Robinhood Prediction Markets: What It Is, How It Works, and Whether It’s Worth Using

Robinhood has 25 million users. Most of them have never heard of Kalshi.

That gap is closing fast.

In March 2025, Robinhood launched its Prediction Markets Hub — a section of the app that lets users trade event contracts on sports, politics, economics, and more. In Q4 2025 alone, Robinhood users traded 8.5 billion event contracts. The company's stock has climbed more than 200% this year, driven in part by the market's conviction that prediction markets are Robinhood's next major growth engine.

If you already use Robinhood for stocks, crypto, or options, and you're curious about prediction markets, here's everything you need to know.

What Robinhood's Prediction Markets Hub Actually Is

Robinhood's hub is not a standalone prediction market. It's a distribution layer built on top of Kalshi, the CFTC-regulated prediction market exchange. When you trade event contracts on Robinhood, you're trading through KalshiEX LLC — a designated contract market regulated by the federal government.

This matters for one important reason: the regulatory status is Kalshi's, not Robinhood's. Robinhood is the interface. Kalshi is the exchange. The same event contracts available on the Kalshi app are available through Robinhood's hub. The difference is that Robinhood sits in front of it, which means Kalshi's markets are now accessible to tens of millions of retail investors who already have Robinhood accounts and have never opened a Kalshi account.

The mechanics are straightforward. You browse markets in the Robinhood app, pick an event, and take a YES or NO position. Contracts are priced between $0.01 and $0.99. A winning contract pays out $1. A losing contract expires at $0. You can close your position before the event resolves — just like trading a stock.

How the Fees Work

Robinhood charges $0.02 per contract. That fee is split: $0.01 goes to Robinhood, $0.01 goes to Kalshi. There are no deposit fees. Withdrawals to debit cards carry a 1.75% fee (minimum $1, maximum $150). Withdrawals to bank accounts are generally fee-free.

For context: if you take a $500 position in a market priced at $0.50, you're buying 1,000 contracts. Your fee is $20. That's 4% of your position, which is meaningful. The fee structure matters more in small-cap markets where you're trading in and out frequently than in large liquid markets where you're holding a position to resolution.

Kalshi itself charges a percentage-based fee rather than a flat per-contract fee, so the relative cost of using Robinhood versus going direct to Kalshi depends on position size. For small positions, Robinhood's flat fee can be cheaper. For large positions, Kalshi direct may be more cost-effective.

What Markets Are Available

Robinhood's hub covers the same categories Kalshi does: sports, politics, economics, and culture. In practice, the most actively traded markets on Robinhood tend to mirror what's generating the most volume on Kalshi generally — major sporting events, Fed rate decisions, election-related markets, and economic indicators like CPI.

One state restriction worth knowing: sports contracts are not available in Maryland, New Jersey, or Nevada. Economic and political markets are available in those states. If you're in one of those states and want sports markets specifically, you'll need to go directly to Kalshi or another platform.

Robinhood also works with ForecastEx, a separate CFTC-registered exchange, for certain contract categories. The hub is explicitly non-exclusive — it routes contracts through whichever partner is the right fit for that market type.

What's Coming Next: Robinhood Is Building Its Own Exchange

The more significant development is what happens after the Kalshi partnership.

In November 2025, Robinhood announced a joint venture with Susquehanna International Group to acquire 90% of MIAX Derivatives Exchange — a designated contract market and derivatives clearing organization. Susquehanna, one of the world's largest quantitative trading firms, will serve as the day-one liquidity provider for the new exchange. Miami International Holdings retains the remaining 10% stake.

This acquisition gives Robinhood direct control over listing, clearing, and risk management for its own prediction market contracts — the full vertical, not just distribution. The new exchange, internally referred to as Rothera, is expected to begin operations in 2026.

The implications for Kalshi are real. Robinhood currently routes the majority of its retail prediction market flow through Kalshi. If Rothera launches and Robinhood begins routing flow to its own exchange, Kalshi loses a significant distribution channel. Robinhood has publicly stated that its Kalshi partnership is non-exclusive and that "there will be no changes in the short term" — but the trajectory is clear.

