics | 0 | — |

Geopolitical and world-event markets are fee-free. There are no Polymarket fees to deposit or
withdraw USDC, though an on-ramp such as Coinbase or MoonPay charges its own. Fees fund a maker
rebate paid daily and a tiered taker rebate.

The 1.25% in this card's fee field is what the 0.05 coefficient costs a taker at the 50-cent
midpoint, which is the rate for every category except crypto. Crypto is 0.07, or 1.75% at the
same point, and one category is free. [Polymarket US](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us) runs a different
schedule — one coefficient for everything, and a maker who is paid rather than merely not
charged.

## Markets & resolution

**Polymarket does not resolve anything here.** The Terms of Use say it plainly —
all contracts displayed on the platform are resolved by the UMA optimistic oracle, and disputes
run through UMA's own process. Mechanically, anyone may propose an outcome by posting a bond,
typically 750 pUSD. There is a **two-hour challenge period**. One dispute sends it to a second
proposal round; a second dispute escalates to UMA's Data Verification Mechanism, a vote of UMA
token holders. That vote, not Polymarket, is the final word, and there is no route from it back
to the company.

The same brand resolves the other way round in America: on
[Polymarket US](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us) the exchange itself determines the outcome, and that
determination is final. If you care about who you can appeal to, this is the field to read
first — and it is the field on which the two products are least alike.

## Integrations

Polymarket's public data and trading interfaces are separate products with their own audiences,
and they have their own cards — [Polymarket Gamma API](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-gamma-api) for markets
and metadata, [Polymarket CLOB API](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-clob-api) for the book and order
placement, and [py-clob-client](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/py-clob-client) as the Python client. Third-party
analytics on the same data live at [Polymarket Analytics](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-analytics) and
[Polyrama](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polyrama).

[Polymarket US](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us) has an entirely separate API, with its own keys, its own
endpoints and its own SDKs; nothing written against the interfaces above reaches it.

Mobile apps are US-only. The iOS and Android apps are published for the US store and carry the
Polymarket US product; no official app is listed in the international storefronts we checked, so
outside the US the platform is a web application.

## Limitations

- **This is not the platform a US reader can use.** It blocks the United States wholesale, by
  physical location and not by residency, and read-only is the fallback rather than an
  inconvenience. The American product is [Polymarket US](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us), and the two
  share a brand rather than an operator, a regulator, a custody model, a fee schedule or a
  resolution authority.
- **UMA resolution is not appealable to Polymarket.** A twice-disputed market is settled by a
  token-holder vote. If you think a market resolved wrongly, there is no support ticket that
  reverses it.
- **Polymarket's own two current documents disagree about which jurisdictions are restricted**,
  and the Terms delegate the authoritative list to a URL that no longer resolves.
- **Polymarket now also runs perpetual futures**, with their own documentation, fee tiers and
  Chainlink-based pricing. A description of the venue as prediction markets only is already out
  of date.
- **Nobody here has funded an account.** Everything above is read from Polymarket's own terms,
  documentation and fee pages, on 19 September 2026.

## Alternatives

[Polymarket US](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us) is where an American reader has to go, and
[Kalshi](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/kalshi) is the other exchange they will be choosing between. [Limitless](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/limitless) is the
closest comparison for the on-chain half, on Base rather than Polygon, and it does not serve US
traders at all. [ForecastEx](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/forecastex) is the opposite end of the same category — no
sports, no crypto, and interest paid on collateral while a position is held.

## FAQ

### Can US residents trade on Polymarket?

Not on this platform. polymarket.com blocks the United States outright and offers view-only access instead. US residents trade on a separate product, [Polymarket US](/tools/polymarket-us), which is a CFTC-designated contract market operated by QCX LLC, settles in dollars and requires identity verification before a first deposit.

### What does a trade cost on Polymarket?

The fee is shaped like price times one-minus-price, so it peaks at 50 cents and vanishes at the extremes. Makers are never charged, and taker coefficients run from 0.07 on crypto down to zero on geopolitics — 1.25% of the payout at the midpoint for most categories, 1.75% for crypto.

### Who resolves a Polymarket market?

The UMA optimistic oracle, not Polymarket. Anyone may propose an outcome against a bond, there is a two-hour challenge window, and a twice-disputed market escalates to a vote of UMA token holders. There is no route from that vote back to the company.

### Does Polymarket require KYC?

Not at signup. An account is a wallet, and what stands in for identity is a click-through attestation that you are not a US person, not in a restricted jurisdiction and not using a VPN, plus a reactive certification path used when an account is flagged.

## Also from Polymarket

- [Polymarket CLI](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-cli.md)
- [polymarket-client](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-client.md)
- [Polymarket CLOB API](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-clob-api.md)
- [Polymarket Gamma API](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-gamma-api.md)
- [Polymarket US API](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us-api.md)
- [Polymarket US Python SDK](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us-python.md)
- [Polymarket US TypeScript SDK](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us-typescript.md)
- [Polymarket US](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/polymarket-us.md)
- [py-clob-client](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/py-clob-client.md)

## Background

- [How accurate a prediction market's price actually is](https://predictionmarkets.tools/guides/how-accurate-the-price-is.md) — What research establishes about reading 73 cents as a 73% chance — where market prices are calibrated, the deviations that recur, and what the horizon does.
- [How money gets back out](https://predictionmarkets.tools/guides/how-money-gets-out.md) — The rail that funded an account is usually not the rail that empties it. Same-source rules, clearing holds, jurisdiction locks, and what a bridge takes.
- [What a prediction market is, and how one works](https://predictionmarkets.tools/guides/what-a-prediction-market-is.md) — A contract that pays one dollar if a stated event happens. What you buy, who takes the other side, who decides, and when the cents stop meaning a probability.

## Also worth comparing

- [Futuur](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/futuur.md) — Play-money and real-money markets side by side, priced by an LS-LMSR market maker.
- [Limitless](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/limitless.md) — Event contracts on Base, collateralised in USDC, traded on a central limit order book.
- [Myriad](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/myriad.md) — Multi-chain event markets priced by an AMM and settled in stablecoins or in points.
- [Crypto.com Prediction](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/crypto-com-prediction-markets.md) — Event contracts on a CFTC-designated exchange, traded from inside the Crypto.com app.
- [ForecastEx](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/forecastex.md) — Economic and climate contracts on a CFTC exchange that pays interest on your collateral.
- [Kalshi](https://predictionmarkets.tools/tools/kalshi.md) — A CFTC-designated exchange for event contracts, settled in dollars against named sources.

## Named as a replacement for

- [Augur](https://predictionmarkets.tools/alternatives/augur.md)
- [Drift BET](https://predictionmarkets.tools/alternatives/drift-bet.md)
- [Insight Prediction](https://predictionmarkets.tools/alternatives/insight-prediction.md)
- [Kalshi](https://predictionmarkets.tools/alternatives/kalshi-alternatives.md)
- [Trepa](https://predictionmarkets.tools/alternatives/trepa.md)
- [Zeitgeist](https://predictionmarkets.tools/alternatives/zeitgeist.md)