Guides
Explainers on how prediction markets work, how platforms compare, and how traders think about strategy, regulation, and risk.
41 guides, updated as platforms and rules change.
Guides (6)
Understanding CPMM: How Automated Market Makers Price Prediction Contracts
A technical but accessible walkthrough of the constant product market maker formula and how it sets prices in liquidity-pool-based prediction markets.
8 min read
What Is Polymarket? A Complete Introduction to the Crypto-Native Prediction Market
An introduction to Polymarket's structure, how it uses blockchain settlement and an order book model, and who typically uses it.
7 min read
Manifold Markets Explained: Play-Money Forecasting for Everyone
An introduction to Manifold's play-money model, its open market creation, and why it appeals to forecasters who want practice without real financial stakes.
6 min read
How to Use Polymarket: A Step-by-Step Tutorial
A walkthrough of the practical steps involved in setting up a wallet, funding an account, and placing a first trade on Polymarket.
8 min read
A Guide to Prediction Market APIs: Pulling Data Programmatically
An introduction to how prediction market APIs work, what kinds of data they expose, and what developers building on top of them need to consider.
8 min read
How Prediction Markets Work: From Market Creation to Settlement
A mechanics-focused walkthrough of a prediction market contract's full lifecycle, from how a market is created to how it ultimately resolves.
7 min read
Markets 101 (7)
Prediction Markets Explained: How Trading on Real-World Events Works
A foundational guide to how prediction markets turn opinions about future events into tradable prices that behave like probabilities.
7 min read
Prediction Market Share: Who Leads and Why It Keeps Shifting
An overview of how trading volume and liquidity are distributed across the major prediction market platforms, and what drives that distribution.
6 min read
A Brief History of Prediction Markets, From Academic Experiment to Global Platform
How prediction markets evolved from small university research projects into a widely used, internationally distributed way of pricing future events.
7 min read
How Accurate Are Prediction Markets, Really?
What the research and general track record say about how well prediction market prices forecast real-world outcomes, and where they fall short.
7 min read
Election Betting Markets in 2026: How to Read the Odds Correctly
A guide to how election-related prediction market contracts are structured and why their prices should be read as probabilities, not forecasts of certainty.
7 min read
How Election Odds Trackers Work, and How to Read Them in 2026
What an odds tracker like PredictRankd is actually doing when it aggregates prediction market prices, and how to interpret the numbers responsibly.
7 min read
What Is Limitless Exchange? A Guide to the On-Chain Prediction Market
Limitless Exchange comes up constantly as a Polymarket alternative but rarely gets explained on its own terms — here's what the platform actually is, how it prices contracts, and what makes its catalog different.
6 min read
Comparisons (14)
Polymarket vs. Kalshi: Which Prediction Market Is Right for You?
A side-by-side look at the two most prominent prediction market platforms and the regulatory, currency, and product differences that separate them.
8 min read
Kalshi in 2026: A Review of the CFTC-Regulated Prediction Market Exchange
An outlook-style review of Kalshi's positioning as a regulated US event-contract exchange, its strengths, and where it still faces open questions.
8 min read
The Best Prediction Markets in 2026: A Platform-by-Platform Breakdown
A comparative rundown of Polymarket, Kalshi, PredictIt, Betfair, and Manifold Markets, and which one fits which kind of trader.
9 min read
Prediction Markets vs. Sports Betting: What Actually Separates Them
A comparison of how prediction markets and traditional sportsbooks are structured differently, priced differently, and regulated differently.
7 min read
Prediction Markets vs. Polls: Two Different Ways of Measuring Public Belief
Why prediction markets and opinion polls measure fundamentally different things, and why the two are best treated as complements rather than competitors.
7 min read
The Best Prediction Market Categories to Trade in 2026
Which contract categories tend to offer the most tradeable combination of liquidity, clear resolution, and genuine information edges.
7 min read
Kalshi vs. PredictIt: Comparing the Two Legal US Political Trading Venues
How two of the longest-running US-accessible political trading platforms differ in regulatory footing, scale, and who they were built to serve.
7 min read
Manifold vs. Polymarket: Play Money Versus Real Stakes
How Manifold's play-money, community-driven model compares to Polymarket's real-money, crypto-native structure, and what that difference means in practice.
