Polymarket’s new fees aim to improve liquidity and discourage bot trading in popular crypto trading markets.
Music fans trying to buy concert tickets, Sara Connor and crypto traders all have one thing in common: they hate robots. And although there is no help for Ticketmaster or Terminator Unfortunately, Polymarket has implemented deterrents against bot-powered trading, much to the delight of its users.
Blockchain-based prediction market giant Polymarket quietly updated its documentation on Tuesday to allow taker-only fees on 15-minute up/down crypto markets. Until now, the Polymarket global platform remained free.
“We are rolling out Maker Rebates for 15-minute crypto markets; a program designed to make these fast-moving markets deeper, tighter, and easier to trade,” the new documentation reads. “Market makers who provide active liquidity (orders that are executed) receive daily USDC rebates, proportional to the liquidity they provide.”
Polymarket’s new trading fees explained
Polymarket noted that these new fees scale for each transaction size and vary along the probability curve. The highest fees have a probability of 50% and fees decrease towards the extremes (0% and 100%).
In the example given, someone buys:
- 100 shares priced at $0.10 = $0.20 fee
- 100 shares priced at $0.50 = $1.56 fee
- 100 shares priced at $0.99 = $0.0025 fee.
As Polymarket noted, these are not simple operational costs. Fees are bundled into a daily USDC rebate (“Rebates are calculated and distributed each day”) and distributed based on performance (“You earn based on how much liquidity you provided and was actually used.”)
Polymarket’s short-lived crypto markets have become more of a high-activity niche since their launch in late 2025. This, according to The blockhas attracted the attention of “algorithmic traders, robots and market makers seeking to arbitrage pricing errors in order to quickly resolve contracts.”
Traders approved these new fees
“This is a big change for Polymarket, said one user of At the same time, it clearly encourages creator-type robots. Liquidity providers now benefit from daily USDC rebates funded by these taker fees. In other words, the platform doesn’t take anything for itself: it redistributes value from takers to creators.
“I like these changes,” said another. “It will definitely be more difficult for robots now.”
“15 million farms just got a lot harder,” said one X user, while another wondered if there would be “more creator bots” as a result of these changes.
Overall, traders considered this a good move, saying Polymarket “continues to empower the community to improve order books.”
The move comes a month after MetaMask, a leading crypto wallet platform, announced a partnership with Polymarket to integrate prediction markets into its user experience. MetaMask subscribers can now browse and trade event contracts directly in the mobile app, but at a cost: MetaMask would charge a 4% fee on each trade, split between MetaMask and Polymarket.
This appears to be a convenience fee for those who don’t want to switch between MetaMask and Polymarket (which doesn’t charge a per-transaction fee on its standalone platform). As our analysis determined, it was a win-win situation for each party, but not so much for the traders.
Polymarket returned to the United States in December after nearly four years of operating strictly outside the United States. The prediction exchange was banned from operating in the United States after the Joe Biden-era Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) determined it was operating an unregistered derivatives exchange.
Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan has spent the last three years overcoming the hurdles necessary to become CFTC compliant. It acquired QCX, a licensed derivatives exchange and clearinghouse, for $112 million in 2025, paving the way for its comeback. After obtaining the green light from the CFTC, Polymarket began relaunching its application intended for the United States to users on the waiting list at the end of 2025.
