Data snapshot Snapshot Nov 8, 2026
Kalshi vs Polymarket vs the Rest: 15 Platforms, Counted
Financial prediction markets have two whales and a long tail. Our index tracks 1,100 finance markets across 15 platforms, snapshotted on Nov 8, 2026. Kalshi carries 456 of them, Polymarket carries 410, and together the two hold 866 markets, 79 percent of everything tracked, before a third platform enters the picture at all.
| Platform | Finance markets | Share | Categories | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kalshi | 456 | 41.5% | 9 | CFTC regulated exchange (US) |
| Polymarket | 410 | 37.3% | 8 | On chain; US arm through a regulated exchange |
| Manifold | 89 | 8.1% | 9 | Play money; mana does not convert to cash |
| ForecastEx | 35 | 3.2% | 3 | CFTC regulated exchange (US) |
| Robinhood Event Contracts | 29 | 2.6% | 5 | CFTC via partner exchanges, inside the Robinhood app |
| CME Group Event Contracts | 28 | 2.5% | 6 | CFTC; the incumbent futures exchange |
| Limitless | 28 | 2.5% | 4 | On chain (Base), unregulated |
| Myriad Markets | 23 | 2.1% | 4 | On chain, unregulated |
| Zeitgeist | 2 | 0.2% | 2 | On chain |
Six more platforms sit in the index with profiles and no finance markets counted at all: DraftKings Predictions, FanDuel Predicts, Metaculus, Opinion, PancakeSwap Prediction and Predict.fun. That is the sports and fantasy tier, and in finance it is not a tier yet. The biggest brands in American sports betting currently list zero financial contracts in a 1,100 market census.
Why the whales survive a legal storm
Ask what happens if the laws move, state by state or in Washington, and the counts answer it. Kalshi is a CFTC regulated exchange, Polymarket bought its way into the US regulated system, and both carry hundreds of markets across rates, inflation, equities, crypto and earnings. A platform like that can slide down in scale, drop whole categories, retreat to its most defensible markets, and still generate revenue for years. A platform with two markets, or none, has nothing to slide down to. Regulation is usually described as the whales' biggest risk. On these numbers it looks more like their moat.
Can you make regular cashflow inside them?
Maybe, and the snapshot hints at where people try. Three lanes show up again and again:
- Latency plays. When news breaks, prices reprice in seconds, and bots collect the gap between platforms. It is a technology race, and the fastest infrastructure wins it.
- Volume grind. Small edges, repeated at size: quoting both sides, catching spreads between platforms on the same question, letting arithmetic do what prediction cannot.
- Near-sure situations. In this snapshot, 267 of the 1,100 markets are priced at 97 percent or higher, or at 3 percent or lower on the other side. Buying a contract at 99 cents that settles at a dollar in a few weeks pays about 1 percent; at 97 cents, about 3 percent. Traders who live on this lane call it, honestly, picking up pennies in front of a steamroller: one wrong certainty wipes out dozens of right ones.
None of it is passive, and all of it happens inside a two whale ocean. The toll booth belongs to Kalshi and Polymarket either way. The open question is whether the cashflow is in trading their markets, or in building the tools the traders use.
Counts, prices and platform details are from the StocksPro24 dataset of 1,100 financial prediction markets and 15 platform profiles, snapshotted Nov 8, 2026; figures are not live quotes. See also prediction market fees compared and the cross-platform comparison.