Guide
Polymarket 5-minute market fees explained
Updated 19 October 2026 · Checked against our recorded data
Polymarket charges a taker fee on its 5-minute crypto markets. It is small per trade but large relative to the edge most short-term strategies have, so any backtest that ignores it is fiction.
The formula
Polymarket's published fee schedule for these markets (checked October 2026) is a taker-only fee of:
fee per share = 0.07 x p x (1 - p)
where p is the price you trade at. Makers, whose resting orders get filled, pay no fee, and the schedule shares part of the fee pool back to makers as a rebate. Check Polymarket's fee page before relying on these numbers, as schedules change.
Worked examples
| price p | fee per share | fee as % of stake | fee on 100 shares ($) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.10 | 0.630¢ | 6.30% | 0.63 |
| 0.30 | 1.470¢ | 4.90% | 1.47 |
| 0.50 | 1.750¢ | 3.50% | 1.75 |
| 0.70 | 1.470¢ | 2.10% | 1.47 |
| 0.90 | 0.630¢ | 0.70% | 0.63 |
| 0.95 | 0.333¢ | 0.35% | 0.33 |
The fee peaks at 1.75 cents per share at 50 cents. As a share of the money you put in, it is highest on cheap shares and smallest near certainty.
What it means for strategy
- Coin-flip entries are expensive. Buying at around 0.50 costs about 3.5% of your stake in fees, so you need to be right noticeably more often than half the time just to break even.
- Resting orders avoid the fee. A strategy that can wait to be filled as a maker keeps the full edge, but must account for orders that never fill.
- Model it per trade. Use the fill price of each simulated trade, as in our backtesting guide.
Test it on real data
Every number here can be checked in our free BTC sample: one hour, 12 windows, every book update and every trade. Full history for all seven coins from £1.99 a month.