Robinhood Prediction Markets

What it is

Event contracts inside the Robinhood app. The useful thing to understand first is that Robinhood is not the exchange — it is the broker in front of three of them, and the card is about the broker.

Robinhood Derivatives, LLC is a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant. Its own disclosure is unambiguous: event contracts are offered by Robinhood Derivatives, LLC through either KalshiEX LLC, ForecastEx LLC or Rothera Exchange and Clearing LLC. There is no designated contract market registered under the Robinhood name — a check of the CFTC's own list of trading organisations does not turn one up.

Rothera is the part worth getting right. Rothera Exchange and Clearing LLC is a designated contract market, derivatives clearing organization and swap execution facility, originally designated on 24 June 2019 as LedgerX LLC and later operating as MIAX Derivatives Exchange (MIAXdx). On 20 January 2026 a joint venture established by Robinhood Markets, Inc. with Susquehanna International Group completed the purchase of 90% of MIAXdx from Miami International Holdings, Inc., which retains 10%; the entity was renamed Rothera Exchange and Clearing LLC on the same date. That closing date is confirmed twice in SEC filings — in MIAX's FY2025 10-K and in Robinhood's FY2025 10-K/A — and by the CFTC's own name-change note.

So the accurate sentence is that Robinhood now part-owns a CFTC-licensed exchange rather than that it operates one. Robinhood's own wording, announcing that Rothera began taking its order flow on 4 June 2026 with a selection of World Cup and professional baseball contracts, is that Rothera is "independently managed through Robinhood's joint venture with Susquehanna International Group".

For a trader the practical consequence is that the contract you hold, the rules it settles under, and the exchange fee on top all depend on where your order was routed — and the app does not make you choose.

Availability

United States only, and Robinhood will not tell you which states.

The requirements from its own help centre are that you be 18 or older, hold an individual brokerage account, and be a US resident. On top of the brokerage account you need a separate Robinhood Derivatives account, approved on trading experience, investment profile and state of residence; applying repeatedly without being approved, or disabling event-contract trading and then re-enabling it, may carry a 30-day wait before an application is reviewed again.

The state restriction is the awkward part, and it is four different facts:

• Maryland residents cannot trade sports event contracts — on Robinhood's event-contracts overview page. Its own restrictions page says instead that Maryland residents cannot trade event contracts at all, with no sports qualifier. Two Robinhood help pages, two different blocks, and nothing reconciling them.
• Nevada residents cannot open new sports event contracts, as of 1 December 2025 — a close-only restriction rather than a block.
• There is no published list of supported states. Robinhood's page says event contracts are not available in all states, that additional state restrictions may apply, and to check the app for the current list. That list is not on the web, so no card can carry it honestly, and this one does not.
• The block follows your current location, not only your residency. Robinhood's restrictions article states that trading is blocked while you are physically in a restricted state, even if you do not live there.

Non-US residents are not served at all. The residency requirement is explicit and the offering entity is a US futures commission merchant.

KYC is ordinary US brokerage onboarding, and it is strict about residency rather than about documents: a legal US residential address in the fifty states, Puerto Rico or the US Virgin Islands, with exceptions for US military abroad; US citizenship, permanent residency or a valid US visa; a Social Security number; and a government photo ID where one is requested.

Pricing

Two layers, and they are charged by two different parties.

Robinhood's commission, from its own fee schedule, effective 1 June 2026:

Total Commission = k × p × (1 − p) × c

where k is 10% without a Robinhood Gold subscription and 5% with one, p is the contract price as a decimal, and c is the number of contracts. It is rounded up to the nearest cent, and Robinhood's help centre states a ceiling of $0.01 per contract. Robinhood's own worked table bears that out — 100 contracts anywhere between 28 and 72 cents costs $1.00 either way, because the cap binds; at 90 cents it is $0.45 with Gold and $0.90 without.

This replaced a flat-rate commission on 1 June 2026. Any figure from before then is stale.

Exchange fees are separate and additional. The fee schedule states that exchange fees on KalshiEX products routed through Robinhood Derivatives are $0.01 per contract, per side. For CME Group, ForecastEx and Rothera it points at each exchange's own schedule instead of quoting a number, so what a fill costs depends on a routing decision you did not make. The help centre's general statement is that exchange fees can be up to $0.01 per contract and apply to both opening and closing trades.

