Kalshi’s introduction of maker fees on parlays are already adding upwards of a million dollars per day to the company’s revenue less than a month after going into effect, as the additional fees don’t appear to have slowed enthusiasm for multi-leg bets.
Kalshi charges fees to both the “taker” and “maker” side for most of its contracts, with the maker side generally having lower fees to encourage more liquidity. Though it launched parlays in September 2025, it did not charge market maker fees on them at first. But on Aug. 20, the exchange added maker fees for parlays.
Uncorrelated NFL parlays continue to be maker-fee-free, but market makers for all other parlays now pay fees.
Maker fees on parlays have already brought in $26 million in their first four weeks, with maker fee revenue from parlays easily topping $1 million on weekends. On Sept. 12, Kalshi made $1.7 million on maker parlay fees. That is more than the Kalshi’s average fee revenue per day from taker and maker fees combined in August 2025.
Parlays now make up the majority of Kalshi’s maker fee revenue, exceeding all other types of trades.
The addition of parlay maker fees brought Kalshi’s total maker fees beyond $2.5 million on Sept. 12, more than double the highest amount collected on maker fees before parlays were added.
The extra million dollars per day has helped bring Kalshi’s fee revenue back towards the highs reached during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. At its peak, on the seven days to July 7, Kalshi averaged $12.9 million per day in fee revenue. On the seven days to Sept. 15, Kalshi averaged $12.3 million. That total would have been just under $11 million without maker fees on parlays.
The maker fee figures do not account for rebates and liquidity rewards, which Kalshi pays to market makers that meet certain requirements.
Parlays show no signs of slowing
Despite the impact of fees, parlay volume has shown no signs of slowing down. Kalshi hit $1 billion in parlay volume on a single day for the first time on Aug. 29, and then broke that record three times in the next three weeks, with $1.49 billion in parlay volume on Sept. 13, the first NFL Sunday of the season.
Total volume can arguably be misleading, particularly when it comes to parlays. Kalshi counts both the taker and maker sides of the trade towards volume, and the maker side — which is often professional traders or institutions — puts up the vast majority of the money for most parlays, as they tend to be at very long odds. Looking only at the taker side, the share that is parlays is lower, but is still hitting record highs.
On Sept. 13, a record $68.4 million was staked on the taker side of parlays, a little over 11% of Kalshi’s total taker-side volume for the day.
Market making on parlays is generally lucrative, as parlay takers are often willing to accept higher prices than the true probability. Parlay takers have lost more than $380 million before fees, or $620 million after fees, since the product launched. Even with added fees, market making on parlays can be highly profitable. Since maker fees on parlays launched, makers have made $24 million in profit after fees. That’s less than the amount of profit made over the previous four-week period, or either of the two four-week runs before that, suggesting that the fees are eating into makers’ profits to some degree.
Have maker fees affected odds?
Parlay makers appear to be charging worse odds to takers since the introduction of maker fees. Looking only at uncorrelated non-NFL combos (excluding same-game parlays and other bets on correlated events), the change can be seen by comparing the odds of the parlay to the odds of its constituent legs. Correlated parlays cannot be examined because an expected fair price can’t be determined from the odds of their legs.
Between Aug. 6-19, parlay prices were marked up — the difference between the real price and the expected price, based on the prices of the component legs — by only 0.64% on average when compared to the implied price based on their legs. But from Aug. 20 onward, that has increased by 2.76%.
