Kalshi smashed its volume record again over the weekend, and set new highs in fees, thanks to a combination of genuinely growing activity and the rise of parlays at increasingly long odds.
On Saturday, Kalshi hit a new high in daily volume, at $3.01 billion, easily shattering the high of $2.46 billion set on Sep. 13. On Sunday, volume was not quite as high, but still blew past the old record, at $2.82 billion.
Parlays drive volume
The huge headline numbers are due to both new highs in activity, and the continued rise of parlays at extremely long odds. Total parlay volume on Saturday was $1.92 billion and on Sunday it was $1.76 billion. The two-day parlay volume is more than Kalshi’s volume across all contract types for the first seven months of 2025 combined.
Volume can arguably be inflated for parlays, especially at long odds, because Kalshi counts the money put down by both the taker and maker side, with the market maker side on parlays being largely professional traders or institutional market makers. If a taker places a $1 bet on a parlay at 0.1% odds, this is $1,000 in volume.
“Lottery ticket” style parlays in particular have been an ever-increasing share of Kalshi’s volume. Parlays with eight or more legs and priced at two cents or below made up 38% of Kalshi’s total volume Saturday, or more than a billion dollars in volume. On those trades, yes-takers staked just $4.1 million.
The sheer number of possible combinations should make it unlikely that any one parlay is traded by an especially large number of users. However, one different 10-leg parlay at was traded more than 40,000 times, at average odds of 0.3%. Not every trade is necessarily a distinct bettor, as Kalshi anonymizes its trade data. Yes-takers put up $219,000 on the parlay, but total volume was $71.5 million. The parlay did not hit.
Taker volume high, but parlays still inflated?
Looking only at taker-side volume, though, the weekend was still a record one.
Even taker-side volume for parlays still may present inflated figures, though, because many parlays are at such long odds that cash-out trades start to represent an outsized share of taker volume. For example, if a user puts down $1 on a parlay trade at 0.1% odds and cashes out at 0.2% odds for $2, they have contributed $999 of taker-side volume.
If taker-no parlay trades are excluded, neither Saturday or Sunday was a record day for total taker volume on Kalshi.
Maker fees drive record fee revenue
Kalshi did set new records for fees over the weekend, with $18.2 million on Saturday, followed by $17.6 million on Sunday, topping the old record of $16.8 million set in July. It also set a seven-day record for fees, averaging $12.9 million per day from Monday to Sunday. Those records, though, were due in part to new highs in maker fees, thanks to the addition of maker fees for most parlays last month. Without parlay maker fees, neither day would have been a record.
Kalshi charges lower fees, as a percentage of volume, for trades at very long or very short odds. Therefore, fees have not risen as quickly as volume in recent months. However, daily fees are still more than double where they were in early June. If Kalshi's fees from Monday to Sunday were averaged over three months, quarterly fee revenue would be $1.2 billion.
The rise of longer parlays has changed the relationship between Kalshi’s volume and its fee revenue. For much of the prediction market’s history, fees were generally around 1% of volume. Now, that figure is much closer to 0.5%.
Parlay takers lose big
On both days, parlay takers – who are largely more recreational bettors – suffered big losses. Yes-side takers on parlays lost $23.2 million on Saturday, among the worst days ever for parlay losses. On Sunday, parlay takers lost a further $22.9 million.
The early slate of NFL games was particularly rough for parlay bettors, but results improved on later games. Sunday at one point looked on course to be the worst day in history for Kalshi parlay takers, but takers made a profit on late parlays – likely including Sunday Night Football as a leg. Even still, the $46.1 million loss over the weekend as a whole was by far the worst two-day period in history for parlay takers.
Taker performance on non-parlay trades was closer to average, but takers still lost $36.3 million on Saturday and another $32.5 million on Sunday.
Record day for most prediction markets
While Kalshi’s numbers were the most dramatic, many other prediction markets hit new highs over the weekend. Polymarket US, DKeX, Crypto.com’s OG, Novig, and ProphetX all set new records on Saturday and then exceeded them on Sunday. Polymarket US continued to lead the competitors with more than half a billion dollars of volume on both Saturday and Sunday.
Rothera did not set a record, as Robinhood directed most of its volume to Kalshi and Crypto.com, while CME and ForecastEx have both quit on sports contracts.
Total prediction market volume over CFTC-regulated exchanges over the weekend was almost $8 billion.
