Same Election Question, Two Different Odds: Predictions.io Launches Free Cross-Venue Comparison Tools
Key Takeaways
- •Identically worded midterm questions show an 8.5 percentage point spread between venues, with 'Blue tsunami in 2026?' priced at 44.5% on Polymarket and 36.0% on Kalshi.
- •Combined volume on Kalshi, Polymarket and Polymarket US reached a record $50.59 billion in July 2026, with Kalshi accounting for roughly 74.5% of the total.
- •Regulatory pressure on the sector includes a New York City probe into both leading venues, a Washington court order for Kalshi to halt most wagers in the state, and a CFTC review of 'mention markets'.
- •Across a sample of directly comparable binary markets, the median cross-venue price gap was more than four points, and nearly half of the pairs differed by five points or more.
- •Predictions.io tracks more than 9,700 event pages across 23 categories on Kalshi, Polymarket and Manifold, and publishes free fee calculator and odds converter tools.

Washington, United States, August 28th, 2026, Chainwire — As prediction-market volume hits record highs and regulators circle, identically worded midterm questions are trading several points apart depending on the venue. Predictions.io now tracks more than 9,700 markets across Kalshi, Polymarket and Manifold in a single place — with free fee and odds calculators so traders can see what a price actually costs them.
Prediction markets have never been bigger — or more contested. The sector's rise has been rapid: the University of Iowa's Iowa Electronic Markets pioneered small-stakes real-money election trading for academic research in 1988, and event contracts entered the mainstream during recent US election cycles. Kalshi has operated as a CFTC-regulated exchange since 2021, while Polymarket — which paid a CFTC settlement over unregistered trading in 2022 and then blocked US users — has since returned to the US market through Polymarket US. Kalshi, Polymarket and Polymarket US together posted a record $50.59 billion in combined volume in July, with Kalshi accounting for roughly 74.5% of the total. In the same month, New York City opened a probe into both leading venues, a Washington judge ordered Kalshi to halt most wagers in the state, and the CFTC began an internal review of so-called “mention markets” — contracts that resolve on whether a public figure says a particular word or phrase.
Amid that scrutiny, a simpler question has gone largely unexamined: when two venues list the same question, do they agree on the answer?
Often, they do not. On identically worded midterm markets tracked by Predictions.io, “Blue tsunami in 2026?” was priced at 44.5% on Polymarket and 36.0% on Kalshi. “Blue wave in 2026?” showed 82.5% against 74.0%. Both gaps stand at 8.5 percentage points — on questions whose wording is identical on the two venues. Across a sample of directly comparable binary markets live on more than one venue, the median gap was more than four points, and nearly half of the pairs differed by five points or more. Prices are as of 05:08 UTC on 28 August 2026; both venues’ live prices are shown side by side on Predictions.io.
Those gaps matter to anyone quoting a single number. A market priced at 44.5% on one venue and 36.0% on another does not have one “market-implied probability” — it has two, and which one gets cited is arbitrary unless the reader is told both. As prediction-market odds are increasingly quoted in election coverage alongside traditional polls, that choice has grown more consequential. In conventional finance, the same instrument listed on two exchanges is typically kept close by traders who can buy on one and sell on the other; here, doing so means maintaining funded accounts on each venue, with different fee schedules and settlement rails — Kalshi settles in dollars on a regulated exchange, while Polymarket’s standard markets have operated with crypto-based settlement. Whether such gaps narrow or persist as the sector matures remains an open empirical question.
“A single venue’s price is a data point. The spread between venues is the information. When the two biggest markets in the world disagree by seven points on the same sentence, that disagreement is the story – and nobody who runs one of those markets is in a position to report it,” said a spokesperson for Predictions.io.
Predictions.io aggregates markets from Kalshi, Polymarket and Manifold — the last a community-run forecasting platform where users create their own questions — matching equivalent questions across venues so the same event can be compared directly. The platform currently tracks more than 9,700 event pages across 23 categories, including US politics, economics, crypto, sport and geopolitics.
Alongside the comparison pages, Predictions.io publishes two free tools:
- Fee Calculator — enter any trade and see the fee, total outlay and effective all-in price on each venue, including Kalshi’s 0.07 × P × (1−P) taker formula and maker discount against Polymarket’s zero-fee standard markets:
- Odds Converter — convert American, decimal and fractional odds into implied probability and prediction-market prices, and see the vig-free line:
A direct venue comparison is available at and live midterms markets at With New York City’s probe, the Washington court order and the CFTC’s mention-market review all unresolved, the rules under which these venues operate could still shift — and the cross-venue record Predictions.io is building offers a baseline for seeing how prices behave as that plays out.
Predictions.io operates no market and takes no position in any contract. It is a data and comparison service, not an exchange, broker or investment adviser.
About Predictions.io
Predictions.io is an independent aggregator of prediction markets, bringing prices from Kalshi, Polymarket and Manifold into a single view so the same question can be compared across venues. It publishes free tools for traders and journalists, including a cross-venue fee calculator and odds converter. Users can learn more about Predictions.io at
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Spokesperson, Predictions.io — support@predictions.io