Polymarket Fees Explained: What You Actually Pay in 2026

Reference · 5 min read · published 2026-07-25 · updated 2026-07-25

For most of its history Polymarket charged no trading fee at all. That changed with Fee Structure V2: fees now depend on the category you are trading and on which side of the book you are on. Here is what actually leaves your balance.

The taker fee

If your order crosses the spread and fills immediately, you are the taker and you pay a fee. It is not a flat percentage - it scales with how uncertain the market is:

fee = coefficient × price × (1 − price) × shares

That formula peaks at 50¢ and falls to almost nothing near the edges. A market trading at 50¢ with a 0.0625 coefficient charges about 1.56% at the peak; the same market at 95¢ charges roughly 0.3%. This is deliberate: near-certain markets stay cheap to trade, which is what makes 99%+ positions viable at all.

Which categories charge fees

Crypto - fees apply across 5-minute, 15-minute, hourly, 4-hour, daily and weekly markets.
Sports - the taker coefficient rose from 0.03 to 0.05 in July 2026, and the maker rebate fell from 25% to 15% of collected fees.
Politics, geopolitics and world events - still fee-free at the time of writing.

Do not memorise the numbers. Every market carries its own fee data, and Polynter reads it directly from the market rather than from a table that goes stale - the trade panel shows the estimated fee before you confirm.

Maker rebates

Post a limit order that rests on the book, and you are the maker. Makers do not pay the taker fee, and on eligible markets they receive a share of the fees collected in that same market, paid daily in pUSD. Rebates are calculated per market, so you compete only against other makers quoting the same question - not against the whole platform.

That is separate from liquidity provider rewards, which pay for quoting inside a maximum spread regardless of whether anyone trades against you.

What Polymarket does not charge

No deposit fee. Bridging in costs whatever the source chain charges, not Polymarket.
No withdrawal fee from Polymarket itself.
No gas on trades. Orders are matched off-chain and settled by the exchange contracts; you sign, you do not pay gas.
No resolution fee. Winning shares pay the full $1.00.

The cost everyone forgets

The spread is usually larger than the fee. If a market shows 61¢ bid / 65¢ ask, crossing it costs you 4¢ - several times the taker fee on a mid-priced market. In thin markets the spread can be 10¢ or more.

Two habits fix most of this: check the order book depth before sizing up, and use limit orders instead of market orders when you are not in a hurry. You become the maker, you skip the taker fee, and you may earn a rebate.

Worked examples

A $1,000 trade at 50¢ in a fee-charging category. You buy 2,000 shares. With a 0.0625 coefficient the fee is 0.0625 × 0.5 × 0.5 × 2000 = about $31, or 3.1% of the stake. This is the worst case - maximum uncertainty is where the fee peaks.

The same $1,000 at 90¢. You buy 1,111 shares. The fee is 0.0625 × 0.9 × 0.1 × 1111 = about $6.25, or 0.6%. Five times cheaper, purely because the price moved toward the edge.

The same $1,000 at 99¢. About $0.63. Effectively nothing - which is the design intent, and the reason yield strategies at the edges are viable at all.

The pattern to internalise: fee cost is a function of where the price sits, not of how much you trade. Two identical stakes can differ tenfold in fee.

Working out the real cost of a trade

Add four things, in the order they usually matter:

The spread you cross. Almost always the largest line item.
Slippage beyond the top of book. On a thin market this can dwarf everything else - the displayed price applies to the first few hundred dollars, not to your whole order.
The taker fee, if you crossed rather than rested.
The opportunity cost of capital locked until resolution.

For a 99¢ market resolving in three days, item four dominates everything - which is exactly why the 99%+ page ranks by annualised return rather than by raw discount.

How to pay less

Rest, do not cross. A limit order inside the spread makes you the maker: no taker fee, possible rebate, better price. The cost is that you might not get filled.
Split large orders. Clearing four levels of a thin book in one click is the most expensive way to enter a position.
Trade the edges when you can. The same conviction expressed at 88¢ costs materially less in fees than at 55¢.
Check the category. The identical strategy can be fee-free in politics and fee-bearing in crypto.
Watch what you are being paid. Maker rebates, holding rewards and LP rewards are three separate programmes; on the right market they can outweigh the fees entirely.

Common questions

Does Polymarket charge to withdraw?

No. You pay the destination chain's own cost, nothing to the platform. Details in deposits and withdrawals.

Do I pay gas on every trade?

No. Orders are matched off-chain and settled by the exchange contracts. You sign messages; you do not pay for transactions.

Is there a fee when a market resolves?

No. Winning shares redeem for the full $1.00.

Why does my fee differ from someone else's on the same market?

Because the fee scales with the price at the moment of the fill, and with your share count. Two traders on opposite sides of the same trade pay different amounts.