Checked against Polymarket's documentation and change log on 10 October 2026.
The short answer
Polymarket's fee rate on sports markets is 0.05 today, and the fee is 0.05 × shares × price × (1 − price), with the price in dollars (30¢ = 0.30). A $100 bet at 50¢ pays $2.50 in fees. The fee is paid when you buy or sell instantly. An order at your own price that waits until someone accepts it pays no fee, and winning shares pay out $1 each with no fee taken.
The rate changed several times in 2026. Sports markets started paying a fee in February, the rate was 0.03 from 30 March, and it went up to 0.05 in July. Pages that say "0.03" or "Polymarket has no fees" were written before those changes.
This page is about polymarket.com. Polymarket US has its own rules and is not covered here.
The fee today
Fee = rate × shares × price × (1 − price). For one share, the fee is highest at 50¢. For a bet of a fixed size, cheap shares pay the most: on a sports market, a $100 bet pays $5 × (1 − price) in fees. That is $3.50 at 30¢, $2.50 at 50¢ and $1.50 at 70¢.
| Category | Rate | $100 at 50¢ |
|---|---|---|
| Sports and esports | 0.05 | $2.50 |
| Crypto | 0.07 | $3.50 |
| Economics, culture, weather, other | 0.05 | $2.50 |
| Politics, finance, tech, mentions | 0.04 | $2.00 |
| Geopolitics | 0 | $0 |
Polymarket's fee table has no separate line for esports. On polymarket.com, esports matches (Counter-Strike, League of Legends, Dota 2 and others) are part of the sports section, and on the real esports trades we checked the rate was 0.05.
Three more things decide what you pay in the end:
- Selling before the end. An instant sale pays a second fee, with the same formula and the same rate.
- Orders at your own price. An order that waits for its price pays nothing and gets a share of a daily pool: in sports, 15% of the fees on that market, split among the waiting orders that were taken.
- Part of the fee paid back. Since 28 May 2026 Polymarket returns 3% to 50% of the fee on instant buys, depending on how much you bought in the last 30 days. More: does Polymarket give any fees back?
All categories and the full rules are on our Polymarket fees page.
What changed and when
Every date below is from Polymarket's own change log, except where another source is named.
| When | What changed |
|---|---|
| Before 2026 | Most markets had no trading fee. |
| 5 Jan 2026 | Fee on 15-minute crypto markets. |
| Feb 2026 | The same fee on 5-minute crypto markets. |
| 18 Feb 2026 | First sports fee: new college basketball (NCAAB) and Serie A markets. |
| 6 Mar 2026 | Fee on all new crypto markets: hourly, daily, weekly. |
| 30 Mar 2026 | Fee on almost every category, sports included, at 0.03. Geopolitics stays free. |
| 28 May 2026 | Part of the fee on instant buys is paid back, 3% to 50%. |
| July 2026 | Sports rate goes from 0.03 to 0.05. |
- Before 2026. Polymarket was known for trading with no fee. The fee of 5 January 2026 was its first move away from that (Cointelegraph).
- February 2026. The first sports fee covered markets created from 18 February. Older NCAAB and Serie A markets, and other sports, had no fee yet. News reports at the time gave the rate as 0.0175 (Odaily).
- 30 March 2026. Polymarket's second fee structure added politics, finance, economics, culture, weather, tech, mentions and other markets. Sports stayed on the list, at 0.03.
- July 2026. Polymarket's change log entry of 10 July records the sports rate going from 0.03 to 0.05 at midnight UTC. The same entry cut the share of fees paid to orders that wait for their price in sports, from 25% to 15%.
Polymarket's change log has no separate entry for esports.
Why some sites still say 0.03
From 30 March to July 2026, 0.03 was the right number for sports. Many fee guides were written in those months and were not updated. Pages that say "no fees" describe Polymarket before 2026, and pages that mention 0.44% at 50¢ describe the February fee on NCAAB and Serie A markets.
Even Polymarket's own numbers did not always agree. In April 2026 a developer reported on Polymarket's GitHub that the documents gave 0.03 for sports, while Polymarket's servers returned different values, and an NHL market showed no fee in his tests (issue #326). The report got no reply on that page.
So we do not copy the rate from a table. We read the fee on each trade from Polymarket's own public records, to the cent. We checked the fee on real esports trades in two public wallets over the last 30 days: 1,241 of 1,247 trades that paid a fee were charged exactly 0.05, and the other 6 differ only by rounding of very small fees.
What it costs on a typical esports bet
You buy $100 of a team on a Counter-Strike match, instantly. On a sports or esports market the fee on a $100 bet is $5 × (1 − price).
- The team is the outsider, at 30¢. $100 buys 333.33 shares. Fee: 0.05 × 333.33 × 0.30 × 0.70 = $3.50.
- The team is the favourite, at 70¢. $100 buys 142.86 shares. Fee: 0.05 × 142.86 × 0.70 × 0.30 = $1.50.
The same bets at the old rate of 0.03, and at today's rate:
| $100 bet at | At 0.03 | At 0.05 (now) |
|---|---|---|
| 30¢ | $2.10 | $3.50 |
| 50¢ | $1.50 | $2.50 |
| 70¢ | $0.90 | $1.50 |
If you sell before the end, the sale pays its own fee. Say the outsider's price rises to 50¢ during the match and you sell the 333.33 shares instantly: 0.05 × 333.33 × 0.50 × 0.50 = $4.17. With the buy, that bet paid $7.67 in fees. How these fees compare with a bookmaker's margin: Polymarket vs a sportsbook: what you pay.
To see what the fee took from your last 30 days, to the cent, type your Polymarket @name or paste your profile address into the free check above. Other ways to find your total: how much have I paid in Polymarket fees.
Questions
What is the Polymarket fee on sports?
The rate is 0.05, and the fee is 0.05 × shares × price × (1 − price), paid when you buy or sell instantly. A $100 bet at 50¢ pays $2.50, at 30¢ it pays $3.50, and at 70¢ it pays $1.50. An order at your own price that waits until someone accepts it pays no fee, and winning shares pay out with no fee taken.
Does Polymarket charge fees on esports?
Yes. Esports markets are part of the sports section on polymarket.com and pay the sports rate of 0.05. Polymarket's fee table has no separate esports line. A $100 bet on a Counter-Strike or League of Legends match at 50¢ pays $2.50 in fees when you buy instantly.
Did Polymarket fees change in 2026?
Yes, several times. Polymarket started charging a fee on 15-minute crypto markets on 5 January 2026, on new NCAAB and Serie A markets on 18 February, and on almost every category from 30 March, with sports at 0.03. In July 2026 the sports rate went up to 0.05. Since 28 May 2026 part of the fee on instant buys is paid back.
Is it 0.03 or 0.05?
0.05 today. The sports rate was 0.03 from 30 March to July 2026, and many guides written then still show it. Polymarket's documentation lists 0.05 for sports, and the fee we read on real sports trades from Polymarket's public records is 0.05.
Do all sports markets have fees?
Not always. Polymarket sets the fee for each market, and its documents say geopolitics markets are free. When fees first came to a group of markets, Polymarket applied them to new markets and left older ones without a fee. In two esports wallets we checked over the last 30 days, all but one instant trade paid a fee.