Understanding Kalshi Fees

Kalshi charges a transaction fee on every trade. The fee depends on your role in the trade:

• Taker (rate multiplier: 0.07) — You pay this when you place an order that executes immediately against an existing resting order. You are "taking" liquidity from the orderbook.
• Maker (rate multiplier: 0.0175) — You pay this when someone else's order executes against your resting order. You "made" the liquidity that was consumed.

These multipliers are not the actual fee percentage you pay — the effective fee depends on the contract price. Both fees are calculated using the same formula, just at different rates. Fees are charged to both sides of a trade.

Where:

• Rate is 0.07 (taker) or 0.0175 (maker)
• Contracts is the number of contracts traded
• P is the contract price (between $0.01 and $0.99)
• ⌈ ⌉ means the result is rounded up to the next cent

The key term is P × (1 − P). This creates a parabolic curve that peaks at P = $0.50 and approaches zero at the extremes ($0.01 and $0.99). The result: fees are highest for contracts priced near 50¢ and lowest for contracts near the edges of the probability range.

The P × (1 − P) structure means fees scale with uncertainty. Contracts priced near 50¢ represent maximum uncertainty — the market is roughly split on the outcome. These trades carry more informational value and risk, so they incur higher fees.

Contracts priced near $0.01 or $0.99 represent near-certain outcomes. The low fees at these extremes reflect the minimal risk and lower informational content of trading on events that the market considers almost resolved.

For the full details, see the official Kalshi fee schedule.