The short version
Since 2026 Polymarket charges a trading fee on sports, esports and crypto markets. You pay it only when your order takes an order that is already in the book (a market order, or a limit order priced to fill immediately). An order that rests in the book and waits pays nothing, and earns a share of the fees collected from the other side.
The formula
Fee per share = rate × price × (1 − price). On sports the rate is 0.05, on crypto markets 0.07. In plain terms:
- at 50¢ a sports share costs 1.25¢ in fees — 2.5% of your stake;
- at 80¢ it costs 0.8¢ — 1% of the stake;
- at 20¢ it costs 0.8¢ — 4% of the stake;
- on a 5-minute crypto market at 50¢ it is 1.75¢ — 3.5% every round.
The fee is deducted from what you receive, so the price you see is not the price you get. Polymarket's interface shows the fee per trade, but there is no running total — which is why most people have no idea what they paid over a month.
Who ends up paying
Takers. If you click Buy or Sell and it fills right away, you took liquidity and paid the fee. In the wallets we have checked, retail traders took the other side in 95–100% of their trades. A trader with $12k of monthly volume on 5-minute crypto markets paid $799 in a month; a live esports trader with $18k of volume paid $404 — more than his loss for the month.
How to pay less
- Rest your order. Place a limit order a tick or two inside the spread and wait. If it fills, there is no fee and you earn part of the rebate (15–20% of collected fees go back to makers).
- Mind the price. Fees peak at 50¢ and fall towards 0¢ and 100¢.
- Count the rounds. On 5-minute markets, 3.5% per round at 50¢ compounds fast: ten rounds a day is a third of your stake in a month.
See your own fee bill
Paste your profile address on the home page. We read every fee from the transaction receipts on Polygon — not an estimate — and show it next to your result for the last 30 days.