Every CFTC-Regulated Prediction Market in 2026
A prediction market is an exchange where you buy and sell contracts on the outcome of a real event, priced in cents between 0 and 100. Instead of taking a price from a bookmaker, you trade against other participants, and the price is the crowd's running estimate of probability.
In the United States these exchanges answer to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission rather than to state gambling regulators. That distinction is why the field went from two venues to thirteen in nine months, and why nine states are now in litigation with the CFTC over it.
What does CFTC registration actually cover?
Registration is venue-level. A platform applies to operate as a designated contract market, and some also register a derivatives clearing organisation to settle their own trades. Both are federal permissions to run the marketplace.
What registration does not do is pre-approve the contracts listed on it. Exchanges self-certify individual contracts, and the CFTC can review them afterwards — on 27 July it told Kalshi and Polymarket to stop filing contracts in blanket batches.
So the badge is narrower than it looks:
- The venue is federally regulated. Segregated customer funds, reporting obligations, a named regulator.
- The contract may not survive. The CFTC's proposed rule would bar contracts on player injuries, officiating decisions and discrete in-game actions.
- Your state is a separate question. Courts have split on whether state gambling law reaches these contracts at all.
Which CFTC-regulated prediction markets are live right now?
VenueRoute to marketStatusKalshiDCM since 2020Live, nationwidePolymarket US (QCX)Acquired QCEX, Dec 2025LiveRobinhoodOwn registrationLive, nationwideDraftKings DKeXAcquired Railbird, June 2026Live since 26 JuneFanDuel PredictsJoint venture with CME GroupLive, phased rolloutCoinbaseKalshi-poweredLive, excludes NevadaCrypto.comOwn DCMLive, US onlyWebullKalshi-poweredLive since Q3 2025ForecastExInteractive Brokers subsidiaryLiveRotheraNew exchangeLive since 4 JuneProphetXDCM and DCO approval June 2026Live since 18 JuneCboe PredictsBinary options on Mini-S&P 500Live since 23 June, via IBKR onlyPredictItLong-running, academic originLive
Status verified against each platform's own documentation or announcement, plus Robinhood's June 2026 fee schedule, which names Kalshi, CME Group, ForecastEx and Rothera as its executing venues. Novig received CFTC designation on 16 June 2026 and said nationwide rollout was expected over the summer; we could not confirm its exchange is trading yet, so it is not listed.
Two caveats on that table. Cboe Predicts is live but reachable only through Interactive Brokers, with Charles Schwab flagged for later — "live" overstates how many people can actually get to it. And Polymarket US publishes a fee schedule effective 1 July with monthly volume-rebate tiers, which implies real trading, but its own marketing page was still serving a waitlist when we checked.
Why the same trade costs different amounts on each venue
Most of these exchanges price fees off uncertainty rather than charging a flat rate. The formula is some coefficient multiplied by price × (1 − price), which peaks when a contract trades at 50 cents and falls away towards either tail. That means the same trade costs most when the outcome is a coin flip — which is exactly where most sports contracts sit.
- Kalshi charges takers a 0.07 coefficient and makers 0.0175, per its own fee schedule. At 50 cents that works out to a 1.75% peak, or 2 cents a contract after rounding. S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 markets get a reduced 0.035 rate.
- Polymarket US charges takers 0.06 and pays makers a rebate, with taker volume rebates from 10% up to 50% above $10m a month.
- Robinhood charges 10% of price × (1 − price), halved to 5% with Gold, plus a 1-cent-per-contract-per-side exchange fee on Kalshi products.
- FanDuel Predicts is the outlier: 2% of your potential payout, taken at checkout. Because it is levied on the payout rather than scaled to uncertainty, it costs proportionally more on heavy favourites.
- ForecastEx through Interactive Brokers carries no IBKR commission and a 1-cent exchange fee.
What sits outside the CFTC perimeter
The largest venue in this market by a distance is Kalshi, which cleared $31.5bn in June against Polymarket US at $3.04bn, according to The Block Data. But the second-largest is not on the table above.
Polymarket's international exchange traded $10.26bn in June — roughly three times its own US entity — and it is not CFTC-regulated. Polymarket says so itself: its site states that the international platform "is not regulated by the CFTC and operates independently." The two share a name and nothing else that matters here. Different fees, different markets, different legal footing.
Limitless sits further out again: fully documented fees, a Panamanian operator, and terms that bar United States users outright.
Checking one Polymarket entity tells you nothing about the other. That is the single most common mistake readers make with this market.
The honest read
Thirteen venues is not thirteen real choices. Liquidity concentrates hard, and a contract with no order book on the other side is a price you cannot actually get. Kalshi took roughly three-quarters of June's regulated US volume; several entrants on that list are still measuring their first full month.
Work in this order: find where the market you want is deep, check the fee structure against how you actually trade, then confirm your state. The third question can make the first two irrelevant. Registration tells you the venue answers to a federal regulator — not that the contract will still be listed next month, and not that you are permitted to trade it from where you are sitting.
Current status and fees for each venue sit on our prediction market platforms page.