Kalshi Review

You may have heard of Kalshi, a financial exchange and prediction market that allows users to trade contracts on any market you can think of, whether it's elections, awards shows, and even the weather. After their founding in 2018, Kalshi finally received a license from the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in late 2020, making them federally regulated and legal in all 50 US states and other territories.

Kalshi began offering trades in 2021 and has flourished ever since. They hold a leg up over other prediction markets like Polymarket and Augur, who don't have a license from the CFTC, and with Donald Trump Jr. joining Kalshi as a strategic advisor in early 2025, it's clear that Kalshi has enough influence to become a heavy hitter among online prediction markets.

Here at Sportsbooks Online, we rate and review the best online sportsbooks and sports betting apps. So why are we reviewing Kalshi? That's because Kalshi began offering trades on sports markets in the summer of 2025. Now, instead of betting on the temperature to be higher than its projection, users can bet on athletes or teams to go over or under their projected stats or point totals.

Kalshi is an exchange, not a sportsbook, so you technically make trades, not bets

Because Kalshi is regulated by the CFTC, it's legal for anyone in America to use if they're 18 years of age or older. So while sports betting apps aren't legal in every state and are typically only available to users who are 21 or older, Kalshi presents an opportunity for anyone in any state to bet on sports if they're 18 or older.

Sounds great, right?

It depends who you ask. In this review, we'll dive further into Kalshi's features and the quality of Kalshi as a sports betting platform, and there's plenty to criticize and compliment. But from a 30,000-foot view, it's clear that Kalshi's connection to the CFTC and political influence is allowing them to virtually rewrite sports betting laws on their own terms, and making sports betting available to younger users is a risk that may not be beneficial to the public.

With that in mind, let's drill down into what we've learned after spending some time betting on sports with the Kalshi platform.

On Sportsbooks Online, we review sportsbooks and sports betting apps, so this review of Kalshi will focus on their sports contracts rather than the entire platform generally. And based on our criteria of how we rate online sportsbooks, Kalshi falls somewhere in the middle of the top sportsbooks and the worst sports betting options — but how they get to the middle is the interesting part.

Tremendous availability and features, but mediocre as a sports betting experience

Overall, Kalshi's best feature is its availability. Because it's regulated federally by the CFTC, they're legal in all 50 states and US territories to any users 18 or older. There are also great features we'll break down below, like the ability to trade out of a contract at any time and the fact that you're not betting against a "house."

However, Kalshi's welcome offer is weak and they have practically no promotions or rewards to speak of. You also have to navigate through markets that probably shouldn't exist in order to get to their sports contracts. Do we really need to bet on what politicians are going to talk about in press briefings? Kalshi sets the bar pretty low for determining what markets to make available, but if you're good at putting blinders on, you'll be okay making sports predictions on Kalshi.

Despite Kalshi's clear drawbacks, their federal regulation and creative nomenclature has allowed them to make some pretty significant positive features available for users. Here are some of the best elements we experienced when trading sports contracts on Kalshi:

🔥 Always Live, Never Locked: Because you're trading contracts instead of placing bets, you can sell your position at any time, like a stock. In the sports betting world, we would call this cashing out at any time, and no sports betting app offers a feature like that.

🔥 Fair Trades: Kalshi's market trading also means that you're buying and selling against other users, not a "house." One of the worst experiences of sports betting is betting even odds with -110 juice — they're not really even odds if you have to pay the house. On Kalshi, there is no house.

🔥 Earn Interest: No matter which method you use for making deposits, both your cash and positions can earn interest on Kalshi. Earn variable 3.75% APY on any investments you make on Kalshi.

🔥 Social Features: Like many social sportsbooks, Kalshi includes social elements that allow users to interact and compare their results. Chat with other players and share your trades in the Ideas section and see where you stack up against other users on Kalshi's Leaderboard.

So, how does Kalshi's mobile app experience stack up against other sports betting apps?

If you want to make trades on markets like the weather, what a politician will say during a speech or a movie's Rotten Tomatoes score, Kalshi offers a way to make trades on the go that is rivaled by few other prediction market platforms. But if you're a sports bettor who has experience with traditional sports betting apps, DFS/Pick'em apps or even social sportsbooks, the Kalshi app may present some frustrations.

First of all, one of the biggest turn-offs of the Kalshi app is the same as their web platform: clutter. If you want to bet on sports without having to navigate through fluff, Kalshi is not for you. The sheer number of markets related to Taylor Swift, Donald Trump, and even Diddy might annoy you and even gross you out as you navigate to their sports page.

And while the Kalshi app functions well without too many lags or glitches, there are more flaws related to trust and taste. For example, it's clear that in their pursuit of legality, Kalshi wasn't able to secure any rights to mention professional team names or leagues or their logos. You can still trade on the markets freely, but betting on the Buccaneers on an app that can't call them by their name or show their logo doesn't exactly instill trust.