For traders, what this means is that Robinhood's prediction market presence is becoming structurally independent. Within the next 12 months, a Robinhood prediction market trade may resolve through a completely different exchange infrastructure than it does today.

Robinhood vs. Kalshi Direct: Which Should You Use?

For most people who are new to prediction markets, Robinhood is the easier entry point. The account is already set up. The app is familiar. Deposit and withdrawal infrastructure is already in place. The friction of opening a new account on a new platform doesn't exist.

For active traders who want the full picture, Robinhood alone isn't enough. Here's why:

Market breadth. Kalshi direct has access to every market Kalshi lists. Robinhood's hub surfaces a subset. For major, high-volume markets — Fed decisions, Super Bowl, presidential elections — the coverage is nearly identical. For niche, mid-volume markets, you may find contracts on Kalshi that aren't surfaced on Robinhood.

Polymarket doesn't exist on Robinhood. Robinhood's hub is Kalshi-only (plus ForecastEx). Polymarket, which runs on blockchain infrastructure and often prices the same events differently from Kalshi, is completely absent from Robinhood. This means Robinhood users who trade without checking Polymarket are seeing, at most, half the market. The cross-platform price gaps between Kalshi and Polymarket regularly run 3 to 7 percentage points on major markets.

Fee comparison at scale. At large position sizes, Kalshi's percentage-based fee is lower than Robinhood's $0.02 per-contract structure. If you're putting significant capital to work, doing the math on which access point is cheaper for your specific position is worth the effort.

Robinhood has also drawn a deliberate line around which contracts it will offer. In April 2026, Jordan Sinclair, Robinhood's UK president, confirmed to the Financial Times that the company has voluntarily excluded "mention markets" — contracts that allow trading on specific words appearing in speeches or earnings calls — due to their high susceptibility to insider abuse. It's a compliance call that reflects Robinhood's broader positioning: federally regulated, defensible, and designed to survive whatever regulatory framework emerges from the current federal-state jurisdictional fight.

The practical answer for most active traders: use Robinhood as one window into the market, not the whole view.

The Bigger Picture

Robinhood's move into prediction markets is the clearest sign yet that these platforms are crossing from niche financial product into mainstream retail investing infrastructure. When the platform that pioneered commission-free stock trading for retail investors decides prediction markets are a core product, the addressable audience expands dramatically.

For the prediction market space, the Robinhood effect cuts both ways. More users means more liquidity, more volume, and tighter spreads on major markets. It also means more new entrants who haven't thought carefully about position sizing, fee structures, or cross-platform pricing. The information asymmetry between sophisticated traders and first-time users — which has always existed in prediction markets — grows when the user base expands rapidly.

DraftKings launched its own prediction market product in early 2026, routing through Wedbush Securities for execution on CME Group. FanDuel is building one. OG (og.com) launched in February 2026 with a sports focus. The number of access points to the same underlying markets is growing quickly.

What that means for active traders: the premium on seeing every platform's prices for the same event — Kalshi via Robinhood, Kalshi direct, Polymarket, DraftKings Predictions — in a single view is only increasing.

The Short Version

Robinhood's Prediction Markets Hub launched in March 2025 and runs on Kalshi's CFTC-regulated exchange infrastructure. The fee is $0.02 per contract, split equally between Robinhood and Kalshi. Sports contracts aren't available in Maryland, New Jersey, or Nevada. Robinhood traded 8.5 billion event contracts in Q4 2025. The company acquired 90% of MIAX Derivatives Exchange in late 2025 and is building its own prediction market exchange, Rothera, expected to launch in 2026. For new traders, Robinhood is the lowest-friction entry point. For active traders, Robinhood alone is one window into a multi-platform market — not the full picture.

Track live prices across Kalshi, Polymarket, and more — including cross-platform gaps on the same events — at predictions.io.