What Is Polymarket? A Complete Guide to Prediction Markets
A prediction market is a market in shares of an outcome: each share pays $1 if the outcome happens and $0 if it does not, so the price is the crowd's estimate of the probability. Polymarket describes itself as the world's largest prediction market, and as of September 2026 it runs as three products with different eligibility rules: the international platform at polymarket.com, the CFTC-regulated Polymarket US, and Polymarket Perps. Here is how it works and which product applies to you.
What a Polymarket share actually is
The unit of trade is simple: every share is priced between $0.00 and $1.00, one dollar of collateral creates one Yes share and one No share, winning shares redeem for $1.00, and losing shares are worth $0.00.
That rule turns a price into a probability. If Yes trades at 62 cents, the market is saying there is roughly a 62 percent chance the event happens, the exact example Polymarket US uses in its own explainer. Polymarket's order-book documentation agrees: the price directly represents the market's belief in the probability of that outcome.
Two words matter before you trade. A market is a single binary question with Yes and No outcomes. An event groups related markets, which is how multi-outcome questions such as an election are built. When those outcomes are mutually exclusive, Polymarket links them as a negative-risk group: exactly one resolves Yes and every other resolves No.
Browse all live markets, go deeper on price-to-probability in understanding Polymarket odds, and look up terms in the prediction market glossary.
How trading works: an order book, not a bookmaker
You are not betting against a house. Polymarket runs a central limit order book, or CLOB, so your order matches against another user's. The design is hybrid: an operator matches compatible orders off-chain, then matched trades settle on-chain through smart contracts.
A market order executes immediately at the best available price. A limit order executes only at your price or better, sits in the book until someone trades against it, and can fill partially.
One detail catches new traders out: the price on a market card is the midpoint of the bid-ask spread, and if that spread is wider than $0.10, the last traded price is shown instead. In a thin market that number is not necessarily a price you can get, so check the book or hunt for liquidity with the market screener and watch repricing on 24h movers.
New shares are minted when complementary limit orders sum to $1.00, so a 60-cent Yes bid and a 40-cent No bid can create both sides at once. Collateral is pUSD, an ERC-20 token backed by USDC with the backing enforced on-chain. The platform runs on Polygon and is non-custodial, so Polymarket never holds your funds and losing your private key means losing access to your money.
How markets resolve
Every market has pre-defined rules naming a resolution source, such as an official announcement or a named website. On the international platform, resolution runs through the UMA Optimistic Oracle. Anyone can propose the outcome by posting a bond, typically $750 in pUSD, followed by a 2-hour challenge period in which anyone can dispute by posting a matching counter-bond. A disputed market goes to a 24 to 48 hour debate period, after which UMA token holders vote, taking approximately 48 hours. Polymarket's documentation puts a fully disputed resolution at 4 to 6 days end to end. Winning tokens then redeem for $1.00 each.
Polymarket US resolves differently: the exchange determines the result from the sources named in the market's rules, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the governing league for a sport, or specific news outlets. Unlisted sources have no effect.
The lesson is the same on both: read the rules text, not the headline, because a market can resolve against you on a technicality the title never mentions. The resolution calendar shows what settles in the next 31 days.
Who runs Polymarket, and the milestones you can verify
The CFTC's January 3, 2022 enforcement order names the operator: Delaware-registered Blockratize, Inc., doing business as Polymarket, based in New York City. It states Polymarket had been operating beginning in approximately June 2020 and had offered more than 900 separate event markets since its inception.
The order settled charges of offering off-exchange event-based binary options contracts and of failing to obtain designation as a designated contract market or registration as a swap execution facility. Polymarket paid a $1.4 million civil monetary penalty, agreed to wind down non-compliant markets on Polymarket.com, and agreed to cease and desist.
The 2024 US election is the volume milestone people cite: Polymarket's public data API reports cumulative volume above $3.6 billion across all candidate markets grouped under its Presidential Election Winner 2024 event. The CFTC's designated contract market filings list QCX LLC, doing business as Polymarket US. For how rules differ by country, see is Polymarket legal.
Polymarket vs Polymarket US vs Polymarket Perps
Three products, three sets of eligibility rules. Confusing them is easy to do.
