While the preponderance of legal and regulated online sports betting now available in 39 of US states, there are still several markets in which betting is prohibited by US law. They include betting on elections, awards competitions such as the Oscars and the Grammys, pop culture items and outcomes of world events.
Prediction markets have stepped in to fill this void. Operating like a commodities exchange rather than a betting site, instead of betting against the house as you would wager at an online sports betting app, with prediction markets, you are choosing one side or the other of an outcome and banking on that to happen. The event is on when others choose to back the opposing side of the outcome in a peer-to-peer competition.
It can be something as vital as whether US President Trump will impose tariffs on a nation, to over/unders on the stock price of Tesla. It could also be something as innocuous as whether Costco will raise the price of its iconic hot dogs.
Of course, you can also predict sports markets. However, rather than laying or getting odds, you’ll simply be backing a yes or no proposition, such as will the Kansas City Chiefs win the Super Bowl?
These prediction markets make money by taking a commission on all transactions that are facilitated.
Most Popular Predictions Apps and Sites
Let’s take a look at some of the more prominent prediction markets you can make plays with in the US market.
Kalshi.com
An exchange dedicated to trading on the outcome of future events, Kalshi was founded in 2018. It was the first prediction market site to be regulated by the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Among the markets you’ll be able to trade on are government shutdowns, inflation, fed rates and unemployment.
Questions are posed on the Kalshi site. For example, some action we found at Kalshi was whether wages would be above inflation this year. On a lighter note, will the Oasis reunion tour go ahead?
You choose to back either yes or no for any of these questions posed by Kalshi. Rather than bets, these choices are referred to by Kalshi as event contracts. They provide you with the ability to trade based on your opinions about a specific topic. Just like playing the stock market, you can back opinions early on before they become more popular, or you can hedge against markets you believe are going to fail.
FiveThirtyEight.com
Owned by ABC News, FiveThirtyEight.com was among the first prediction sites to gain popularity in the US. However, unlike other prediction sites, they are simply an information provider, offering opinions and delivering data similar to a polling site.
At FiveThirtyEight.com, the site provides the latest news on current events and then offers polls on where the public stands on those events. For instance, recent polls at FiveThirtyEight.com included how Americans would view cuts to Medicaid. Other opinions focused on the public’s favorability rating of US President Donald Trump and Vice-President JD Vance.
During the 2024 US Presidential election, Fivethirtyeight.com was the recipient of plenty of criticism when its polls were showing a projection of a solid Trump victory on election day. Of course, those predictions would prove to be entirely accurate.
There are also regular polls regarding sports, health, lifestyle, entertainment and weather, among other subjects.
PredictIt.com
At PredictIt.com, the site is 100% focused on the US political environment. All of the projecting that takes place on the site involves outcomes within the Trump Administration, US elections and Congress.
The site is a project of New Zealand’s Victoria University of Wellington. The stated purpose of PredictIt is to facilitate research into the way markets forecast events. Monetary values are assigned to outcomes and you choose which side of the issue to back.
Among the events available on the PredictIt marketplace when we checked in were whether Robert Kennedy Jr. would be approved to head US health care. There were also markets on the Virginia gubernatorial election and the Democratic nomination to run for mayor of New York.
It should be noted that PredictIt is not regulated by, or registered with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) or any other regulatory authority.
PolyMarket.com
Polymarket.com offers markets in politics and sports, as well as more particular items such as Elon Musk tweets and the highest grossing movie in 2025. Billing itself as the world’s largest prediction market, Pollymarket.com combines news, polls and expert opinion to set market values for what they describe as unbiased, accurate and real-time probabilities for trades offered on the site.
Will TikTok be banned in the US? What will President Trump accomplish during his first 100 days in office? Can the Miami Heat win the NBA Championship? These were other markets that were actively trading on the Pollymarket.com site.
Reading the markets on the site is truly simple. For example, if an outcome is given a backing of 18 cents, that means the chance of that event actually occurring is 18%. Shares in event outcomes at Pollymarket.com are always priced between $0.00 and $1.00 in US dollars.
RealClearPolling.com
The mandate at RealClearPolling.com is 100% political. All of the polls offered on the site are dealing with outcomes involving US politics. And much like FiveThirtyEight.com, the data delivered by RealClearPolling.com is entirely for informational purposes. The site does not offer the chance to trade or back any of these markets.
RealClearPolling.com is simply collating the latest polls from around the US political spectrum in a one-stop location. You’ll find polls from leading sites such as Emerson, The Hill, Atlas Intel and The Trafalgar Group.
Some of the ongoing polls being offered when we looked in on the RealClearPolling.com site included the latest approval rating of President Trump, outcomes for both the Democratic and Republican New Jersey governor primaries and opinions on the current direction of the USA as a country.
ElectionBettingOdds.com
The name of the site – ElectionBettingOdds.com – is fairly self-explanatory. Instead of offering you the latest polling results, at ElectionBettingOdds.com, the site is crunching the numbers from a variety of prediction sites. These include rivals such as RealClearPolling.com and PredictIt.com. And this is entirely an information site. Although odds are laid out, the chance to back those odds is not offered by RealClearPolling.com.
Already, ElectionBettingOdds.com is offering lines on the 2028 US Presidential nomination for both major parties. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is the 12.5% favorite to earn the Democratic nod. Vice-president Vance is given runaway odds of 44.5% to lead the Republicans into the next Presidential election. President Trump (8.0%) is a distant second.
