Polymarket restricted countries

The list Polymarket publishes, and what each tier actually permits

Three tiers, in Polymarket's own words. Block completely means no new orders and no closing of existing positions — the position is frozen where it stands. Close-only means existing positions can be closed but no new ones opened; whether that applies to the API as well as the website is the difference between the second tier and the third.

That frontend-versus-API distinction is the part worth slowing down for, because it decides whether a restriction is a wall or a curtain. In the largest tier the restriction covers both, so Polymarket's API refuses the same new orders its website does. In the smallest tier it covers the website only and the API is explicitly left open — Polymarket says so in the same document. Five jurisdictions sit in that third tier, and a page that flattens all restrictions into one word tells their residents something false in both directions.

Two details worth knowing that most copies of this list drop. North Korea appears in two tiers at once, so the 49 entries cover 48 distinct jurisdictions. And Malta is listed as restricted for sports only — the single entry on the list with a category carve-out.

Polymarket's help centre publishes a second list that disagrees: its article dated 14 August 2026 calls the United Kingdom, Japan, Ireland and others completely restricted — countries the developer documentation files as close-only. This page follows the developer documentation, because Polymarket's terms of use point to that list and the help centre article never mentions the API.

The countries Polymarket does not list, and still cannot be reached from

This is the half that breaks the copied lists. A country can be entirely absent from Polymarket's restrictions and still be a country where polymarket.com does not load — because the block belongs to the state, the regulator or the internet provider, not to the venue.

We measured these ourselves rather than repeating them. Each row below names the mechanism, because the mechanism is what determines whether anything can be done about it. A DNS-level block behaves differently from a connection reset injected at the network layer, and a page that just says "blocked" tells you neither.

What we measured ourselves

The tables above mix two kinds of evidence, and they deserve different levels of trust. Polymarket's tiers are a published document — we quote it and date it. The network claims are our own probes, run from real consumer networks on 18 August 2026, and they come with limits we would rather state than bury.

Coverage is per-provider, not per-country: measuring three networks in Argentina says nothing about the fourth. A successful connection proves the site answered, not that every feature works. And the strongest evidence we have is not the page load at all — it is the resolver check. When an Australian provider's own DNS server returns the regulator's block record for polymarket.com and genuine records for overdog.bet, that is the block, visible in one query, on a named server, on a named date.

That is also why probe results and reality can disagree. A block implemented in DNS is invisible to a probe that brings its own resolver — several of our own runs sailed through blocks we could then demonstrate directly. Any list that reports reachability without saying which instrument produced it is guessing.

What the other lists get wrong

Three error classes, all of them currently live on pages that rank for this question.

The stale list is the most common. Polymarket's developer documentation puts no last-updated date on its restrictions list, so a page copied months ago looks identical to one checked this morning — and entries do move. Brazil and Slovakia joined during 2026; New Zealand appeared after the summer.

The one-directional list is the most misleading. It reports Polymarket's own tiers and stops there, which quietly tells an Indian or Spanish reader that nothing stands in their way. Both countries are absent from Polymarket's list and both block it at the network level.

And the unnamed-layer list is the most useless in practice. "Blocked in Spain" and "blocked in Australia" describe different machinery with different consequences: one is a reset injected by a provider, the other is a regulator's block record plus a venue-side refusal. Saying which layer is doing the work is the difference between information and a rumour.

If you are reading this from the United States

The United States is in the close-only tier, on the website and the API both — so the answer to "can I open a position on the global exchange from the US" is no, and that is Polymarket's own answer, not a network block. US networks reach polymarket.com perfectly well; we measured that too. The restriction is applied at the venue, on the basis of where you are.

There is a second Polymarket for US residents — a separate entity overseen by a US regulator, with its own rulebook and its own, higher fee schedule. It is a different product with different terms, and comparing the two is the honest thing this page can do for an American reader.

What we will not do is offer you a route around the first restriction. OVERDOG does not serve US residents into the global order books, and no combination of the tables above adds up to a workaround. If you are in the US, treat this page as a reference for how the map works — not as directions.

How current this page is

Every claim above is stamped, and the stamps are not all from the same day. On 5 October 2026 we re-read Polymarket's two published lists and the terms of use that point to one of them, and updated the tier table. Nothing else on the page was re-checked that day.

Our network measurements are from 18 August 2026, and the country-side blocks in the second table stand as this page reported them in August; neither was re-verified in October. Because the developer documentation carries no date of its own, a page that cites it without a read-date is making a claim it cannot support.

If you are reading this well after those dates, treat the tier table as a starting point and check the source, which is linked below. The list changing is the normal case, not the exception — which is precisely why this page exists in the shape it does.

Where OVERDOG sits in this map — and how to bet the same markets

OVERDOG routes orders to the same Polymarket order books through our own gateway. Where the block is on the country's side, our route is a different path to the same market — and on every network we probed, overdog.bet answered where polymarket.com did not.

Where Polymarket lists a jurisdiction as close-only, the route is the same: orders go through OVERDOG's gateway to Polymarket's order books, and no VPN is part of it. This page describes no route for two groups: the United States, covered in its own section above, and the sanctioned jurisdictions Polymarket blocks completely. OVERDOG is not Polymarket and holds no local licence in the countries on this map, and this page does not say that using it there is allowed. Checking your local law is up to you.

OVERDOG is an access layer, not a bookmaker: prices come from Polymarket's order book, so there is no vig built into them. The cost is a flat 1% OVERDOG fee plus Polymarket's own fees, and a crypto deposit needs no document upload. You can export your wallet and withdraw anytime, so we cannot freeze your funds, and with no house position against you, winning never gets your account limited. The route is four steps: