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Kalshi alternatives

Where people go when Kalshi is missing the market they want, or when a regulated US exchange was never quite the thing they needed.

Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated prediction-market exchange. You fund an account, trade event contracts that settle in dollars at a flat $0.02 per contract, and the exchange itself writes and resolves every market it lists, across elections, economic releases, weather, and sports.

The reasons to look elsewhere tend to be specific. Kalshi's curated catalog can lack the exact question you want to trade, since the exchange only lists what it chooses to write. Its API requires RSA-PSS request signing, which is real integration work compared with a plain key. Some people want to experiment without risking money at all. And a subset of searchers were never after a place to trade; they need programmatic prices for software, which points at a data product rather than a second exchange.

01

Polymarket + Polymarket US

The other real-money venue, and the usual first stop. The international platform runs on-chain via a funded Polygon wallet, carries a much broader catalog spanning politics and crypto and culture, and charges takers a dynamic fee up to roughly 3.15% while rebating makers. It blocks the US along with several European countries. Polymarket US is the company's separate CFTC-regulated, KYC'd platform, launched in 2026 for the domestic market that the international platform can't serve. State-level availability wasn't confirmed in Polymarket's own docs as of 2026-07-09, so check before relying on it. Our full breakdown of the two venues is at Kalshi vs Polymarket.

02

Manifold Markets

The play-money route. Accounts start with mana rather than a funded balance, anyone can create a market on any question, and the catalog covers politics, technology, sports, culture, and business, per its own site as of 2026-07-24. Nothing pays out in dollars, which rules it out as a trading venue and rules it in for practicing forecasts or running community markets at zero financial risk. Its free API takes a plain key at 500 requests a minute, a far gentler on-ramp than Kalshi's request signing.

03

Oddpool

A window rather than a venue. Oddpool is a dashboard over both Kalshi and Polymarket, spanning politics, sports, crypto, and culture, with a cross-venue arbitrage scanner and whale-trade flagging built in. If the pull away from Kalshi was wanting to watch the whole prediction-market landscape at once instead of one exchange's book, this covers that. Trades still happen on the venues themselves. Full comparison.

04

dino.markets

Our product

dino.markets isn't a sixth venue to open an account on. It's an API, built and sold by us, that pairs each Kalshi market with its Polymarket counterpart where one exists and attaches a confidence score to the match, serving both books behind a single Bearer key instead of Kalshi's RSA-PSS signing. The entry tier runs 10,000 requests a month at no cost, with the MCP server on every plan.

Common questions

Is Polymarket legal to use in the US?+
The international platform blocks US users. Polymarket US, the company's separate CFTC-regulated arm launched in 2026, is the US-facing option, with full KYC; confirm your state's eligibility with them directly, since their docs didn't settle it as of 2026-07-09.
Which alternatives involve real money?+
Polymarket and Polymarket US settle in real value. Manifold runs entirely on play-money mana. Oddpool and dino.markets handle data only, so no money moves through either.
Why do people find Kalshi's API hard to integrate?+
Every request must carry an RSA-PSS signature over its timestamp, method, and path, which means generating and managing a key pair. Manifold's API and dino.markets' API each use a plain key instead.
Is there an alternative with more markets than Kalshi?+
By raw count, Manifold, since users create markets freely. Among real-money venues, Polymarket's international catalog is the broader one, particularly in crypto and culture categories Kalshi doesn't touch.
What if I want Kalshi's data without a Kalshi account?+
Kalshi's market data API is free to query, though it still involves the signing scheme. dino.markets serves Kalshi prices alongside Polymarket's through one key, and Oddpool displays both venues in a dashboard. Which fits depends on whether you're writing code or watching a screen.