Prediction market odds and payouts explained

A prediction market price is what one share costs, and a winning share pays $1, so the price in cents reads as the market's implied chance: 62 cents is 62%, decimal odds of 1.61 or American odds of −163. Fees change what you take home. On 11 November 2026, about $100 on the New York Knicks to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers bought 155 shares on Polymarket and 159 shares on Hyperliquid's HIP-4 market, worth $155.00 and $158.78 after fees if the Knicks won. At Kalshi's ask the same $100 bought 157 contracts, worth $157.00.

Contents

How do you read prediction market odds?#

Read the price as a probability. Every contract pays $1 if its outcome happens and nothing if it doesn't, so a Yes share at 62 cents means traders, taken together, give the outcome about a 62% chance. Kalshi puts it the same way: prices come from members trading with one another, not from Kalshi, and a price is a likelihood, not a promise.

Three numbers sit behind each price. The bid is the most anyone will pay for a share, the ask is the least anyone will sell for, and the displayed price is usually between them. On Polymarket, the displayed price is the midpoint of the bid and ask, or the last trade if the spread is wider than 10 cents. You buy at the ask and sell at the bid.

Yes and No on the same outcome add up to about $1. Here is the Knicks game at 10:03 UTC on 11 November 2026, from each venue's order book:

Venue	Knicks bid	Knicks ask	Cavaliers ask	Knicks ask plus Cavaliers ask
Kalshi	0.61	0.62	0.38	1.00
Polymarket	0.62	0.63	0.38	1.01
HIP-4 on Hyperliquid	0.62514	0.62516	0.37486	1.00002

The cent or so above $1 is the spread, which is what a buyer pays the traders who quote both sides. HIP-4 keeps one order book for both sides of an outcome, so its Yes and No asks add up to almost exactly $1.

Kalshi's 0.38 for the Cavaliers covered only 5 contracts; the next price was 0.39.

Prediction market odds conversion table#

Prediction market prices convert to sportsbook odds with three formulas, where p is the price in dollars:

implied chance = p decimal odds = 1 / p American odds = +100 × (1 − p) / p below 0.50, −100 × p / (1 − p) above

Before fees. American odds above 0.50 are negative: the stake needed to win $100. Below 0.50 they are positive: the profit on a $100 stake.

Price	Implied chance	Decimal odds	American odds	Profit on $100 if right, before fees
$0.05	5%	20.00	+1900	$1,900.00
$0.10	10%	10.00	+900	$900.00
$0.20	20%	5.00	+400	$400.00
$0.25	25%	4.00	+300	$300.00
$0.33	33%	3.03	+203	$203.03
$0.40	40%	2.50	+150	$150.00
$0.50	50%	2.00	+100	$100.00
$0.60	60%	1.67	−150	$66.67
$0.67	67%	1.49	−203	$49.25
$0.75	75%	1.33	−300	$33.33
$0.80	80%	1.25	−400	$25.00
$0.90	90%	1.11	−900	$11.11
$0.95	95%	1.05	−1900	$5.26

A sportsbook's odds work the other way round: the book sets the payout and keeps a margin inside it, so its implied chances for both sides add up to more than 100% (prediction markets vs sportsbooks).

What does $100 pay on Kalshi, Polymarket and HIP-4?#

Less than the table says, because of the ask and the fee. We priced about $100 of Knicks shares, fees included, at the 10:03 UTC asks on 11 November 2026:

Venue	Price paid	Shares	Fee	Total cost	Pays if the Knicks win	Profit	Break-even chance
Kalshi	0.62	157	$2.5893 when you buy	$99.93	$157.00	$57.07	63.6%
Polymarket	0.63	155	$1.81 when you buy	$99.46	$155.00	$55.54	64.2%
HIP-4, order sent to Hyperliquid	0.62516	159	$0.22 at settlement, only if they win (assumed rate)	$99.40	$158.78	$59.38	62.6%
HIP-4, order placed in the Totalis app	0.62516	159	$0.10 when you buy, plus $0.22 at settlement (assumed rate)	$99.50	$158.78	$59.28	62.7%

