Using Kalshi for Sports: Access Rules, Steps and Fees
A 'yes' on tonight's match costs 60 cents. Whether you may buy one is a separate question.
Betting on Kalshi means trading contracts on outcomes, and your country of residence decides whether you may.
A contract is worth 1 dollar if the outcome happens and 0 if it does not, and Kalshi says you always trade against another member. Its Member Agreement names jurisdictions where trading event contracts is barred; its help centre says you can trade from many countries, subject to that agreement. Identity is verified and residence confirmed before you can deposit. The fee depends on the contract price: on the formula assumed below, it takes a larger share of a 10 cent contract than of a 50 cent one. No result is promised, and it is for adults only (18+).
Your address decides before the exchange does
Many Kalshi guides are written for US states and lean on a Social Security number. Kalshi's help centre answers differently for many countries, on one condition: the Member Agreement has to allow it.
Kalshi is a cousin of the exchanges described in how betting exchanges work, since you deal with other members. What a prediction market is explains the contract you buy, which settles at 1 dollar or at nothing. Kalshi's own pages speak of trades and event contracts, so from here on this page does too.
Kalshi's documents treat three situations differently.
- Your country is not named in the agreement: Kalshi's help centre says you can trade from many countries, subject to the agreement, and asks you to confirm your country of residence and identity at sign-up.
- Your country is named: the agreement prohibits anyone domiciled, organised or located in a jurisdiction it names from trading event contracts. The version in Kalshi's public document store has 55 jurisdictions named in the agreement; the copy on kalshi.com could not be compared, and Kalshi can change the list, so the current agreement is the reference. In the agreement, Kalshi also reserves the right, at its sole and absolute discretion, to grant, deny, condition, suspend or revoke access, whether or not your country is named. If yours is, do not read these terms as an invitation to open an account.
- Your country is not named, but your law says no: on accepting the agreement, a member states that they are not in any jurisdiction where trading event contracts is prohibited by applicable law or by Kalshi's policy. Checking that is your individual responsibility, Kalshi says, and it gives no individual legal or eligibility advice.
Neither replaces the other. Legality varies by country, and Kalshi gives no advice on yours.
We would read the current agreement in full before creating an account: a summary such as this one ages faster than the contract does, and Kalshi can change the list.
How to bet on Kalshi: five steps from sign-up to a first trade
Check your country and your local law
Read the current agreement, then the law where you live. If either says no, stop here.
Open an account
You must be 18 or older. Kalshi asks for basic personal details and a residential address, needs no US phone number (some country codes are unsupported) and allows one account each.
Verify your identity
Photograph a valid passport or driver's licence live in the app; camera-roll photos, screenshots, photocopies and scans are refused. Name and date of birth must match the document exactly.
Deposit
International accounts fund by debit card, wire transfer or crypto. A deposit cannot be cancelled or refunded once submitted.
Read the contract and the fee before you confirm
Kalshi says to read each market's rules before trading. The fee on your order appears under the "i" icon next to "You're buying".
What Kalshi asks for before you can deposit
Kalshi describes itself as a US designated contract market regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and says it must therefore confirm who trades and may check again periodically. Its document verification article says the ID image goes to a third-party verification provider.
Kalshi says verification usually takes a few minutes when the photo is clear, and a sign-up placed under review typically takes about 48 hours. The FAQ below covers what those help pages say about the Social Security Number.
Paying in and cashing out of a Kalshi account from abroad
Kalshi's help says international accounts can deposit by debit card, wire transfer and crypto, and withdraw by debit card and crypto. ACH, PayPal, Venmo and Cash App are not available to them. The help pages are not consistent on a few details, so read the payment screen.
- Debit card: the minimum deposit is 10 dollars, the cardholder name must match the account, and Kalshi says a 2% processing fee may apply. Card withdrawals carry no fee and typically arrive within a few hours, unless a payment processor review of about 3 to 5 business days pauses them.
- Wire transfer: the minimum is 1,000 dollars, in US dollars, from an account in the same name, with no Kalshi fee; it is credited the same day if received before 4 pm New York time.
- Crypto: deposits may carry provider and network fees and typically take up to 30 minutes, and the help pages leave the choice of coin and network to the deposit screen. Withdrawals carry no fee and typically arrive within 30 minutes, but need an earlier crypto deposit.
What an order really costs, and where the fee bites hardest
Kalshi says it charges a transaction fee on the expected earnings of a contract and posts its complete fee schedule on its website. That schedule could not be read at the source; the figures below are a calculation and do not reproduce Kalshi's table. Third-party guides that cite it give the taker fee, meaning an order that hits one already sitting in the book, as 0.07 x contracts x price x (1 - price), rounded up to the next cent.
On the assumed formula a taker pays 6.3% of the price at 10 cents, 5.25% at 25, 3.5% at 50, 1.75% at 75 and 0.7% at 90, before rounding.
Rounded up to the next cent, as third-party guides describe it, one contract at 50 cents pays 2 cents (4.0% of the price), ten pay 18 cents (3.6%) and 100 pay 1.75 dollars (3.5%). At 10 cents one contract pays 1 cent, 10.0% of its price against 0.63 cents before rounding, while 100 contracts pay 0.63 dollars (6.3%). Kalshi's API documentation describes a balance aligned to one cent for some members and to a hundredth of a cent for others, without saying which applies to an ordinary account. At a hundredth of a cent, one contract at 50 cents would pay 1.75 cents instead of 2: rounding adds up to 1 cent per order, and less in that case.