Vance (25.7%) is a heavy favorite to win the next Presidential race. There are also betting lines on which parties will win House and Senate control in 2026 midterm elections. You can also get odds on sports, such as which team will win the Super Bowl.
Explore real sportsbook apps in NJ and our betting promo codes.
List of Event Prediction Apps and Sites
- Kalshi.com – A regulated exchange trading future event outcomes, covering government policies, inflation, and entertainment.
- FiveThirtyEight.com – Provides polls and data-driven predictions on politics, sports, and current events but doesn’t offer betting.
- PredictIt.com – Focuses solely on US political markets, allowing users to trade on election outcomes and government decisions.
- PolyMarket.com – A broad prediction market covering politics, sports, and entertainment with real-time trading.
- RealClearPolling.com – Aggregates political polling data from various sources, offering insights but no betting opportunities.
- ElectionBettingOdds.com – Compiles odds from multiple prediction sites, mainly focused on political elections and control of government bodies.
The Rise of Prediction Apps and How They Work
Predictions apps have become increasingly popular in 2025. What exactly are they and what does 2026 hold for them? It is likely to be decisions made in courts of law that determines how successful they will be.
Recent years have seen huge growth in the American gambling industry. Over half of US states have now made sports gambling legal. The online sites offer a range of odds on sporting events such as the NFL, NBA and soccer matches.
Now online predictions sites such as Kalshi, Polymarket and Robinhood are growing in popularity. Just how different are they from online betting sportsbooks such as FanDuel or Caesars?
A major difference is that with the predictions sites, players are trading contracts with other users on the site whose views on a market are different from theirs. The charging of transaction fees is a source of revenue. That’s different from a sportsbetting site that makes money when gamblers place losing bets.
There is a wide range of subjects covered on the prediction apps. For example, you can make a prediction on the score a movie will receive on the Rotten Tomatoes site. How low will Bitcoin go this year, will there be another pandemic in 2025 and even whether Jesus Christ will return before the end of the year.
Take the Rotten Tomatoes predictions for example. For the movie, ‘Predator: Badlands’ the Kalshi site gives two options. One is for a score of above 85 and they give this a prediction of 61%, you can opt to agree with this or believe it’ll score below that number.
The main players in the predictions market are seeing huge growth in their businesses.. Ninja Trader has been such a success that earlier this year they were acquired by technology platform, Kraken.
Polymarket has also enjoyed success this year. Their site doesn’t have any bet limits and they do not charge users any fees.
Robinhood launched a hub for trading events contracts in partnership with Kalshi. Within the first few months of launching, over two billion contracts were traded. Realising how popular the NFL and college football are, the company, launching prediction markets for them, was seen as a “no-brainer.”
Kalshi has around two million users and is a leading company in the predictions market. They have been at the forefront of a battle between the predictions market and state regulators across the USA.
Legal Battles and State Regulator Pushback
A key point to make is that the predictions market sites are legal in US states where online sportsbetting is still illegal. This has led to a debate over whether this should be happening and the courts are getting involved.
Kalishi has been successful this year but their presence in some US states has caused legal problems for the company. States such as New Jersey, Maryland and Nevada (who have legalised online sportsbetting) issued cease-and-desists to Kalshi.
The company went to federal courts arguing that the regulators were intruding on the fact they had been allowed to operate by the CommodityFutures Trading Commission (CFTC). That’s not a view that state regulators share. Their opinion is that the CFTC does not have any jurisdiction over sports gambling.
Kalshi have enjoyed some success in their court actions. A preliminary injunction was granted in Nevada as the court found they were likely subject to being under exclusive jurisdiction of the CTFC. In New Jersey, a court made a similar finding and decided that the CTFC’s “implicit decision to permit them” therefore preempted New Jersey state law.
That wasn’t the case in Maryland however. Their federal court did not grant Kalshi a preliminary injunction. They found that it was “highly unlikely” that Congress had the intention of supplanting the gambling laws of the state.
The coming months are likely to see more legal action likely to take place in the Supreme Court. If that was to see a ruling in favor of the state regulators, that would not be good news for the predictions markets. It would see them needing to apply for licenses to operate in states that have made sportsbetting legal.
If the outcome was in favor of the predictions sites, then they would be able to continue offering a nationwide service. This wouldn’t be helpful for the legalised sportsbetting sites. If more people were to use the predictions sites rather than bet at the legal sportsbetting sites, it would affect the amounts US states receive in gambling tax.
Leagues such as the NFL and NBA are also concerned over how predictions markets may affect the integrity of their sports amid recent controversies.
The Big Question for 2026: Gambling or Not?
The CEO of Kalshi is Tarek Mansour. In April of this year, he said that he didn’t know exactly what their business “has to do with gambling.” He added that if they were to be seen as a gambling business, then “I think you’re basically calling the entire financial market gambling.”
Former journalist and now gambling consultant Dustin Gouker disagrees. His view is clear: “There’s no doubt that it’s gambling,” he says. “You can argue on the logistics, and whether it’s federally legal, all of that. But it’s gambling,” he added.
Sportsbooks such as DraftKings and FanDuel have been considering launching prediction markets but need to be careful not to upset the state regulators who have granted them licenses.
2026 certainly promises to be a fascinating year. Whether the predictions markets continue to prosper will depend on the views of courts around the US, including the Supreme Court.
