Polymarket Fees Explained

This guide covers prediction markets. Perps have their own fee tiers and funding, explained in the Perps guide.

Who pays a fee

Every trade on Polymarket has two sides. The maker placed a resting order that was waiting in the order book, and the taker sent an order that matched against it at once. The fee is charged to the taker. Makers pay none, and a maker whose liquidity is taken can earn a rebate that is funded by taker fees.

The fee is set by the protocol at the moment the trade is matched, so you do not include it in your order. Polymarket also charges no fee to move money in or out, although a service you use to buy or send funds may charge its own fee.

The formula

The taker fee follows this formula: fee = C × feeRate × p × (1 - p). C is the number of shares you trade, feeRate is a per-market parameter and p is the price of the share between 0 and 1. The fee is rounded to 5 decimal places, and the smallest fee charged is 0.00001 pUSD, so a very small trade near the ends of the price range can pay no fee at all.

Two official pages name different currencies for that minimum: the Fees page says 0.00001 USDC, while the Maker Rebates page says pUSD. Polymarket now uses pUSD (Polymarket USD) as collateral, so this guide uses pUSD.

Polymarket lists the usual rate for each market category:

Taker fee rate, maker fee rate and maker rebate by category. Source: docs.polymarket.com/trading/fees, checked Oct 19, 2026.

Geopolitical and world events markets are fee-free. Polymarket can change the rates and the rebate shares, and the table above shows what the official page said on the day it was checked. The table gives the rate by category, but fees are switched on market by market: in Polymarket's market data, each market reports whether fees are active for it and carries its own fee schedule.

Why the fee peaks at 50 cents

Because p is multiplied by one minus p, the fee is symmetric around 50 cents and is largest there. For 100 crypto shares at 50 cents the fee is $1.75. At 10 cents and at 90 cents it is the same smaller number.

The numbers in this table are computed from the formula and match the fee tables in Polymarket's documentation. Use the fee calculator for your own category, price and size.

What the fee does to your odds

A fee is part of what you pay for a share, so it raises the probability you need to break even. Buying a crypto share at 50 cents and holding it to resolution needs a win probability of 51.75%, not 50 percent. The effect adds up if you trade often, because a taker pays the fee on every trade it takes. The odds converter shows the break-even for any price.

Maker rebates

Taker fees fund a rebate program for makers. Rebates are paid daily, in pUSD, and a rebate has to reach 1 pUSD before it is paid out. A maker competes for the pool of the market where the order was filled: totals are counted per market, so only makers in the same market compete for the same pool. Your share of the pool is calculated as rebate = (your_fee_equivalent / total_fee_equivalent) * rebate_pool, where the fee equivalent of your filled orders is what the taker fee on them would have been.

The share of fees that goes to the pool depends on the category. It is 20% for crypto, 15% for sports and 25% for most other categories in the table above.

There is a second program for takers. The Taker Rebate Program started on May 28, 2026. Your tier follows your weighted volume over the last 30 days, and the rebate grows with the tier. The program page says it has seven tiers, from Bronze to Obsidian, while its own table lists six named tiers, from Bronze to Obsidian, plus a Tier 0 with no rebate. The program page has the current numbers.

Fees when you trade through an interface

Polymarket's Builder Program lets an interface that routes orders to Polymarket charge its own fee. On prediction markets, builder fees are flat percentages of the trade value that each builder sets within Polymarket's limits, and they stack on top of platform fees and never replace them. Polymarket caps them at 1% on taker orders and 0.5% on maker orders, and the rates are publicly queryable.

Because a builder fee is separate from Polymarket's own, a market with no platform fee can still carry a builder fee, and it can apply to a maker order even though Polymarket's fee never does. Orders placed through PolyTerminal carry PolyTerminal's Polymarket builder code, and PolyTerminal may charge a builder fee on top of Polymarket's own fees, as stated on every page of this site.

How the rules changed in 2026

The fee rules have changed several times this year, which is one reason copies of the rules on other websites can be out of date. This is a selection of entries from Polymarket's own changelog. Each date is the date of the entry, which is not always the day a change took effect:

Selected fee changes in 2026 (official changelog entries). Source: docs.polymarket.com/changelog/predictions, checked Oct 19, 2026.

Always check the date on the page where you read a rate. The list of rules at the end of this page gives the day each one was last compared with the official page.

PolyTerminal is an independent interface for Polymarket and is not operated or endorsed by Polymarket. Orders placed through PolyTerminal carry PolyTerminal’s Polymarket builder code, and PolyTerminal may charge a builder fee on top of Polymarket’s own fees. This page is educational and is not investment advice. Rules were compared with the official documentation on Oct 19, 2026; check the source before you act on a number.