In my Kalshi review, I’ll be taking a forensic look at what is perhaps the best-known prediction markets site in the US. This CTFC-regulated sites allows you to buy and sell events contracts on outcomes for sports, politics, and more.
The prices of these event contacts are based on the outcome probability, and are always between $0.01 and $1.00. For example, if the outcome has roughly a 60% chance of happening, the contract price would be around $0.60. While simple enough and very user-friendly, Kalshi’s interface is packed with stats and features that experienced users will love.
The Kalshi $10 welcome bonus
It’s actually fairly unusual for prediction markets sites to put on bonuses, but I was pleased to see that Kalshi is more than happy to buck this trend. For example, if you sign up to the brand via the banners on this page, you will activate a $10 Kalshi sign up bonus that you can claim with an initial deposit of just $1. Once you’ve made $10 worth of trades, the $10 bonus will be yours. From here, you can go onto enjoy plenty more trading without having to spend any more of your own cash.
Alternatively, you can enter a friend’s referral Kalshi promo code and you’ll each get a bonus of $25, but I’ll discuss that in a bit more detail later on. For now, here are the key details of the welcome offer:
| 🏈 Prediction markets site: | Kalshi |
| 🏆 Welcome bonus: | $10 |
| 🎁 Promo code: | N/A |
| 💰 Minimum deposit: | $1.00 |
| 💱 Qualfying trades: | $10 |
Kalshi World Cup Offer
Right now users on Kalshi can get a share of $1 million for correctly predicting the World Cup winner, and it also automatically enters you into a prize package for free World Cup Tickets.
Full Details: Kalshi Soccer Cup Gives You a Chance to Share $1 Million
What are Kalshi prediction markets?
For those of you who haven’t come across prediction markets before, allow me to explain how they work on this site specifically. Prediction markets are questions about a future event, be it sports, culture, politics, or something else.
For each possible outcome of the future event, there are contracts that you can buy and sell. These contracts are priced at a fractional of a dollar based on the percentage chance of the outcome from happening.
For example, a 40% chance means that the contract will roughly be priced at $0.40. Once the event is finished, the prices of the contract outcome that happened go to $1.00. So if you’d bought $0.40 contracts, you’d make $0.60 profit on each one if your prediction was correct.
On the flipside, if your outcome didn’t happen, the event contract would resolve to $0.00, so you’d lose all the money you’d invested.
Example of a prediction market in action
Now that we know what prediction markets are, let’s take a look at an example of how they work in action. To keep it simple, let’s use a two-outcome Yes/No prediction contract scenario for an NFL game between the Packers and the Bears.
This is how it might look:
| 💯 Chance of winning | ✅ ‘Yes’ contract price | ❌’No’ contract price | |
| Packers to win contract: | 60% | $0.60 | $0.40 |
| Bears to win contract: | 40% | $0.40 | $0.60 |
- If you fancied the Bears to win as Underdogs, you’d buy “Yes” contracts at $0.40 each
- If the Bears won the game, the market would resolve as a “Yes”
- The price of the contracts that you’d bought would move to $1.00
- You’d therefore get $0.60 profit per contract (minus fees, which I’ll explain later)
Different types of Kalshi event contracts
The example that I’ve used above is the simplest type of prediction market: a two-outcome Yes/No. However, there are other types of multi-outcome prediction markets available, including Kalshi combos, as we can see below:
- Binary contracts - The simple “Yes/No contracts that I described above.
- Multiple choice - A prediction market where multiple outcomes are possible, and each outcome has its own Yes/No contracts. An example of this could be a futures market like “Who will win the Super Bowl?”. If trading this in late August, there’d still be 32 teams with a chance of winning, and therefore 32 possible outcomes.
- Scaled - These event contracts are based on range, and are often applicable to financial and economic prediction markets. For example, if the prediction market was “The price of Bitcoin by the end of the year”, you’d have multiple ranged event contracts to choose from, e.g., $70,000 to $74,999.99.
How are Kalshi event contracts priced
The prices and probabilities of Kalshi event contracts open with roughly the accurate probability of the event from happening. Once users start trading the probabilities and prices of the event contracts will move considerably.
Additionally, the factors that directly impact the events will also move the price, such as injury news or weather updates for an outdoor sporting event. The cool thing is that Kalshi will show you a graph of the price movements of the relevant event contracts over time so that you can see how they have shifted up to the current moment.
