Robinhood Prediction Markets

This page is general information, not financial, investment, legal, tax or betting advice. It explains how the product works and names the regulator and the dates behind each claim. Verify the current rules and your own eligibility before you trade.

The quick answer, plainly put.

Robinhood Prediction Markets is a hub inside the Robinhood app where eligible US customers buy and sell event contracts, the kind that pay one dollar if a stated outcome happens and nothing if it does not. Robinhood is the front end you tap; the contracts themselves are listed and cleared by a partner exchange that is regulated by the CFTC as a designated contract market, which for most of the product's life has been Kalshi (per reputable reporting and Robinhood's own support pages, as of March 2026). That structure is the whole point: you get the comfort of a familiar broker and the regulatory backing of an established derivatives venue in one screen.

The cost is low and the interface is the easiest in this category, which makes it a natural starting point for people who already hold a Robinhood account. The trade offs are that the market menu is curated rather than complete, the product is offered only inside the United States, and several states are excluded. Below we explain exactly how it works, who sits behind it, what it costs, where it is available, and who it does and does not suit, with every claim dated and sourced.

How Robinhood Prediction Markets actually works.

What an event contract is, and what it is not

An event contract is a simple instrument with a yes side and a no side. It settles at one dollar if the stated event happens by a stated date, and at zero if it does not. Because the maximum payout is one dollar, the price always sits somewhere between zero and one dollar, and that price is the market's implied probability of the event. A contract trading at 62 cents means buyers and sellers, on balance, are pricing roughly a 62 percent chance at that moment. When you buy yes at 62 cents you risk 62 cents to make 38 cents if the event resolves your way; when you buy no you take the other side of the same bet.

This matters for how you read the product. A price is not a forecast that an outcome will occur, and it is not a tip from Robinhood. It is a number set by the flow of orders, and it moves as opinion and money move. Treat it as a live odometer of market opinion rather than a prediction you can rely on. We explain this idea in depth on our guide to why prices are not predictions.

The two layers: the app you see and the exchange you do not

The single most important thing to understand about this product is that Robinhood is not the venue. When you place an order, Robinhood passes it to a partner exchange that holds the licence to list and settle the contract. That exchange is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under the Commodity Exchange Act as a designated contract market, the same legal category that governs regulated futures venues in the US. For most of the product's history that partner has been Kalshi, which lists the underlying markets and handles final settlement (per reputable reporting and Robinhood support pages, as of March 2026).

That split has two consequences worth holding onto. First, the rules that decide whether a market exists, how it resolves, and when it settles are the exchange's rules, not Robinhood's. Second, the venue behind a given market is not fixed forever. Reporting in 2026 indicates Robinhood, alongside a trading firm partner, agreed to acquire a designated contract market and clearing organisation so it can run more of the stack itself, and that it has explored routing some markets through other venues (financemagnates.com and cryptobriefing.com, as of March 2026). Those moves were still developing at the time of writing, so we treat the exact future venue as unsettled and will update this page as it firms up. What does not change is the core fact: you are trading a regulated contract, listed by a regulated exchange, through a broker.

Reading a price as a probability

Because every contract settles at one dollar or nothing, the price reads directly as a percentage. The strip below shows the conversion at a glance. It is the single most useful habit to build before you trade anything here: look at the price, read it as a probability, and ask yourself whether you genuinely think the real chance is higher or lower than the number the market is showing.

For a fuller walkthrough of this idea, including how the spread and fees eat into the simple percentage, see our guide on reading prices and our explainer on converting prices to odds.

What it costs, to the cent.

Robinhood does not advertise a commission on event contracts in the way a stockbroker once advertised per trade fees. Instead a small fee is applied per contract. For most of the product's life that fee was about one cent per contract on the Robinhood side, with the partner exchange charging a similar amount, so a round figure to carry in your head was roughly two cents per contract across both layers (defirate.com fee tracking, as of early 2026).

That changed recently and the detail matters. Reporting indicates that from 1 June 2026 Robinhood moved away from a flat cent toward a fee that scales with the contract price, using a tier constant that is lower for Robinhood Gold subscribers than for standard accounts (defirate.com and tech insider reporting, as of March 2026). Because the change is recent, because the exact arithmetic depends on the contract price and your subscription tier, and because Robinhood shows the live figure on the order screen, the reliable move is to read the fee on the confirmation screen before you place the order rather than trust any single quoted number. We have read the published reporting on the new schedule but have not independently tested it again across a range of contract prices, so we mark the precise current fee as a figure to verify in the app. This is a contested and moving detail, and we would rather say so than print a number that has gone stale.

Robinhood Prediction Markets: costs and key terms at a glance

Methodology: figures compiled from Robinhood's published support material and from independent fee tracking by reputable prediction market reporters, read in June 2026. We did not receive any figure from Robinhood directly and we take no payment from any platform. Fees and terms change; treat the order screen as the authority on the day you trade.

Even after the change, the headline takeaway is unlikely to flip: costs here sit at the low end of the category for casual sizes, and the bigger drag on a real position is usually the spread between the buy and sell price rather than the fee itself. We track costs across every venue in the cross platform comparison; you can see where Robinhood sits in the cross platform fees table.

What you can trade, and what you cannot.

The market menu inside Robinhood is curated rather than exhaustive. Robinhood surfaces a selected set of the contracts available on the partner exchange, weighted toward the categories that draw the most interest: economic releases such as interest rate decisions and inflation prints, headline political and policy questions, sports outcomes, and a rotating handful of cultural and world events. That curation is a genuine usability win for newcomers, because the screen is not cluttered with thousands of thin markets, and a genuine limitation for power users, who will find the underlying exchange lists markets that never appear in the Robinhood view.

