Polymarket Fees: Trading Costs, Deposit Fees, and the New Bridge Fees
Everything you pay to trade on Polymarket in 2026. Taker rates by category, the pricing curve, free geopolitics markets, and bridge costs.
Most people place their first trade on Polymarket before they ever look at the cost side. Then the fill comes back smaller than expected and they go hunting for an answer. The rules are not hidden. They are written into a formula that most guides skip over.
This post covers the whole cost picture. You get the exact taker fee formula, the current rate for every category, what makers earn instead of pay, how deposits and withdrawals work, and the bridge costs that show up when your money leaves Polygon. By the end you can price a trade before you click.
How Polymarket Fees Work
Only takers pay. If your order crosses the book and fills immediately, you pay. If your limit order rests and someone else hits it, you pay nothing and collect a rebate instead.
The other thing to know: geopolitics and world events markets carry no fee at all. Zero, at any price, for makers and takers both.
Fees hit at the moment of the match. There is no fee field to fill in, no separate transaction, no charge at settlement. The protocol takes it out of the fill.
The Taker Fee Formula
fee = C × feeRate × p × (1 - p)Cis the share countfeeRateis the rate for that market categorypis the share price as a decimal between 0.01 and 0.99
Results round to five decimal places, so the smallest possible charge is 0.00001. Small orders priced near the extremes often round straight to zero.
Why the Cost Peaks at 50 Cents
The p × (1 - p) part of the formula is a curve, not a flat percentage. It tops out at 0.50 and falls toward zero as the price approaches either end.
A trade at 0.30 and a trade at 0.70 cost the identical dollar amount. Coin flip markets are the expensive ones. Lopsided markets are cheap.
Balanced books cost the most to trade. That is not an accident. It is where liquidity is hardest to hold, and the fee funds the people holding it.
Polymarket Fee Schedule by Category
Sports moved up in July 2026. Here is the current table, with the peak dollar cost on 100 shares at 0.50.
| Category | feeRate | Max fee per 100 shares | Maker rebate share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crypto Fees | 0.07 | $1.75 | 20% |
| Sports Fees | 0.05 | $1.25 | 15% |
| Economics, Culture, Weather, Other Fees | 0.05 | $1.25 | 25% |
| Finance, Politics, Tech, Mentions Fees | 0.04 | $1.00 | 25% |
| Geopolitics / World Events Fees | 0 | $0.00 | n/a |
Crypto is the most expensive category on the board. Politics and finance are the cheapest that still charge anything.
Maker Rebates
Taker fees do not vanish into the company. They fund a daily rebate paid to the traders who post resting orders. A maker in a politics market collects a share of 25% of the fees that market generated. Crypto pays 20%. Sports pays 15%, the smallest share on the platform.
Rebates settle daily. For anyone running size on the book, that flips the cost line into an income line.
Real Trade Examples
| Trade | Price | Value | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 shares, crypto | 0.50 | $50 | $1.75 |
| 100 shares, sports | 0.50 | $50 | $1.25 |
| 100 shares, politics | 0.50 | $50 | $1.00 |
| 100 shares, geopolitics | any | any | $0.00 |
| 1000 shares, sports | 0.20 | $200 | $8.00 |
That last row surprises people. The rate looks worse as a percentage of trade value because the price sits away from the middle, but the dollar cost per share is lower than it would be at 0.50. Read the formula, not the percentage.
Sells work the same way. The fee comes out of your proceeds in the settlement token.
Polymarket Deposit Fees
Polymarket charges nothing to deposit. You send a supported token, it converts to pUSD, and you trade. pUSD holds a one to one backing with USDC and the wrap happens on its own for most accounts.
| Chain | Minimum deposit |
|---|---|
| Polygon, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism and other L2s | $2 |
| Ethereum mainnet | $7 |
| Bitcoin, Tron | $9 |
Solana and several other chains are supported as well. Bitcoin and Tron sit higher because their bridging costs are higher.