How each fee works:

Kalshi charges takers 0.07 × contracts × p × (1 − p), per its fee schedule, and its NBA game series carries the standard multiplier of 1. Its fee rounding docs keep the balances of members who trade with Kalshi directly to $0.0001, which is the precision used here; members clearing through a broker are rounded to the cent. It charges no settlement fee. Kalshi fees covers the schedule.
Polymarket charges takers shares × rate × p × (1 − p), and this market's rate was 0.05, the sports rate on its fee page. Makers pay nothing. Polymarket fees has the other categories.
Hyperliquid charges nothing to open an outcome position and charges when you close or settle, per its fees page. That page publishes no rate table for outcome markets, and Hyperliquid's HIP-4 overview still says outcome fees are zero. So the 0.14% here is an observation, not a published rate: one base-tier wallet with no discounts paid exactly 0.14% on each of four winning settlements in markets from this market's deployer, three NBA games on 11 November and an NFL game on 10 November (0.0182 USDC on 13 shares, for example). That the Knicks shares would pay the same is our assumption. A losing side settles at zero and pays nothing.
Totalis adds a 0.1% builder fee on singles placed in its app, and a new account's first buy goes without it, per the Totalis fees and limits page.

The break-even chance is the total cost divided by the payout. Buying on Polymarket at these prices only pays off on average if the Knicks win more than 64.2% of the time, while its midpoint said 62.5%. At Kalshi's prices the break-even was 63.6% against a 61.5% midpoint. That gap, spread plus fee, is the price of taking a quote now instead of waiting for someone to take yours. The top HIP-4 ask held 680 shares, so a much larger order would have paid more per share; lowest-fee prediction markets compares the fees of eleven venues.

How are prediction markets paid out?#

A winning share pays $1 when the market settles, and a losing share pays nothing. How the dollar reaches you differs:

Kalshi pays winning contracts into your cash balance at settlement, with no settlement fee on simple yes or no results. Its market FAQs say most markets settle within a few hours of the outcome being known, often within about 3 hours.
Polymarket markets resolve through the UMA Optimistic Oracle. Its resolution page says an undisputed proposal resolves in about 2 hours, after which winning tokens redeem for $1 each. Getting dollars out is a separate step (how to withdraw from Polymarket).
HIP-4 settles automatically: a Yes share becomes the market's settlement fraction in USDC and a No share the rest, with nothing to redeem.

Not every market pays exactly 1 or 0. If the Knicks game were cancelled, the three venues would pay differently. Kalshi's market settles at "a fair price" if the game doesn't start within 48 hours of its scheduled time. Polymarket's resolves 50-50 if it hasn't started by 11:59 PM ET on 13 November. The HIP-4 market pays 0.5 if the result is a draw, a no contest, no winner or a winner it doesn't list, or if no result is established by 19 November; a game moved to another day before then still counts. Prediction market arbitrage shows what those differences do to a position held on two venues.

You don't have to wait for settlement. Selling early gets you the bid at that moment, not $1.

Why isn't the price the true chance?#

The price is a good guide, not a measurement, for three reasons:

The spread. The midpoint is not a price anyone will trade with you at. Buyers pay the ask and sellers get the bid.
Fees. The Knicks example needed a 62.6% to 64.2% win rate, depending on the venue, against a 62.5% midpoint on Polymarket and a 62.5% ask on HIP-4.
The favourite-longshot bias. In a study of Kalshi prices by Bürgi, Deng and Whelan, covering 313,972 sampled prices on 46,282 Yes contracts from Kalshi's 2021 launch to April 2025, a period the authors model with Kalshi's pre-2025 fees charged to takers only, cheap contracts won less often than their prices implied: buyers of contracts under 10 cents lost over 60% of their money, while contracts above 50 cents earned small positive returns. A study of Polymarket's full trade history by Akey, Grégoire, Harvie and Martineau found its prices well calibrated on aggregate: a contract priced at p won about p of the time.