Add the two layers up and a Kalshi contract costs more here than on Kalshi. At 50 cents the commission cap binds at a cent and the KalshiEX exchange fee is another, so a fill costs 2 cents a contract — 2% of a dollar of payout, against 1.75% on Kalshi directly. The gap widens at the extremes rather than closing, because Kalshi's fee is a curve that collapses towards the edges while two flat cents do not: at 10 cents the same fill is about 1.9% here and 0.63% there. What you are paying for is the app, the single account and the routing, not a better price.

Robinhood Gold is $5 a month. It is an account-wide subscription rather than a prediction-markets product, and it appears in this card's tier list only because it halves the commission constant.

The 2% in this card's fee fields is both layers added up, at the 50-cent midpoint and on the KalshiEX route: a cent of commission, where the $0.01-per-contract ceiling binds and k stops mattering because 10% and 5% both land on the cap, plus a cent of exchange fee. It is not the commission alone. A field carrying only the commission would show 1% here against 1.75% on Kalshi, and a reader sorting this category by taker fee would see the most expensive of the three US routes ranked as the cheapest.

Two things the single number cannot carry. Robinhood publishes no maker-taker distinction for event contracts — one commission applies whether your order rests or takes — and for the ForecastEx and Rothera routes the second layer is not quoted at all, so 2% is the figure for the route this card can price.

Markets & resolution

Robinhood resolves nothing. Every contract settles under the rules of the exchange it was routed to — KalshiEX, ForecastEx or Rothera — and the outcome verification source is that exchange's, not Robinhood's. If you want to know who decides and against what, the answer is on the exchange's card, and which exchange applies depends on the contract.

The listing is the widest in this category because it aggregates three venues. Robinhood's help centre summarises it as sports, politics, weather, commodities and entertainment; its own prediction-markets page runs a longer live set — pro and college football, NBA, NHL, WNBA, baseball, tennis, cricket, golf, soccer, MMA, boxing, racing, crypto, climate, commodities and metals, economics, education, elections, entertainment, financial, politics and technology.

Order handling is narrower than the listing suggests. Orders are limit-only, either immediate-or-cancel or good-til-date, where good-til-date expires at 3 AM ET the next calendar day. Dollar-denominated orders are always immediate-or-cancel. Fractional contracts are available for closing and for dollar orders; opening a position takes whole contracts.

Integrations

There is no public API, no WebSocket and no SDK for Robinhood event contracts. This is a consumer app and nothing else — anyone wanting programmatic access is on the wrong card and should be reading the exchanges' own APIs, Kalshi API among them.

Tax documents, reports and statements for event contracts are covered by Robinhood's own help centre as a separate topic; we have not opened an account to see what a statement contains.

Limitations

• Mobile only for trading. Robinhood's own words are that prediction markets are currently only available in the mobile app and only available to view on web, not trade. They are not available on Robinhood Legend.
• No public state list. The one restriction a US reader most needs is deliberately in the app and nowhere else, which makes it uncheckable before signup.
• You do not choose the exchange, and the exchange determines both the settlement rules and the second half of your fee. Robinhood quotes the KalshiEX exchange fee and refers you elsewhere for the other two.
• No API, no automation, no export we could verify.
• Robinhood does not resolve markets, so a dispute about an outcome is a conversation with an exchange you have no direct relationship with.
• The commission formula changed on 1 June 2026 and the fee schedule itself carries a 2026-05-28 version stamp. Re-check it before trading size.
• Nobody here has funded an account. Everything above is read from Robinhood's own help centre, fee schedule, newsroom and SEC filings, and from the CFTC's list of trading organisations, on 19 September 2026.

Alternatives

Kalshi is where most of these contracts actually trade, and going direct replaces Robinhood's commission with Kalshi's own fee schedule and gives you an API. ForecastEx is the other exchange behind this app, reachable through Interactive Brokers as well. Polymarket is the alternative for a US reader who wants deeper listings, through its own designated contract market rather than a broker.