Note that prediction markets work as a two-way trading street, meaning that you need an equal number of traders on each outcome for the market to work. For example, if you want to buy “Yes” contracts, someone else on the site must buy an equal number of “No”. Thankfully Kalshi is the largest prediction market site in the US, and therefore there should always be enough customers to provide the required liquidity for your trades.
Does Kalshi charge fees on event contracts?
Instead of juicing the probabilities or adding a commission, Kalshi charges a fee when you buy events contracts. The Kalshi fees are paid when you buy, not when you’re paid out, and are based on the expected returns of the contract.
This is a detailed document that explains the math behind these fees, which is found on the Kalshi Fees Schedule page and it is a bit complex, so I won’t bore you with the details. However, using the $0.40 contract example from above, you’d roughly expect to pay a $0.02 fee per contract, which is reasonable and on par with what you get at rival prediction markets sites.
What prediction markets can you trade on Kalshi?
From sports to financials, tech and science, I found a diverse range of prediction markets on this site. Broadly speaking, it can be narrowed down to these following categories:
Other prediction markets on the Kalshi trading platform
In addition to the above key prediction market categories above, here are some other events that Kalshi covers:
- Mentions - These are unique markets that cover what a political or popular figure might say during their next speech or public appearance.
- Tech and Science - This category covers everything from AI company performance to when will NASA next land on the moon.
- Companies -Mostly this covers company activities such as “When will Tesla release their next car?”.
- Financials - As I mentioned above there’s some crossover with the economics prediction markets here in relation to oil and gas prices. However, you can also buy and sell events contracts for S&P 500 performance and other stock market predictions.
Kalshi review - Usability, look, and feel
I loved the look and feel of the Kalshi site as its use of white and minty greens is a refreshing alternative to the more sober look of other prediction markets sites. You can sign up here in a matter of minutes and from here you will find it plenty of fun navigating around all of the prediction markets. Elsewhere you will find plenty more enjoyable things like the comments section that usually offers some fairly spicy debate on what you’re trading.
Top mobile app found in my Kalshi review
I found that the Kalshi app is so good that I wrote an entire guide about it. It’s available for all modern iOS and Android devices, and you can download it for free from the relevant app stores. If anything, it’s even more user-friendly than the brand’s website and is well worth a download.
Is Kalshi legit in your state?
I wrote this entire guide that asks, ‘Is Kalshi legal?’ but I thought that I’d better give you the basics right here. So what you need to know is that this site is fully regulated by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a designated contract market. As such, you can trade here from all 50 states, even though a few states like Washington and Arizona have launched legal action against the brand.
A good Kalshi review for deposits and withdrawals
You can make secure and instant deposits at Kalshi from a minimum of $10 with a variety of payment methods including debit cards, Apple Pay, bank transfers and cryptocurrencies. Most of the above can be used to make withdrawals from a minimum of $10, and the processing times vary between 30 minutes for cards and up to four working days for bank transfers. Just note that there is a $2 fee for card withdrawals.
Getting help at the Kalshi prediction markets site
I found it pretty easy to get help from Kalshi simply by sending in a message to the dedicated customer support email address. As well as that, there is a comprehensive Help Center on the site that is packed full of useful articles about everything from signing up to making your withdrawals.
Simple steps to sign up to the Kalshi trading platform
So if you’ve made it this far, you are probably giving real consideration to signing up to Kalshi. In which case, just take the following steps to register your account and make your trades:
Now you can sit back and see how the price of your event contract rises or falls over time, and then you can decide whether to try and sell the contract for a profit or hold out til the event has concluded and hopefully win back your investment.
Conclusion - What I learned from my Kalshi review
One thing is for sure, and this is that Kalshi is more than worthy of its place as the biggest prediction markets site in the US. It’s a brand that will stay in the prediction markets news simply because it’s a whole lot of fun, with lots of interesting event contracts to trade and the whole thing is seriously user-friendly too.
I tried to think of a few criticisms, and the only thing that I could think of was that the commission fees could be explained a bit better. But that’s just a minor thing and certainly not enough to stop me from recommending that you hit any of the links for Kalshi in the banners of this page to sign up and start trading.