If your money already sits on Polygon as USDC or USDC.e, that path is the cheapest one available. Polygon gas rarely passes a few cents. Send to your deposit address and the balance shows up ready.
Deposits from anywhere else run through the Bridge API, which quotes gas and provider costs before you confirm. For anything above $50,000 coming from a non Polygon chain, the docs point you toward an outside bridge to hold slippage down.
Polymarket Withdrawal Fees
Same answer on the exit. Polymarket takes no withdrawal fee. Your pUSD converts back to USDC and you send it to an external wallet. Polygon gas stays small.
The cost only appears when you want the money on a different chain.
The New Bridge Fees
This is the part that catches people, and it is the newest piece of the Polymarket fees picture.
The Bridge API handles cross chain movement in both directions. It gives you a full quote first. The quote breaks into four parts:
- Network gas on both sides
- An app fee from the bridge provider, which often shows as zero
- Fill cost
- Slippage impact
Gas is usually the bulk of it. On a congested day or an awkward chain pair the total can reach a few dollars. Small withdrawals feel it hardest because the fixed portion eats a bigger share of the amount.
There is a quirk worth knowing. Some traders moving funds out of Polymarket to park them on lending markets have hit a bridge step even with a Polygon destination. The internal settlement layer routes through a relay service on the way out, and that relay adds a small charge on top of gas. Batching fixes most of it.
Pull a quote before you move anything. The endpoint returns your exact estimated output and every fee line. One check, no surprises.
Stay on Polygon and none of this applies. Your only cost is the trading fee on the markets you pick.
How to Cut Your Polymarket Fees
- Trade geopolitics when the market fits your view, because those cost nothing
- Post limit orders and become the maker, which drops your fee to zero and pays you a rebate
- Watch the price when you size up, since anything near 0.50 costs the most in dollars
- Deposit native USDC on Polygon and skip the bridge entirely
- Batch your withdrawals into one larger exit rather than several small ones
- Check the
feesEnabledflag on the market object, because older markets sometimes run the previous structure
Anyone copy trading or running a bot already knows this math. A wallet that looks sharp on chain can lose its whole edge once the taker fee and a worse fill land on the copy side. Manual traders face the same arithmetic. Price the cost before you size the position.
Why Polymarket Added Fees at All
Polymarket ran at zero trading fees for years while it built volume. Crypto markets picked up a fee in early 2026, sports followed on March 30, and the rest of the categories came in around the same window. Once the books got deep enough to matter, the platform put a price on taking liquidity and handed that money to the people supplying it.
Tighter books mean better fills. That is the trade the fee structure makes.
The pUSD shift did something separate. It pulled older bridge risk out of the collateral itself, so your balance stays pegged to USDC without a wrapped asset sitting in between.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Polymarket charge a fee on winnings?
No. Resolution and settlement are free. The old "2% of profit" model that some guides still repeat is not how the current system works.
Are sell orders charged?
Yes, if the sell order is a taker order. A resting sell that someone else fills pays nothing.
Are Polymarket fees cheaper than Kalshi?
On most categories, yes. Politics at 0.04 runs well under the Kalshi taker rate at every price point. Crypto at 0.07 sits close to even. Makers pay nothing on Polymarket in every category.
Do deposits or withdrawals cost anything?
Not from Polymarket. You pay network gas, plus bridge costs if you move across chains.
The Short Version
Polymarket fees hit takers only, on fee enabled markets only. Peak cost sits between $1.00 and $1.75 per 100 shares depending on the category. Makers pay zero and collect a daily rebate. Geopolitics is free. Deposits and withdrawals cost nothing on the platform side, and bridge fees appear only when you leave Polygon.
Run the formula on the next trade you are sizing. Switch your market orders to limit orders where you can wait for the fill. Keep your working capital on Polygon. Those three habits do more for your net return than most strategy tweaks, and they take about a minute to adopt.
Open your next position with the fee already priced in.
