The best prediction market platforms in 2026 are Kalshi, Polymarket, Metaculus, Endpoint Arena, and SOAR — five platforms that together cover everything from US politics and NFL outcomes to clinical trial endpoints and private tech company valuations.
Prediction markets processed over $44 billion in total notional volume in 2025, per Gambling Insider, and the category is still accelerating. But the platforms doing the most interesting work look nothing alike. Which one is right for you depends entirely on what you want to trade, where you’re based, and whether you want real money on the line.
Key takeaways
What is the best prediction market platform in 2026?
Kalshi is the best general prediction market for US retail users — CFTC-regulated, dollar-settled, and legally unambiguous. Polymarket is the largest by volume globally. For private tech company exposure, SOAR is the only platform that covers Anthropic, Stripe, and OpenAI and more.
Which prediction market platforms are legal in the US?
Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated designated contract market — fully legal for US retail users. SOAR operates under applicable regulatory frameworks and does not require accreditation. Polymarket prohibits US users under its terms of service. Metaculus and Endpoint Arena use play money only, so they fall outside financial regulation.
What’s the difference between Kalshi and Polymarket?
Kalshi is US-regulated, dollar-settled, and legally available to US retail users. Polymarket is crypto-settled, globally accessible, larger by volume, and not available to US users under its terms of service. Both offer real money markets. Kalshi leads on regulatory clarity; Polymarket leads on volume and market breadth.
Are there prediction markets for anything other than politics and sports?
Yes — and the most interesting ones are domain-specific. Endpoint Arena runs prediction markets exclusively on clinical trial outcomes. SOAR runs prediction markets exclusively on private tech company valuations, funding rounds, and IPO timing. Both solve the same problem: the generalist platforms don’t go deep enough on specialized asset classes.
How we evaluated these platforms
Each platform on this list was evaluated on five criteria: regulatory status and geographic availability, whether real money is at stake, and what makes each platform genuinely distinct from the others.
The goal is not to declare one platform the winner — it’s to match each platform to the trader it’s actually built for. A biotech investor and a US sports bettor and a private equity analyst all have different needs from a prediction market. The right platform depends on your use case.
Kalshi — best for US retail users
Kalshi is the best prediction market platform for US-based retail traders, offering real-money event contracts across politics, economics, sports, weather, and finance — fully regulated by the CFTC as a designated contract market, the same regulatory category as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
Kalshi’s growth in 2025 was extraordinary by any measure. The platform processed $52 billion in total notional trading volume in 2025, representing 1,108% year-over-year growth and approximately 97 million total trades, per KalshiData and Sacra. Monthly active users grew from 600,000 to 5.1 million over the course of 2025, per Yahoo Finance and the Financial Times. In May 2026, Kalshi raised $1 billion in a Series F at a $22 billion valuation, led by Coatue with participation from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and Morgan Stanley.
The CFTC designation is the key differentiator for US users. The 2023 federal court ruling in Kalshi’s favour confirmed that political event contracts are legal under the Commodity Exchange Act — clearing the way for Kalshi to expand into the market categories that had been legally contested. Sports markets now drive the majority of Kalshi’s volume, but economics and policy markets remain the platform’s intellectual core.
Dollar settlement (no crypto required), no accreditation requirement, and a clean mobile app make Kalshi the most accessible real-money prediction market for US participants. The trade-off: slightly lower market breadth than Polymarket on global events, and no private company markets.
Is Kalshi safe to use? Kalshi is registered with and regulated by the CFTC — the same federal agency that oversees the CME Group. Customer funds are held in segregated accounts. As a regulated financial exchange, Kalshi has disclosure and financial requirements that unregulated platforms do not.
Polymarket — best by volume
Polymarket is the largest prediction market in the world by trading volume, operating on the Polygon blockchain with USDC settlement and covering politics, sports, economics, crypto, science, and more — making it the go-to platform for anyone outside the US who wants the deepest liquidity and the broadest market selection.
In February 2026, Polymarket processed $7 billion in monthly volume, a 7.5× year-over-year increase, per TradeTheOutcome. Together, Polymarket and Kalshi account for approximately 85–90% of total prediction market volume globally, per Gambling Insider. Polymarket’s accuracy record is strong: the leading outcome matched final resolution 96.7% of the time four hours before close and 90.4% of the time one month before close, per Polymarket’s resolved-market data.
How does Polymarket set its prices? Polymarket uses an automated market maker (AMM) model — a liquidity pool mechanism borrowed from decentralised finance. Traders don’t need a counterparty to take the other side of their position immediately; the AMM algorithmically provides liquidity at all times. Prices shift as traders buy yes or no shares, with the AMM rebalancing the pool. The resulting price reflects the collective probability estimate of all traders weighted by capital committed — not a bookmaker’s odds or a house view.
Polymarket’s key limitation for US users is legal: the platform prohibits US participation under its terms of service, blocks US IP addresses, and is not registered with the CFTC. For anyone outside the US, Polymarket is the deepest and most liquid real-money prediction market available.
