Polymarket charges takers a fee that varies by market category and peaks when a contract trades near 50¢. Makers — the orders that add liquidity to the book — pay nothing and can earn rebates instead. There is no deposit fee, no withdrawal fee, and no subscription. The entire cost of trading is the taker fee plus whatever spread you cross, and both are knowable before you click.

That's a meaningful change from how Polymarket used to work. As of Polymarket's 2026 exchange upgrade, fees are charged in stablecoin (pUSD) at the moment your order matches, rather than being baked into share counts. They now show up as a line item in your trade history instead of quietly reducing the shares you received. This guide breaks down exactly what you pay, how the number is calculated, and where the real cost of a trade actually hides — with every rate verified live against Polymarket's own market data as of June 2026.

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The Short Answer

• Makers pay 0%. If your order rests on the book and gets filled, you're a maker. No fee — and you may earn a rebate.
• Takers pay a per-category fee, charged in stablecoin when the order matches.
• The fee rate peaks at a 50¢ share price and shrinks toward both extremes (1¢ and 99¢).
• Geopolitical and world-events markets are fee-free for both sides.
• No deposit, withdrawal, or account fees. Polymarket settles on Polygon; the only other cost is gas, which is abstracted away in normal trading.

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The Fee Formula

Polymarket's taker fee is defined by a single formula, per its official documentation:

fee = C × p × feeRate × (p × (1 − p))^exponent

where C is the number of shares traded, p is the share price (between 0 and 1), feeRate is the category rate, and exponent is a per-category parameter — currently 1 for every fee-charging category, per the fee schedule Polymarket publishes on each market.

The cleanest way to read it: divide by your cost (C × p) and the fee as a percentage of what you spend is simply feeRate × p × (1 − p). That term peaks at 50¢ — where p × (1 − p) hits its maximum of 0.25 — and collapses toward zero as the price approaches 1¢ or 99¢. So the most you can ever pay, relative to your stake, is feeRate ÷ 4, and it only happens at the 50/50 midpoint. A 30¢ trade and a 70¢ trade cost the same percentage of your stake (0.3 × 0.7 = 0.7 × 0.3), though not the same dollar amount, since the dollar fee also scales with the price you pay per share.

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Taker Fee Rates by Category

Each market category has its own feeRate, published in the fee schedule attached to every market. These are the live values as of June 2026, read directly from Polymarket's market data:

The "max fee" column is feeRate ÷ 4 — the most a taker pays relative to the capital deployed, which only happens at a 50¢ price. Every fee-charging category is taker-only: the maker side of the schedule is zero across the board.

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Worked Examples

The formula is easy to run yourself. Three buys of 100 shares in a crypto market (feeRate 0.07, exponent 1):

• At 50¢ (you spend $50): 100 × 0.50 × 0.07 × (0.50 × 0.50) = $0.88 — 1.75% of your spend
• At 70¢ (you spend $70): 100 × 0.70 × 0.07 × (0.70 × 0.30) = $1.03 — 1.47% of your spend
• At 90¢ (you spend $90): 100 × 0.90 × 0.07 × (0.90 × 0.10) = $0.57 — 0.63% of your spend

Same in a sports market (feeRate 0.03), 100 shares at 50¢: 100 × 0.50 × 0.03 × 0.25 ≈ $0.38 — which is Polymarket's own worked example in its documentation, and 0.75% of the $50 you spent.

The number that matters for sizing isn't the headline rate — it's the fee relative to the capital you actually deploy, and that's highest exactly where markets are most uncertain.

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Uncertainty Is What You Pay For

Relative to the capital you put up, the fee curve has one clean shape: it's feeRate × p × (1 − p) of your spend, symmetric around the midpoint and highest at exactly 50¢. A 10¢ longshot and a 90¢ favorite both cost about 0.63% of your stake in a crypto market; a 50¢ coin-flip costs 1.75% — nearly three times more, proportionally.

The intuition: Polymarket charges you the most where the market knows the least. Trading the maximum-uncertainty midpoint is the most expensive thing you can do as a percentage of capital, while well-priced extremes — longshots and heavy favorites alike — are proportionally cheap.

The practical takeaway for sizing: fee drag matters most on high-frequency strategies that live near the midpoint (which is exactly where crypto's 0.07 rate bites hardest), and least on conviction positions taken at the extremes.

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Makers Don't Pay — They Get Paid

Only takers are charged. If you post a limit order that sits on the book and someone else fills it, you paid no fee and you qualify for the Maker Rebates Program.

This trips people up, because most crypto exchanges charge both a maker and a taker fee. Polymarket doesn't: every fee-charging category's schedule is marked taker-only, with the maker side at zero. Makers earn rebates instead of paying — the inverse of the usual exchange model.