So in that Kalshi sample, contracts under 10 cents won well under the chance their price implied. Fees weigh most on cheap contracts too: Kalshi's taker fee works out to 7% × (1 − p) of what you pay, 6.65% at 5 cents against 2.66% at 62 cents. Can you make money on prediction markets? goes through who wins and who loses.

How much does a $100 parlay (Combo) pay?#

A Combo joins two or more outcomes, its legs, into one position that pays only if every leg wins. A Combo is what sportsbooks call a parlay. Its payout is the quote you accept, minus fees.

On Totalis, market makers compete to quote each Combo, and you take one quote with a signature. A useful yardstick is the product of the legs' prices, which is the fair price if the legs are unrelated. At 10:03 UTC on 11 November, three NBA games open for Combos on Totalis had these HIP-4 asks:

Leg	HIP-4 ask
Knicks over the Cavaliers	0.625
Rockets over the Warriors	0.672
Lakers over the Bucks	0.852
All three, multiplied	0.358, or 2.80 times your money

Read the other way, 0.358 is roughly the market's chance that all three win if the games are unrelated, so this three-leg parlay of favourites would lose about 64% of the time. Use 2.80x as a yardstick, not a payout to expect. Makers charge for the risk they take, so quotes come in below the yardstick, and legs that move together change the fair price itself. The Totalis trading guide says not to estimate a Combo's payout by multiplying leg prices: the quote is the price.

Fees come off the quote. Totalis takes 1.5% of the stake on entry and 1% of the profit on a win. Say makers quote a 260 USDC payout on a 100 USDC stake (an illustrative quote):

Result	Settles at	Profit fee	You receive
All three legs win	260.00	1.615	258.385
One game ends with no result (0.5), the others win	130.00	0.315	129.685
Any leg loses	0	None	0

The 1.50 entry fee leaves a net stake of 98.50, and the profit fee is 1% of what the Combo settles at above that. A leg that settles at 0.5 halves the payout because a Combo pays its payout times the product of its legs' results. Kalshi's market FAQs, linked above, describe the same rule for its combos. Prediction market combos compared sets Totalis beside Kalshi, Polymarket and others.

Totalis trades HIP-4 outcomes as singles on the HyperCore order book and as Combos of 2 to 5 legs held in the Totalis vault on HyperEVM. It isn't available to US persons, and signing up takes an invite code. If you're outside the US, request a Combo quote in the Totalis app and compare it with the yardstick before you sign. None of this is financial advice; it is the arithmetic behind the numbers on the screen.

How we counted#

Prices. Polymarket's Gamma and CLOB APIs and Hyperliquid's l2Book info request, read at 10:03 UTC on 11 November 2026.
Kalshi. Kalshi prices come from Kalshi's order book at the same time. Its asks are 1 minus the best opposing bid, and fees use the $0.0001 precision Kalshi applies to direct members.
Fees. Each venue's published formula at the prices above. The Hyperliquid settlement rate is an observation, not a published rate: the 0.14% one base-tier wallet paid on four winning settlements on 10 and 11 November, assumed here for the Knicks shares. Higher-volume or staking wallets pay less.
Rounding. Shares are whole numbers bought within $100, fees included.

Sources and further reading#

Kalshi fee schedule, accessed 2026-11-11
Polymarket trading fees, accessed 2026-11-11
Hyperliquid fees, accessed 2026-11-11
Polymarket prices and order book, accessed 2026-11-11
Polymarket resolution, accessed 2026-11-11
Kalshi market settlement, accessed 2026-11-11
Bürgi, Deng and Whelan, Makers and Takers: The Economics of the Kalshi Prediction Market, accessed 2026-11-11
Totalis fees and limits, accessed 2026-11-11

This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Prediction market positions can lose their entire value. Availability of markets and features depends on your jurisdiction and each platform’s terms.