Metaculus — best for structured forecasting
Metaculus is the leading structured forecasting platform — a community-driven environment where participants make and track probability estimates on long-horizon questions across science, technology, geopolitics, and economics, with no real money at stake and a rigorous calibration scoring system.
The Good Judgment Project demonstrated that calibrated human forecasters operating in structured environments consistently outperform intelligence agencies and expert panels on geopolitical questions. Metaculus has formalized that approach into a platform with thousands of active forecasters and a deep question archive.
Best for: researchers, analysts, and serious forecasters who want to develop calibration skills or track high-quality probability estimates on complex questions without financial risk.
Endpoint Arena — best for biotech and clinical trials
Endpoint Arena is a domain-specific prediction market for clinical trial outcomes, where traders take positions on whether Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials will hit their primary endpoints — covering oncology, cardiology, neurology, rare diseases, and other therapeutic areas.
The platform is purpose-built for a domain where prediction markets add genuine value: clinical trial outcomes are high-stakes, information-rich, and contested. Biotech investors, healthcare professionals, and clinical researchers hold fragments of relevant information that a well-designed market can aggregate into a probability estimate that no individual analyst can match alone.
How does Endpoint Arena resolve its markets? Endpoint Arena markets resolve based on primary endpoint results published in official trial reports, regulatory filings, or peer-reviewed publications. The resolution criteria are set at market creation and specify exactly which endpoint result constitutes a yes or no outcome.
Best for: biotech investors, healthcare professionals, and clinical researchers who want a continuous probability estimate on trial outcomes as they approach readouts.
SOAR — best for private tech company exposure
SOAR is the best prediction market platform for private tech company exposure — the only platform where traders can take positions on the valuations, funding rounds, and IPO timing of Anthropic, SpaceX, Stripe, OpenAI, and other late-stage private companies, with no accreditation requirement, no minimum, and continuous prices.
Every other platform on this list covers events with a public underlying: election outcomes, economic indicators, sports results, clinical trial data. None of them cover private companies — where there is no public price, no exchange, no quarterly earnings release, and no official valuation until the company chooses to raise.
SOAR applies the same prediction market mechanism to private companies: binary contracts at specific valuation thresholds, resolving against marks published by Nasdaq Private Market. In May 2026, Polymarket’s implied valuation for Anthropic was $1.0765 trillion two days before its Series H printed at $965 billion — capturing 84% of the true repricing before the official announcement.
How does SOAR differ from buying shares in a private company? Buying shares means acquiring equity — legal ownership with lock-ups, accreditation requirements, Right of First Refusal clauses, and no liquidity until IPO or acquisition. Trading on SOAR means taking a synthetic position — a contract that gains or loses value based on market consensus about a future valuation outcome. No equity changes hands, no company approval is required, positions can be entered and exited continuously, and no accreditation is needed.
Best for: anyone who’s interested in startups and wants to take a position on private tech company valuations.
How to choose the right platform
You’re based in the US and want real money markets: Kalshi is your clearest legal option.
You’re outside the US and want the most liquid markets: Polymarket has the deepest liquidity and broadest market selection.
You want to develop forecasting skills without financial risk: Metaculus is the most rigorous structured forecasting environment available.
You follow biotech and drug development: Endpoint Arena is the only platform with dedicated clinical trial markets.
You want exposure to Anthropic, Stripe, or OpenAI and more: SOAR is the only platform with a specialization in private tech company markets.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most accurate prediction market?
On high-volume markets, both Kalshi and Polymarket demonstrate strong accuracy. Per Gambling Insider’s 2026 analysis, Polymarket’s Brier scores cluster around 0.09 across resolved markets, with Kalshi showing a more stable pattern.
Both significantly outperform polls and traditional forecasting methods. Accuracy degrades on low-volume markets.
Are prediction markets legal in the US?
Kalshi is fully legal for US retail users as a CFTC-designated contract market. SOAR operates under applicable regulatory frameworks. Polymarket prohibits US users under its terms of service and blocks US IP addresses. Metaculus and Endpoint Arena use play money only and fall outside financial regulation.
Can you make money on prediction markets?
Yes — consistently profitable traders exist on both Kalshi and Polymarket. The edge comes from having better probability estimates than the market consensus, which requires genuine information advantage or superior calibration. Most traders lose money for the same reason they lose on any financial market: overconfidence, poor calibration, and trading on noise. Trading always comes with financial risk.
What prediction markets exist for stocks or private companies?
No prediction market currently covers publicly traded stocks in the traditional sense. For private companies, SOAR is currently the only platform running markets for valuations, funding rounds, and IPO timing.
Start trading on SOAR
SOAR is the only prediction market platform where you can take a position on the private companies defining the next decade — Anthropic, Stripe, OpenAI — with no accreditation, no minimum, and no lock-up. Explore live markets at SOAR.
Trading event contracts involves risk and may not be suitable for everyone. You could lose the funds used to enter any transaction.