7 min read
Polymarket Alternatives: 5 Real Platforms Worth Comparing in 2026
Why traders look for a Polymarket alternative in the first place, and how Kalshi, PredictIt, Manifold, and Limitless actually differ once you get past the headline pitch.
8 min read
Kalshi Alternatives: Where Else to Trade Event Contracts
Kalshi's regulated, US-only structure is exactly why some traders look elsewhere — here's what Polymarket, PredictIt, Manifold, and Limitless actually offer instead.
7 min read
PredictIt Alternatives for Trading US Political Markets
PredictIt's position caps and politics-only scope, both direct consequences of the regulatory relief that lets it operate, are the main reasons US traders look for somewhere else to go.
7 min read
The Best Free Prediction Market Apps (No Real Money Required)
There's a real difference between a platform that's free to browse and one that's genuinely free to trade on — here's which prediction market apps actually let you participate without risking real money.
6 min read
The Best Crypto Prediction Markets in 2026
What it actually means for a prediction market to be "crypto-native," and how Polymarket and Limitless Exchange compare once you look past the shared USDC-and-wallet structure.
6 min read
Polymarket vs. Betfair: Two Exchange Models for Trading Real-World Events
Betfair pioneered the peer-to-peer betting exchange model decades before crypto prediction markets existed — a look at how it actually compares to Polymarket once you get past both being "exchanges."
7 min read
Strategy (8)
Hedging 101: Using Polymarket to Offset Real-World Risk
A practical introduction to using prediction market contracts as a hedge against outcomes that would otherwise hurt your business, portfolio, or plans.
7 min read
Correlation Trading in Prediction Markets: Finding Relative Value Across Related Contracts
How traders exploit the relationships between related prediction market contracts, and the risks that arise when those relationships break down.
7 min read
A Practical Guide to Arbitrage in Prediction Markets
How cross-platform pricing gaps create arbitrage opportunities in prediction markets, and why real-world frictions often eat into the theoretical profit.
7 min read
Core Prediction Market Strategies Every Trader Should Understand
A framework for thinking about the major strategic approaches to trading prediction markets, from information edges to liquidity provision.
8 min read
Can You Actually Make Money on Polymarket? A Realistic Look
A sober assessment of what it actually takes to trade Polymarket profitably, and why most participants should not expect it to be a reliable income source.
7 min read
How to Read Championship Futures Odds on Prediction Markets
A practical guide to interpreting NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and college football championship futures on Polymarket and Kalshi — and how those odds actually move.
6 min read
Polymarket Fees Explained: Gas, Spread, and the Real Cost of Trading
Polymarket's documented common case is a $0 trading fee — but that's not the same as trading being free once gas costs and the bid-ask spread are counted.
6 min read
Kalshi Fees Explained: How Contract Pricing and Trading Costs Work
Kalshi's published fee formula scales with how close a contract sits to a coin-flip — here's what that actually means for the cost of a trade near 50¢ versus near the extremes.
6 min read
Regulation (6)
Insider Trading in Prediction Markets: What the Rules Actually Say
How the concept of insider trading applies, imperfectly and unevenly, to prediction markets built around news, politics, and corporate events.
7 min read
Prediction Market Taxes in 2026: What Traders Should Understand
A general overview of how gains and losses from prediction market trading are typically treated for tax purposes, and why professional advice matters.
6 min read
Trading Prediction Markets From the United States: The Regulatory Landscape
What US-based traders need to understand about which prediction market platforms they can legally access and why the rules differ so sharply between them.
7 min read
Is Polymarket Legal? Untangling a Genuinely Complicated Question
A general look at why Polymarket's legal status depends heavily on jurisdiction, and why the answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no.
6 min read
Is Polymarket Safe? What Its Custody, Regulation, and Wallet Model Actually Mean
"Is Polymarket legit" and "is Polymarket regulated" are different questions with different answers — a look at what actually backs a position on a crypto-native prediction market.
7 min read
Is Kalshi Safe and Legit? What CFTC Regulation Actually Means for Traders
Kalshi's regulated status is real and meaningfully different from a crypto-native platform's — here's what that regulation actually covers, and where it stops.
6 min read