On the same assumptions, 100 contracts at 50 cents need the outcome to happen more than 51.75% of the time to break even, and the decimal odds are about 1.93 instead of 2.00. Treat any fee figure for a small order as a floor: the spread, a card fee, network fees and a fee on a sale before settlement come on top. Kalshi's help says only markets listed with maker fees charge resting orders, and third-party guides put that fee at a quarter of the taker figure; whether any sports series has one was not established, so the chart covers takers only.
How a Kalshi sports contract settles when a match is called off
In the game contracts read (soccer, basketball, baseball and tennis), the settlement value is 1 dollar and the smallest price step is 0.01 dollars. In its soccer, basketball and baseball contracts, Kalshi says a game postponed or restarted within 48 hours keeps the contract open. If a game is called off, or is still unplayed once those 48 hours have passed, the contract settles at a last fair price fixed by the exchange at its sole discretion, which can differ from what you paid.
Its tennis match winner contract follows another rule. A match cancelled before the first point, or a walkover, settles at the last fair price; a delay within the same tournament keeps the market open; a retirement after at least one point settles on the official result. In all four game contracts, Kalshi's terms also set, for each member and each strike, a position accountability level of 25,000 dollars; above it, Kalshi says it may ask the member for information and require a reduction.
Reaching Kalshi through a broker: what the texts say and leave open
BetInAsia's own Kalshi page could not be opened at the source, so what it says is not verified here. MadMarket's site banner says Kalshi and Polymarket are now available on its Edge platform, and its Edge page lists the exchange, with no terms, countries or fees for Kalshi. None of the Kalshi documents read (the agreement, the exchange rulebook and the help pages) names BetInAsia, MadMarket or any other betting broker.
The agreement has each member promise not to let anyone not identified to Kalshi use the services, and the rulebook has an applicant certify that it will trade only for itself. It also describes a route for customers who are not members, open only through intermediaries organised in the United States, registered with the CFTC and members of the National Futures Association.
None of the documents read says how any of this applies to a customer of a betting broker, so a claim such as "Kalshi forbids brokers" and its mirror image, "brokers are allowed", both go further than the texts do, and a reader who leans on either one treats a silence in the documents as a ruling that they never made.
A broker account is an account under the broker's own rules, with its own identity checks, excluded countries, fees and withdrawal terms, and it changes nothing about the rules that apply to you under Kalshi's agreement or your local law.
BetInAsia shows 3.0 out of 5 on Trustpilot from more than 230 reviews, with 51% at one star. Its one-star reviewers mostly write about frozen or reviewed accounts, withdrawals that stay blocked and identity documents requested again and again. MadMarket's Trustpilot page shows no reviews and an unclaimed profile, and its KYC policy requires full verification when any withdrawal is requested. None of the broker texts read says the identity check is waived for a venue reached through the broker; identity checks at betting sites covers those texts, and what public reviews say about betting brokers adds the wider picture.
What Kalshi users report, and how much weight to give it
Trustpilot shows Kalshi at 2.5 out of 5 from more than 340 reviews, with about 65% at one star and 30% at five; the company replies to about a third of the negative ones. The one-star reviews mostly describe blocked or restricted accounts, withdrawals that cannot be completed, repeated verification requests, support that reviewers call automated and disputed market settlements.
Most reviews appear to come from users in the United States, so they say little about an international account. Reviews online lean towards unhappy customers.
Questions about using Kalshi from abroad
Can I use Kalshi outside the United States?
Kalshi's help centre says you can trade from many countries, subject to its Member Agreement, and that you confirm your country of residence at sign-up. The agreement names jurisdictions where trading event contracts is prohibited and the list can change, so read the current one.
Do I need a Social Security number?
A Kalshi help article on document verification names the Social Security Number among details required by regulation, such as address, phone number and email, that Kalshi stores for audit and regulatory purposes. The help pages do not say what a person living outside the United States provides in its place, or whether one is asked for, so any claim either way is unconfirmed.
How do I deposit and withdraw from outside the US?
Kalshi's help lists debit card, wire transfer and crypto for deposits, and debit card or crypto for withdrawals; ACH, PayPal, Venmo and Cash App are unavailable to international accounts. Where help pages differ, the payment screen has the last word.
What does Kalshi charge?
Kalshi says its fee is a transaction fee on the expected earnings of a contract, and that some markets differ. Its full schedule could not be read at the source; the curve above is a calculation on an assumed formula.
What does a 60 cent contract really cost?
At 60 cents you pay 60 cents to collect 1 dollar if the outcome happens: decimal odds of about 1.67 before any fee. On the assumed formula, the taker fee is 0.07 x 0.60 x 0.40 = 0.0168 dollars, or 1.68 cents per contract before rounding, which is 2.8% of the price. The outcome then has to happen more than 61.68% of the time to break even, and the spread, card fees and any fee on a sale come on top.
Before you fund anything
A contract can end at nothing. Decide what you can afford to see go to zero before you fund the account, and if trading stops feeling like a choice, the responsible gambling page lists where to find help. If your country's answer is no, stop there. Whether other products, such as classic betting exchanges, are open to you depends on the law where you live, and Polymarket has location rules of its own, covered in the guide to using Polymarket.