Polymarket (international) is the crypto-based platform on polymarket.com. Open it from a US connection and the site says so itself: "Trading is blocked in the United States on polymarket.com. Switch to polymarket.us to trade prediction markets." If you are outside the US and eligible, you can open Polymarket; availability depends on your jurisdiction. Circumventing a geographic restriction violates the platform's terms.
Polymarket US is the fiat-based, US-regulated platform: a designated contract market and derivatives clearing organization under CFTC oversight, with all trading in US dollars. You complete KYC before you can deposit or trade, supplying name, date of birth and address, with an ID and selfie check if automated verification does not clear. As of September 2026 its listings are mostly sports, from the NFL and NBA to tennis and golf, with politics, culture, finance and economics described as coming soon. It does not offer perpetuals and is not available in every US state, so confirm eligibility at signup. We have no affiliate relationship with Polymarket US, so go direct; our breakdown is Polymarket US explained.
Polymarket Perps launched on September 3, 2026. These are perpetual contracts tracking an index, commodity, crypto asset or equity. They trade continuously and never expire, so there is no resolution event to wait for. Polymarket's public instrument list showed 67 tradable perpetual markets as of September 2026, with up to 20x leverage on major crypto, index and commodity markets and up to 10x on single stocks. Those ceilings are entry tiers rather than flat caps: the limit falls as position size grows. On BTC-USD and SP500-USD, 20x applies below $250,000 of notional, the full face value of the position, and steps down to 1x above $10 million. TSLA-USD drops from 10x to 5x above $500,000, and a few smaller crypto markets cap below 10x at every size. Base-tier fees are 0.0400 percent taker and 0.0125 percent maker, charged on the notional value of each fill. Funding settles at the end of each one-hour window and is capped at plus or minus 4 percent per hour. Order placement is not permitted from the United States, Canada, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Crimea, Donetsk or Luhansk, and early access requires a Perps referral link or code.
Start with the Perps hub, check funding and open interest on the Perps screener, and size a position on the liquidation calculator. Eligible readers outside the US and Canada can open Polymarket Perps; availability depends on your jurisdiction. Leverage magnifies losses as well as gains, and positions can be liquidated, as is Polymarket Perps safe explains.
Why people use prediction markets, and where they fall short
People come for three things: information, because a continuously updated price is a probability estimate with money behind it; hedging, because a position that pays when a bad outcome lands offsets part of its real-life cost; and speculation, when you think the crowd is mispricing something.
The limits deserve equal billing:
None of that argues against prediction markets. It argues for sizing positions as though you will be wrong a meaningful share of the time, because you will be.
Getting started, and what to check first
The full walkthrough is how to use Polymarket. Our free tools are open to everyone: the whale tracker ranks a market's largest holders by Smart Money Score, the alerts feed streams large positions in real time, and biggest Polymarket bets surfaces the week's largest new positions. We also run live 2026 midterm odds and Fed rate cut odds.
Frequently asked questions
Is Polymarket legal in the United States?
The international platform blocks trading from the United States and points US visitors to polymarket.us instead. Polymarket US is the regulated route: QCX LLC, doing business as Polymarket US, appears in the CFTC's designated contract market filings. It is not available in every state, so confirm eligibility at signup, and note that circumventing a geographic restriction violates the platform's terms.
Is Polymarket gambling or trading?
Legally these sit in derivatives territory: the CFTC's 2022 order described Polymarket's event markets as pairs of binary options constituting swaps under its jurisdiction, and Polymarket US calls its products regulated event-based derivatives. It differs from a sportsbook in two ways Polymarket US names directly: you trade against other users on an order book rather than the house, and you can sell before the event resolves.
Can you lose money on Polymarket?
Yes. A losing share is worth $0.00 at resolution, so a position can go to zero. You can also lose by selling into a wide spread, paying taker fees on frequent trades, or landing on the wrong side of a rules technicality. On Perps, leverage and hourly funding can liquidate a position before your view plays out.
Is there a minimum deposit?
There is no single published account minimum, and the products differ. On Polymarket US, wire transfers carry a $1,000 minimum with no maximum, while debit card and bank transfers have a $50,000 daily limit and no stated minimum — a wire minimum is not an account minimum. On the international platform deposits are crypto transfers, so your floor is set by network and intermediary costs, not by Polymarket.
PolymarketFlow may earn a commission when you sign up through links on this site. This is not financial advice; trading involves risk and availability depends on your jurisdiction.