A few positive features we noticed when testing sports betting on the Kalshi app include the following:

🔥 Interest Tracking: You can earn interest on your deposits to Kalshi and track interest in the app

🔥 Trade Management: Because you can exit a trade at any time, Kalshi makes it easy to simulate early cash-outs

🔥 Price Display: Sports markets refresh quickly, allowing users to track prices live

One thing that will stick out to sports bettors who want to make trades of sports market on the Kalshi app is that teams and players are listed with percentage probabilities rather than traditional odds. However, the folks at Kalshi identified this as a pain point right away, and they developed a way for users to toggle the display to show traditional sports betting odds. See the screenshot below for a quick tutorial on how to turn on traditional odds.

Once you toggle on traditional odds on the Kalshi app, you might wonder how an app like Kalshi is any different from a sportsbook like Bet365 or a social sportsbook like Betr. The answer? Beats us! It's just another example of how Kalshi has blurred the lines of semantics to make their product available to everyone 18+ in all 50 US states and territories.

So overall, the Kalshi app is flawed, but offers users a solid platform for betting on sports on the go.

But don't just take our word for it — the Kalshi app has been rated and reviewed by more than 15,000 app users, with tons of users giving it positive marks, and plenty of others offering legitimate critiques. How does the Kalshi app rate for users? Here are a few sample reviews of the Kalshi app from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

So we've established that you can bet on sports with Kalshi — excuse us, we meant to say "make trades" — but has Kalshi figured out a way to circumvent sports betting laws enough to provide features that you'd find on a traditional sportsbook?

Believe it or not, they sure have.

On Kalshi, you can trade on traditional markets like spreads, totals and moneylines, as well as a wide variety of player and team props. Here's a list of betting options available on Kalshi at the time this review was written:

• Spreads & Alternate Spreads
• Moneylines
• Totals & Alternate Totals
• Player Props (Passing Yds, Pts Scored, etc.)
• Alternate Player Props
• Futures (Awards, Championship Winner, etc.)
• Parlays (Referred to as "Combos" on Kalshi)
• Other Events (Traded Players, Fired Coaches, etc.)

While we're impressed that Kalshi has found a way to present a sports betting experience very similar to what's on offer from traditional sportsbooks, it must be noted that the ability to bet on how many NFL games Taylor Swift goes to or how long Bill Belichick will stay at North Carolina feed more into the "cultural slop" category than impressive betting features. Of course, just because the features are available doesn't mean you have to use them.

Parlays on Kalshi

If you're a sports bettor who loves building parlays, you'll find your needs adequately met on Kalshi, as they rolled out a parlay engine in early fall 2025. However, they don't call them parlays; on Kalshi, you can use the Combo feature to combine picks from the same game or multiple games. It's a bit of a limited experience compared to traditional sports betting apps that let you parlay picks from multiple sports, however. Kalshi often allows you to combine picks from the same sport, but not between multiple sports.

Having said that, once you toggle the Combos button in the top-left corner, you will see quite a few betting options available to stack in your parlay. Combine totals with spreads or moneylines, add in player props like passing yards or points scored, and see your potential payout increase exponentially as you add more markets to your Combo.

Sports Available on Kalshi

Compared to traditional sports betting apps and major sportsbook alternatives, Kalshi's offering of sports for making trades stacks up well. They offer markets on traditional sports in the US like the NFL and NBA, including women's and college sports, and include some niche sports like chess, esports and more.

Here's a full list of sports and other markets available for making trades on Kalshi:

If you'd like to make trades on sports or otherwise using the Kalshi app or desktop platform, you'll first need to make a deposit to your account so that you have money to trade with. If you're lucky enough to win money on Kalshi, you'll then have the option to withdraw funds from your account as you see fit.

However, the options for depositing and withdrawing money on Kalshi are a bit limited compared to other sports betting platforms. Let's take a look at the payment methods available on Kalshi.

Keep in mind: Kalshi doesn't take a "vig" or a cut from each wager; instead, they make money from transaction fees. While the fees can change from month to month, there is currently a 2% transaction fee associated with debit deposits, and a $2 fee associated with debit withdrawals from your Kalshi account.

When it comes to customer service on a sports betting app, Kalshi compares favorably to other sportsbooks and sportsbook alternatives. Because they're federally regulated, they're under a higher level of scrutiny, which translates to a higher degree of trust from users despite an otherwise seedy feel to their platform overall.

Kalshi's customer support options fall under two main umbrellas:

• Help Center
• Support Chat

Kalshi Help Center

Kalshi's help center features a robust offering of customer service options for finding solutions to myriad problems. You can learn more about Kalshi or prediction markets in general, browse their FAQ, make adjustments to your account and more. The Kalshi help center is based on an internet browser, so it may not operate as well if you're not on a good internet connection. Otherwise, their help center is a solid option for resolving issues.

If you don't have luck with the Kalshi help center, though, you'll likely have more like with their support chat.

Kalshi Support Chat

Kalshi's support chat is a rare winner when it comes to sports betting apps that include a chat feature. While most support chats on sports betting platforms utilize an AI bot that often hallucinates or fails to respond in a useful way, Kalshi's support chat is operated by real people based in the US. It may take up to 30 minutes to receive a response from Kalshi support, but for the advantage of getting to speak to a real person to quickly resolve problems, it's well worth the wait.

Because their support chat is run by real people who speak English, US users will find Kalshi's customer support fits their needs and outmatches other sports betting apps.

Where is it legal to use the Kalshi app in the US? Hey, this will be a short section!