Polymarket fees

What Polymarket charges

Polymarket charges fees to takers — orders that cross the book and fill immediately. The formula is printed on its own docs: fee = shares × feeRate × price × (1 − price). Makers, whose resting orders supply the liquidity, are never charged, in any category. Deposits and withdrawals carry no Polymarket fee either, though an intermediary may charge its own.

The (1 − price) term is the part worth understanding: relative to what you spend, the fee is smallest on favourites and largest on longshots — the table below prices that curve.

Fee rates by category

One schedule, per category group. The taker rate is what a market order pays; makers pay zero across every row. The rebate column is Polymarket's maker-volume program, paid on its own schedule — every cost on this page is computed before any rebate.

Geopolitics is the one category with a genuinely zero taker rate; everything else charges by the formula above.

What a bet costs through OVERDOG

Every cost claim here is the compound one: a flat 1% OVERDOG fee plus Polymarket's own fees. Both sit inside the stake — what you enter is what leaves your balance.

The worked example: $100 resting at 62¢ as a limit order that fills buys 159.69 shares. One fee applies — OVERDOG's 1%, which is $0.99, or 0.99% of the stake* — because Polymarket's own fee for a maker is zero. The same $100 sent at market, as a taker, buys 156.74 shares: $0.97 to OVERDOG plus $1.85 to Polymarket, $2.82 all-in, 2.82% of stake. Every figure re-derives from the formula above, and the calculator reproduces both paths on your own numbers.

*With a resting limit order that fills. The schedule below prices the taker path for a $100 Sports bet; the fee columns use the formula's basis (of notional), the all-in column your stake.

How to pay no Polymarket fee: rest a limit order

The honest answer to the most-asked question on this topic is structural, not a coupon: makers are never charged, so an order that rests in the book and fills pays Polymarket nothing. On OVERDOG that path is a first-class order type — set a limit price, let it rest, and the all-in cost of the fill is the flat 1% OVERDOG fee plus Polymarket's maker fee of zero.

The trade-off is execution, said plainly: a limit order priced to cross the book fills at once as a taker, and one that rests may not fill at all. Zero fee is the reward for supplying liquidity and accepting that risk.

Polymarket US and the global exchange charge differently

There are two Polymarkets with two fee schedules, and pages on this query mix them up. The US-regulated entity's schedule, effective 1 July 2026, charges takers 6% by the same shape of formula, pays makers a rebate through that formula, and caps the fee at $1.50 per hundred contracts at 50¢. The global exchange charges the category table above — Sports at 5%.

OVERDOG routes to the global exchange, so this page quotes the global schedule; a 6% figure seen elsewhere is the US entity's.

How this compares with a sportsbook's margin

A bookmaker's fee is invisible because it lives inside the odds. Make it visible and the comparison is straightforward: a standard −110/−110 line implies 52.38% on each side, which sums to 104.76% — a 4.76% overround, which works out to 4.55% of the stake kept. Our all-in taker cost at the same coin-flip price is 3.38% of stake; as a maker it is 0.99%. Run your own book's prices through the no-vig calculator and set its margin next to the number this page computes — the comparison rides your odds, not our example.

The boundary runs both ways. Below roughly 25¢ the taker path costs more of your stake than that −110 line keeps (4.55%), and a sharp book beats it at many prices — peer-reviewed work on bookmaker margins (Whelan and Hegarty, Applied Economics, 2025) finds books load their heaviest margins onto longshots, which is also where the (1 − price) term bites hardest here. The difference: this page shows the curve. The axis where the exchange wins outright is not price: no betting limits, no winner bans — and the maker path, a flat 1% OVERDOG fee plus Polymarket's own fee of zero.