The regulated prediction market landscape is exploding. Here's every platform that matters — from CFTC-regulated exchanges to crypto-native markets and traditional betting exchanges.
Prediction-market trading runs on three layers. Pure prediction-market platforms (Polymarket, Kalshi, ForecastEx) are the anchors. Sports exchanges with thematic overlap supply parallel liquidity for season-outright markets. Classical financial markets provide the pendant sources we compare Polymarket prices against on a source-of-truth basis.
Layer tags: 🎯 Directional Anchor = tradable for single-leg trades · ⚖️ Arbitrage Anchor = both legs tradable for pair-trades · 📊 Pendant Reference = comparison source only, not traded directly.
Pure prediction-market platforms — event contracts as the core product, often CFTC-regulated or crypto-native. Anchors for both trading layers.
Largest prediction market platform worldwide. USDC on Polygon. Deep liquidity on political, crypto, sports and macro markets. Anchor in the Mispricing Lab.
First CFTC-regulated prediction market exchange. Event contracts on economics, politics, weather. Data partnerships with CNN and CNBC. For EU users read-only via API — pendant reference, no trading.
Thomas Peterffy's institutional prediction market platform. Built on IB's brokerage infrastructure. Event contracts alongside stocks, options and futures in one account.
12 billion event contracts traded in 2025. Joint venture with Susquehanna. Brings PM to 25M+ retail brokerage users. Mobile-first, zero-commission.
Winklevoss brothers' prediction market with CFTC DCM license. Leverages Gemini's existing crypto exchange infrastructure and regulatory relationships.
Play-money-class liquidity, but the public API is open and auth-free — useful for long-tail markets where Polymarket is thin. Often the first platform to list exotic questions.
Traditional peer-to-peer betting exchanges — you trade against other users, not against the house. Season outright markets (Champions League qualification, relegation, league winner, top scorer, tournament winner) overlap thematically with Polymarket sports markets.
The original betting exchange, founded 2000. Peer-to-peer with back/lay mechanics. Dominant in UK and EU sports markets. 5 % commission on winnings. Season-outright liquidity often the largest in EU.
Low-commission alternative to Betfair (2 % vs 5 %). Clean UX, API-friendly. Strong on political and event markets. UK-regulated. Season outrights and politics often parallel to Polymarket.
Not a betting exchange but a sharp-money sportsbook with the lowest margins in the industry (~2 % vig). Not tradable for EU users — we use vig-adjusted Pinnacle odds as the source-of-truth benchmark for Polymarket sport-season markets.
Classical financial markets are not prediction markets — but the underlying is often identical. Fed Funds Futures price the same outcome as a Polymarket FOMC market. Crypto options price the same outcome as BTC targets. The vig-adjusted price is therefore the hardest pendant anchor for source-of-truth strategies.
30-day Federal Funds future — settles on the effective Fed Funds rate. The implied probability for Fed rate decisions is derived from the future price (CME FedWatch methodology). We pull it via EODHD.
S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures. Pricing for Polymarket markets like “S&P > 6000 by year-end” derives from forward curve and implied vol. Stage-3 adapter.
Largest crypto-options exchange worldwide. Public API. Implied probability for “BTC > $150k by Y” via Black-Scholes on Deribit's surface. Stage-3 adapter.
CPI, PPI, NFP, GDP, ISM — consensus, forecast, prior. We treat the consensus value as the centre of a normal distribution to price Polymarket threshold markets. Live adapter.
Federal Reserve Economic Data plus Cleveland Fed CPI nowcast as an additional forecaster. Reference data for Polymarket macro threshold markets. Free, Stage-3 cross-check.
EUR/USD, GBP/USD and other major crosses. The forward curve gives implied mid-expectations for Polymarket FX targets, embedded vol from FX options. Stage-3 adapter.
Altus Alpha operates on two levels. Our reputation-based forecasting system (no real money) runs on our own infrastructure — predictions.closelook.net for Finance, predictions.aktebundesliga.net for Football. For real-money trading signals, we reference Pinnacle odds (via The Odds API) as the pricing oracle and Polymarket prices for market sentiment.
The platforms listed above are where real-money event trading happens. We don't operate a platform ourselves — we build the intelligence layer on top.