The short answer
Polymarket has no cash out offer like a sportsbook, where the bookmaker names a price for your bet. To get out before the end, you sell your shares to another trader. You can sell at any time before the market is resolved, as long as someone wants to buy. An instant sale, at the best price a buyer offers right now, pays a fee. A sell order at your own price pays no fee, but it may never go through.
To see what your buys and sales cost in the last 30 days, to the cent, type your Polymarket @name or paste your profile address into the free check above.
This page is about polymarket.com. Polymarket US has its own rules and is not covered here.
How to sell before the end
Open the market and switch the trade box from Buy to Sell. Pick the side you hold and the number of shares. Then choose one of two ways to sell:
- Sell instantly. Your shares go at once, at the best price a buyer is offering. This sale pays a fee, with the same formula as a buy: fee = rate × shares × price × (1 − price). Price is in dollars, so 75¢ = 0.75. The rate is 0.05 for sports and 0.07 for crypto. All rates are on our Polymarket fees page.
- Sell at your own price. You set the price, and the order waits until a buyer accepts it. This pays no fee, and when a buyer takes your order you get a share of a daily pool: 15% of the fees on that sports market, split among the waiting orders that were taken. But the price may never come, and then your shares stay unsold.
An instant sale has a second cost that is easy to miss. At any moment there are two prices: the highest price buyers offer, and the lowest price sellers ask. An instant buy pays the higher one. An instant sale gets the lower one. The price Polymarket shows for the market is halfway between the two (when they are more than 10¢ apart, Polymarket shows the last trade price instead). In Polymarket's own example, buyers offer 34¢, sellers ask 40¢, and the market shows 37¢. If you sell instantly there, you get 34¢ a share, not 37¢. The gap between the two prices costs money too, and it is often wider on quiet markets.
What selling early costs: a worked example
You buy 250 shares on a sports market at 40¢, instantly. That is $100.
- Fee at the buy: 0.05 × 250 × 0.40 × 0.60 = $3.00.
- The price rises. Buyers now offer 75¢. You sell all 250 shares instantly: 250 × 0.75 = $187.50.
- Fee at the sale: 0.05 × 250 × 0.75 × 0.25 = $2.34 (2.34375 before rounding).
- Result after both fees: $187.50 − $100 − $3.00 − $2.34 = $82.16.
Now the same bet, held to the end:
- If it wins: 250 shares pay $1 each, so you get $250. No fee is taken from the payout. $250 − $100 − $3.00 = $147.00.
- If it loses: the shares are worth $0. You lose the $100 and the $3.00 fee, $103.00 in all.
Selling at 75¢ sets the result at +$82.16, whatever happens in the game, and it costs a second fee of $2.34. Holding leaves the result open: +$147.00 or −$103.00. Selling or holding is your decision. The second fee is one part of what selling costs.
The sale shows up in the profit or loss on your Polymarket profile, with both fees already taken out. More on that number: what the Polymarket profit number means.
Why you sometimes can't sell
- No buyer at your price. A sale needs a buyer. If few people are buying, an instant sale may sell part of your shares or none of them. The part that finds no buyer is cancelled, not left waiting. A sell order at your own price waits until someone accepts it, and that may not happen before the end.
- The shares are already in an open sell order. Shares in a waiting sell order are held for that order. To sell them another way, cancel the open order first. You can't sell more shares than you hold.
- The game has started. On sports markets, Polymarket cancels all open orders at your own price at the official start time. If you placed a sell order before the game, it is gone, and you need to place it again. Instant orders on sports markets wait 3 seconds before they go through, and an order can be turned down at the end of that wait.
- The market is resolved. Once Polymarket settles the result, trading stops: you can't buy or sell. Each winning share is then worth $1, and losing shares are worth $0. Settling takes about two hours when no one disputes the result, and several days when someone does.
What we saw in 108 wallets
We looked at 108 public wallets checked on polyfees, over the last 30 days, from Polymarket's own public records.
- 9,743 of 39,652 finished bets (24.6%) were sold before the market ended.
- 90 of 108 wallets sold before the end one or more times.
- 11% of all fees were paid on sales before the end: $20,582 of $185,670, in a wider set of 117 wallets.
So selling before the end is common, and each instant sale has its own fee. 108 wallets are a sample, not everyone. The full report for $19 shows which of your bets were sold before the end and how those sales turned out.
Questions
Is there a cash out button on Polymarket?
Not the sportsbook kind, where the bookmaker offers a price for your bet. On Polymarket you sell your shares to another trader, with Sell in the trade box, at any time before the market is resolved. Polymarket's help pages use the words "cash out" for Combos, and there too it means selling your shares to a buyer.
Is there a fee to sell on Polymarket?
Yes, if you sell instantly before the market ends. The sale uses the same formula as the buy: rate × shares × price × (1 − price), with a rate of 0.05 for sports. A sell order at your own price pays no fee, and shares that win and pay out at the end pay no fee.
Why can't I sell my shares?
There may be no buyer at your price, your shares may already be held in an open sell order, or the market may be resolved, and then trading has stopped. On sports markets, sell orders at your own price are cancelled when the game starts and need to be placed again.
Can I sell after the game started?
Yes, until the market is resolved, as long as there is a buyer. At the official start time Polymarket cancels open orders at your own price on sports markets, and instant orders there wait 3 seconds before they go through. Once the result is settled, trading stops, and each winning share is worth $1.
Is it cheaper to hold until the end?
In fees, yes: no fee is taken from the payout at the end, while an instant sale pays a second fee. But a held bet can still lose, and a sale sets your result at the sale price. Selling or holding is your decision. More in does Polymarket take a cut of winnings.