How much can fees reduce a winning trade?

Buying 200 contracts at 62¢ ($124) and selling at 70¢ ($140) is a $16 gross gain. Fees are $3.30 on the buy and $2.94 on the sell, so the net gain is $9.76. Fees took 39% of the profit.

Can an active sports trader lose money even when their picks are right more often than not?

Yes. A trader making 120 round trips a month at about $6.24 in fees each pays about $748.80 in fees. If their trades gain $600 before fees, they finish the month down $148.80.

Is my Kalshi balance the same as my profit?

No. Deposits, withdrawals, promotional credits, and money held in open positions all change your balance. Profit and loss counts only the results of trades and settlements, after fees.

Damage Report

Issues with Kalshi reporting

Q: Does the Kalshi app show my total profit and loss?

Not in one place. Kalshi shows your cash balance, open positions, and individual fills and settlements, but it does not combine lifetime realized P&L, current unrealized P&L, and fees into a single figure. A balance of $700 after depositing $800 is a $100 loss, even if you started with $500.

Updated October 1, 2026

Kalshi shows you a balance and a list of positions. It doesn’t show you, in one place, whether you’re actually winning.

1. There is no complete P&L

Kalshi’s app is built around trading, not accounting. It shows your cash balance, your open positions, and a history of individual fills and settlements, but it does not present a complete profit and loss statement: lifetime realized results from closed trades and settlements, the current unrealized result of open positions, and the fees behind both, combined into one figure you can trust. To get that answer, you have to reconstruct it yourself from scattered records.

Realized P&L is sale proceeds plus settlement payouts, minus the purchase cost of the contracts closed, minus fees. Unrealized P&L is the current value of open positions minus what you paid for them. Total P&L is the two added together. Each piece is calculable from Kalshi’s records, but Kalshi does not add them up for you.

2. Fees are easy to miss and add up fast

Fees are the clearest example of what gets lost. Kalshi charges a trading fee on many fills, and the amount varies with the contract price and the number of contracts, so it is easy to overlook on any single trade. Fees are reflected in your balance, yet the app doesn’t total them over time or set them against your results. For an active trader, fees can quietly amount to a meaningful share of gross winnings, turning what feels like a profitable stretch into a break-even or losing one.

Under Kalshi’s published fee schedule (July 7, 2026 update), the standard taker fee is 0.07 × contracts × price × (1 − price), rounded up to the next cent for the order. It is largest in dollars at a 50¢ price and largest as a share of cost on cheap longshots. Holding to settlement adds no further fee, but selling before settlement pays the fee a second time.

Taker fee on 100 contracts

At 10¢ ($10 cost): $0.63 · 6.3% of cost
At 25¢ ($25 cost): $1.32 · 5.3% of cost
At 50¢ ($50 cost): $1.75 · 3.5% of cost
At 75¢ ($75 cost): $1.32 · 1.8% of cost
At 90¢ ($90 cost): $0.63 · 0.7% of cost

Example: a winning in-game trade

Fees took 39% of the profit.

You buy 200 “Chiefs win” contracts at 62¢ before kickoff, then sell all of them at 70¢ in the third quarter.

Sale proceeds (200 × 70¢): $140.00
Purchase cost (200 × 62¢): −$124.00
Gross gain: $16.00
Fee on the buy: −$3.30
Fee on the sell: −$2.94
Realized P&L: +$9.76

The app shows the fill prices. It doesn’t show that $6.24 of a $16.00 gain went to fees.

3. Your balance is not your profit

Balance is a poor substitute for P&L. Deposits, withdrawals, promotional credits, and money tied up in open positions all move the number you see, so a rising balance may simply reflect money you added, and a falling one may be capital sitting in unsettled contracts. Without separating funding from trading results, the headline figure in the app can’t tell you whether your decisions are making or losing money.

Example: one month of funding and trading

Up $200, or down $100?

You deposit $500 on September 1 and another $300 on September 15. On September 30 you hold $520 in cash plus open positions that cost $240 and are now worth $180.

Total deposited: $800
Portfolio value ($520 cash + $180 positions): $700
Realized P&L ($520 + $240 − $800): −$40
Unrealized P&L ($180 − $240): −$60
Total P&L: −$100

Remembering only the first $500 deposit, a $700 portfolio looks like a $200 gain. After counting the second deposit, it is a $100 loss.

4. Sports traders often don’t know how they’re doing

This matters most for people using prediction markets to bet on sports. Sports trading tends to mean many small, fast positions across games, often bought and sold before settlement, which is exactly the activity where fees accumulate and where memory favors the big wins over the steady losses. The result is that many users genuinely don’t know how they’re doing financially.

Example: an active month

Right more often, still behind.

A trader makes about four in-and-out trades a day, roughly 120 round trips a month, sized like the Chiefs trade above at about $6.24 in fees each.

Trading gains before fees: +$600.00
Fees (120 × ~$6.24): −$748.80
Net result: −$148.80

Example: the win you remember

A $200 win inside a $171 loss.

A trader remembers a $200 Sunday win on one NFL game. Over the same weekend, twelve smaller bets lost $330, and fees across all thirteen trades came to $41.

The memorable win: +$200
Twelve smaller losses: −$330
Fees on thirteen trades: −$41
Weekend result: −$171

Damage Report was built to close that gap, with realized and unrealized P&L, fees, and funding shown separately and traceable back to every fill and settlement.

Quick answers

Does the Kalshi app show my total profit and loss?

Not in one place. It shows cash, open positions, and individual fills and settlements, but it does not combine realized P&L, unrealized P&L, and fees into one figure.

How much are Kalshi trading fees?

The standard taker fee is 0.07 × contracts × price × (1 − price), rounded up to the cent: $1.75 for 100 contracts at 50¢, $0.63 at 10¢ or 90¢. Selling before settlement pays the fee again. Some markets use different rates, and resting maker orders in some markets pay a lower maker fee.

Can fees turn a winning record into a loss?

Yes. In the active-month example above, $600 of trading gains became a $148.80 loss after $748.80 in fees.

Is my balance the same as my profit?

No. Deposits, withdrawals, promotional credits, and money held in open positions move your balance. P&L counts only trading and settlement results after fees.