Polymarket Fees Explained: The Taker Formula, Rebates and Real Costs

Polymarket charges no fee to makers and a price-dependent taker fee on most markets. The fee is not a flat percentage of the trade. It is calculated as C × feeRate × p × (1 - p), where C is the number of shares, p is the share price, and feeRate depends on the market category. The dollar charge peaks at $0.50 and falls symmetrically toward both extremes. Geopolitical and world-events markets are fee-free.

On a politics market the rate parameter is 0.04. That produces a maximum of $1.00 per 100 shares at a $0.50 price, which is about 1% of the $50 notional. Crypto is 0.07, or $1.75 per 100 shares at $0.50, about 1.75%. Reading 0.04 as a "4% fee" is wrong: the rate is an input to a quadratic curve, not a percentage of the amount traded.

The formula, category by category

Polymarket publishes a rate for each category. Crypto is 0.07. Sports, economics, culture, weather and "other/general" are 0.05. Politics, finance, mentions and tech are 0.04. Geopolitics is zero. Combos carry their own 0.05 rate regardless of the categories of their legs. Makers pay zero in every category, and the fee table's maker rebate column is the share of taker fees redistributed to makers, not a charge.

Because the formula multiplies p by (1 - p), the charge is symmetric around 50%. One hundred politics shares at $0.30 incurs 100 × 0.04 × 0.30 × 0.70 = $0.84. The same 100 shares at $0.70 also incurs $0.84, even though the notional is more than twice as large. That is deliberate: the fee tracks the value of the optionality embedded in the share, not the dollar amount that changes hands.

Fees are set by the protocol at match time. You do not include fee information in an order; the fee is applied by the exchange rather than entered as an order field. Fees are rounded to five decimal places, and the smallest charge is 0.00001; anything smaller rounds to zero. Very small trades near $0.01 or $0.99 can therefore pay nothing.

A worked net return

Suppose you buy 1,000 YES shares in a politics market at $0.40 as a taker. The notional is $400. The entry fee is 1,000 × 0.04 × 0.40 × 0.60 = $9.60. Your all-in cost is $409.60.

If YES resolves true, the position pays $1,000. Your profit is $590.40 on $409.60 of capital, a 144.1% return. If YES resolves false, you lose the full $409.60. The break-even probability is 40.96%, not 40%. The 0.96-point gap is the fee expressed as a probability.

Now suppose you sell at $0.55 before resolution. The sale brings $550. The exit fee is 1,000 × 0.04 × 0.55 × 0.45 = $9.90, leaving $540.10. Against your $409.60 entry cost, the profit is $130.50. The round trip paid $19.50 in fees, or 4.8% of the entry capital, before any spread.

A taker rebate changes the number at the margin. If you qualify for the Gold tier's 18% rebate, the entry fee drops to $7.87 and the break-even falls to 40.79%. That is a genuine improvement, but the tier requires $200,000 of 30-day weighted volume, so it is not available to a one-off trader. Treat rebates as a scale benefit, not a reason to trade.

Who pays whom

Makers pay no fee and can receive a share of the taker fees their resting liquidity generates. The maker rebate percentages are 20% for crypto, 15% for sports, and 25% for politics, finance, economics, culture, weather, other/general, mentions and tech. Distribution is fee-curve weighted and calculated per market: your rebate is your fee equivalent divided by the market's total fee equivalent, multiplied by the rebate pool. Rebates are paid daily in pUSD, with a $1 minimum. Markets with a 0% taker fee generate no maker rebate.

The Taker Rebate Program is separate and went live on May 28, 2026. It uses seven tiers based on weighted volume over the last 30 days: Bronze at 3% for $2,000, Silver at 8% for $20,000, Gold at 18% for $200,000, Platinum at 32% for $1 million, Diamond at 44% for $4 million, and Obsidian at 50% for $10 million and above. Rebates apply to trades from the moment a tier is reached, are paid daily in pUSD, and require a $1 minimum. Polymarket states that the rates, thresholds and bonuses are discretionary and can change.

For a trader, the practical question is not "what is the fee?" but "which side of the spread am I on?" A resting order that gets filled pays no fee and may earn a rebate. A marketable order pays the taker fee and may also pay the spread. The same trade can be 2% cheaper or more expensive depending on which side you choose.

Gas, bridging, and the costs that are not called fees

Polymarket says it charges no fee to deposit or withdraw USDC. That does not mean moving money is free. Deposits from another chain are bridged and swapped into pUSD on Polygon, and the quote can include provider and swap costs. The source-chain transaction also costs gas in the native token. Minimum deposits are $2 on Polygon, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism and most other supported L2s, $7 on Ethereum, and $9 on Bitcoin and Tron. For deposits over $50,000 from a non-Polygon chain, the documentation recommends a third-party bridge to limit slippage.

Withdrawals unwind pUSD to USDC and swap through a Uniswap v3 pool. The interface enforces less than a 10 basis point difference in output, but the pool can be exhausted; the docs suggest splitting a withdrawal or waiting for it to rebalance. Withdrawing pUSD directly avoids the Uniswap step, but some exchanges no longer accept pUSD deposits. For very large withdrawals, the same advice applies: split the order or use an external bridge.

The largest unlisted cost is usually the spread. In the example above, a one-cent spread on 1,000 shares costs $10, slightly more than the $9.60 taker fee. If you cross the spread, you pay it immediately. If you rest, you avoid it but take the risk that the price moves away before you fill.

What the fee page does not cover

Builder fees can be added when an order is routed through a third-party application. Fee holidays can temporarily zero a market, and a market's category classification determines its rate, so a "politics" market and a "geopolitics" market can have very different economics. Rebate eligibility depends on volume and on the market's fee status, not just on posting an order. And fees are charged per transaction, so a strategy that trades in and out repeatedly pays the curve each time.

Model the all-in break-even rather than the headline probability. On a 40% entry with a 0.96-point fee drag, you need to be right about 41% of the time just to break even before the spread. That is the number that should sit next to the market price.