Taker fees fund a rebate pool that's redistributed to the makers who provided the liquidity that got taken, proportional to your filled liquidity and calculated per market. The rebate share is published in each market's fee schedule: 20% in crypto and 25% in every other fee-charging category (live values as of June 2026). Geopolitics markets, being fee-free, have no rebates.

Rebates are paid in stablecoin directly to your wallet. For anyone running resting orders, the rebate program turns the fee structure from a cost into a potential income stream — the opposite of how takers experience it.

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What the April 2026 Upgrade Changed

Before the 2026 exchange upgrade, fees were deducted in shares, which made them hard to see — the cost was absorbed into the number of shares you received rather than shown explicitly. The upgrade moved fees to stablecoin and made two changes worth knowing:

1. Fees are charged in stablecoin (pUSD), so they appear as a readable line in your trade history instead of being hidden in share counts.
2. The fee is calculated when your order matches, not when you place it. A resting order's fee status is only decided at fill time — which is also what determines whether you ended up a maker or a taker.

For a trader, the practical upshot is transparency: you can now audit exactly what every fill cost you.

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Rounding and Minimums

Per Polymarket's documentation, the smallest fee it will charge is 0.0001 pUSD — anything smaller rounds to zero. In practice, very small trades — or trades at extreme prices where the p × (1 − p) term is tiny — can incur no fee at all.

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The Cost That Isn't a Fee: Spread

The taker fee is the explicit cost. The implicit one is the spread — the gap between the best bid and the best ask. When you take liquidity, you cross that spread, and on thin markets it can dwarf the fee.

This is why execution quality matters as much as the fee schedule. A market with a one-cent spread and a $1.00 fee on your trade is cheaper to enter than a market with a five-cent spread and no fee at all. If you're following a larger trader into a position, getting filled before the book moves is the difference between paying their price and paying the market's reaction to it — the core problem we covered in how to track Polymarket whales and in Block 0 copy trading.

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Trading Polymarket on FrenFlow

The fees above are Polymarket's — they apply wherever you place the order, because the trade settles on Polymarket's on-chain order book either way. What changes on FrenFlow is everything around the trade: you can copy proven wallets from the traders leaderboard in the same block they trade, your funds stay in your own self-custody wallet, and it works across the web app and Telegram. There's no subscription and no deposit or withdrawal fee on top of Polymarket's standard taker fee.

If you're choosing which markets to trade, the fee schedule is a genuine edge: a sports position costs less than half what the same-sized crypto position does, and geopolitical markets cost nothing at all. Factor it into sizing the same way you'd factor in the spread. For the full picture on automating it, see our guide to the best copy trading bot for Polymarket.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Does Polymarket charge trading fees?

Yes, but only on the taker side. Orders that take liquidity from the book pay a fee in stablecoin that varies by market category and, relative to your spend, peaks at a 50¢ share price. Makers — orders that rest on the book and get filled — pay nothing and can earn rebates. There are no deposit, withdrawal, or subscription fees.

How much are Polymarket's fees?

The taker fee is shares × price × feeRate × (price × (1 − price)), where feeRate is 0.07 for crypto, 0.05 for economics/culture/weather, 0.04 for finance/politics/tech, and 0.03 for sports. Relative to what you spend, the fee peaks at a 50¢ price at exactly feeRate ÷ 4: 1.75% of your stake in crypto, 1.25% in the 0.05 categories, 1.00% in the 0.04 categories, and 0.75% in sports. Geopolitical markets are fee-free.

Why is the Polymarket fee higher at 50¢?

Because the fee formula includes a price × (1 − price) term, which is largest (0.25) when the price is 0.50 and shrinks toward zero as the price approaches 1¢ or 99¢. As a percentage of the capital you deploy, the fee is symmetric around the midpoint — a trade at 30¢ costs the same share of your stake as one at 70¢ — and the 50/50 midpoint is the most expensive point on the curve.

Do makers pay fees on Polymarket?

No. Makers are never charged — every fee-charging category's schedule is taker-only. Instead, makers qualify for the Maker Rebates Program, which pays a stablecoin rebate funded by taker fees: 20% of the pool in crypto and 25% in the other fee-charging categories, per the rebate share published in each market's fee schedule.

Are there deposit or withdrawal fees on Polymarket?

Polymarket itself charges nothing to deposit or withdraw. Third-party on-ramps you might use to fund the account — Coinbase, MoonPay, or a bridge — can charge their own fees, and network gas applies, but none of that goes to Polymarket. Settlement happens on Polygon.

Which Polymarket markets are cheapest to trade?

Geopolitical and world-events markets are fee-free for both makers and takers. Among fee-charging categories, sports is the cheapest (feeRate 0.03), and crypto is the most expensive (feeRate 0.07). Within any category, trades near the 50¢ midpoint are proportionally the most expensive — the fee peaks at feeRate ÷ 4 of your stake there — while prices near the extremes carry proportionally tiny fees.