One category deserves a specific note. Sports event contracts have been the most regulation sensitive part of this product. Reporting indicates that Nevada blocked new sports event contracts for residents from 1 December 2025, while other categories remained available there (oddsassist.com and Robinhood support, as of March 2026). That pattern, where the same app offers different menus in different states, is a direct result of the partner exchange model and of state by state regulatory pressure on sports specific contracts. Always assume the menu you see is filtered by where you are. For the wider picture of what trades where, see our guides to politics and elections markets and the full market categories hub.

We do not build pages for individual live markets, because they expire and a page about an expired contract helps no one. What endures is the category and the venue, which is what this hub covers.

Funding, withdrawals and the account behind it.

Because the product lives inside the broker, funding works the way the rest of Robinhood works. Money sits in your brokerage balance, which you top up by bank transfer or, where supported, by card, and from there it backs your contract positions. When a contract settles or you sell out of a position, the proceeds return to your brokerage cash balance, and you withdraw to your linked bank from there. There is no separate wallet to manage and no crypto rails to learn, which is one of the clearest advantages over the onchain venues in this category. Standard brokerage identity verification applies before you can fund or withdraw.

The practical implication is that your event contract money is governed by the same brokerage framework as the rest of your Robinhood account, and settles in US dollars. That is reassuring for most users, but it also means the product is bound to the United States and to Robinhood's account rules. If you do not qualify for or want a Robinhood brokerage relationship, this product is not separable from it.

Placing a trade, and how it resolves.

The flow inside the app is deliberately plain. You open the predictions or event contracts area, pick a market, and read the question and its resolution terms, which state precisely what has to happen for yes to win and by when. You choose the yes or the no side, set how many contracts you want, and the order screen shows your price, the maximum you can win, the maximum you can lose, and the fee for that order. Nothing is hidden behind a wager slip; the most you can lose on a long contract is what you pay for it, and the most you can win is the gap up to one dollar per contract, before fees.

From there one of two things happens. You can hold the contract until the event resolves, in which case the partner exchange settles it at one dollar if your side was right and at zero if it was not, and the cash lands back in your brokerage balance. Or you can sell the contract before resolution at whatever the market price is then, locking in a gain or a loss without waiting for the event. That ability to exit early is one of the features that separates an event contract from a simple bet, because the price moves continuously and you are never forced to ride a position to the end.

Two habits keep this honest. First, always read the resolution criteria before you trade, because the wording decides borderline outcomes and a market can resolve in a way that feels unintuitive if you skimmed the terms. Second, remember that the price you see already contains the crowd's view, so beating the market means having a better reason than the crowd, not simply a strong opinion. For the mechanics of how and when contracts settle across the category, see our guide on understanding market resolution dates, and for sizing your stake sensibly, our guide on position sizing and bankroll.

Where it is available, and where it is not.

Robinhood Prediction Markets is offered only to verified customers in the United States who hold an approved Robinhood account. It is not available to users based in the United Kingdom, the European Union, or generally elsewhere, as of March 2026. Within the US, several states are excluded. Reporting as of March 2026 lists Arizona, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, Nevada and Ohio as states where event contracts are not offered, and notes the Nevada sports restriction from 1 December 2025 (oddsassist.com and Robinhood support, as of March 2026).

Treat that list as a dated snapshot, not a permanent map. State availability shifts as regulators act and as the partner exchange adjusts its own state coverage, which Robinhood then inherits and sometimes narrows further. The authoritative source for your own state on any given day is Robinhood's own event contracts support and restrictions pages. For the broader legal picture across the country, our US legality hub tracks how prediction markets are treated state by state, and where the contested positions are.

Availability snapshot, as of March 2026

Status compiled from reputable reporting and Robinhood support material, read June 2026. Availability changes frequently; confirm your state on Robinhood's support page before relying on it.

Who it suits, and who should look elsewhere.

This product suits one reader especially well: someone who already uses Robinhood, wants to try event contracts without learning a new platform, and values a clean interface over a deep market list. For that person the appeal is real. The account already exists, the money is already there, the contracts settle in dollars, and a regulated exchange sits behind the screen. The familiarity removes most of the friction that keeps newcomers away from this category, which is exactly why we rate usability so highly for it.

It suits a power user far less well. If you want the full breadth of markets, the tightest possible spreads on niche contracts, or features such as advanced order types and resting liquidity across thousands of markets, you will hit the limits of the curated menu quickly and will likely prefer trading on the underlying exchange directly, or a venue built for depth. If you live in an excluded state, or outside the US, the product is simply closed to you and a comparison is moot.

To see how it stacks up against the venue that sits behind it and against the wider field, our even handed comparisons are the place to start: Kalshi vs Robinhood, Polymarket vs Robinhood, and Robinhood vs Crypto.com. Each names what the other platform does better, not just where Robinhood wins.

Our scoring, and what we actually checked

The score of 79 out of 100 on this page is an illustrative editorial example, not investment advice and not a number any platform paid for. It reflects strong marks for regulation and trust, because a CFTC regulated exchange settles the contracts; high marks for usability, because the app is the most beginner friendly in the set; competitive marks on cost; and lower marks on market breadth, because the curated menu is narrower than the underlying exchange. What we did to reach it was research the regulatory basis, the published fee reporting, the funding model, the market range and the state availability from primary and reputable sources in June 2026. Where we had not opened an account and captured a screen ourselves, we say so plainly below rather than imply hands on use we did not have.