If the stock market is where we bet on companies, the prediction market is where we bet on everything else. What began as a niche experiment has exploded into a global financial layer where we stake on real outcomes.  

Instead of buying equity in Apple or Tesla, traders buy contracts on future events. These contracts fluctuate in value based on collective belief or polls, which in turn creates a crowdsourced probability engine that often reacts faster than the news itself. 

Today, people spend billions of dollars on contracts on outcomes ranging from who wins an election, a hurricane's path, to which celebrity will win an Oscar this year.

But not all markets are created equal. The prediction market landscape has split into distinct camps—from the regulated safety of federal exchanges to the wild west of the blockchain. To understand the trade, you first have to understand the platforms. 

Here are the 10 prediction platforms that define the prediction market landscape today. 

1. Polymarket 

Polymarket is widely recognized as one of the largest decentralized blockchain‑based prediction market platforms. Founded in 2020 by entrepreneur Shayne Coplan and a team of crypto builders, it operates on the Polygon network using stablecoins such as USDC, allowing users globally to place bets on real‑world outcomes — from political races and economic milestones to sports and entertainment outcomes.  

While Polymarket does not publicly disclose official revenue figures, independent sector research shows massive engagement and trading activity, with monthly active users peaking at around 477,900 in late 2025 — a nearly 94% surge from earlier in the year — and monthly trading volumes rebounding to about $3 billion according to industry data. 

2. Kalshi 

Founded in 2018 by Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, Kalshi is one of the few Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulated prediction markets. It offers contracts on economics, climate, politics, and sports. Annual trading volume according to the company is estimated at $23.8 billion, with weekly transactions often in the hundreds of millions, reflecting deep liquidity and growing institutional interest.  

3. PredictIt 

PredictIt is one of the oldest online prediction markets still active today. Originally launched on November 3, 2014, by Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand as an educational research project, it focused primarily on U.S. political forecasts — letting users trade shares on election outcomes, legislative actions, and other civic questions.  

4. Robinhood Prediction Markets 

Robinhood Prediction Markets formally entered the prediction economy in October 2024, initially rolling out election betting contracts to select customers before rapidly expanding availability.  

By late 2025, the company reported that its prediction market segment had become one of its fastest-growing business lines, tracking towards $100 million in annualized revenue with over 2.5 billion contracts traded in the month of October alone.  

In January 2026, Robinhood solidified its position by closing a joint venture to operate its own CFTC-licensed exchange, signalling a permanent shift from third-party partnerships to owning its own regulated infrastructure.

5. Interactive Brokers ForecastEx 

Interactive Brokers launched ForecastEx on August 1, 2024, as a fully CFTC-regulated subsidiary designed to offer “forecast contracts” on economic data, climate indicators, and political outcomes.  

The platform differentiates itself by paying interest on the cash value of open positions, appealing to the brokerage's client base.  

By January 2026, ForecastEx reported that its cumulative notional volume had surpassed $1 billion, driven by a surge in demand for hedging instruments around key U.S. economic and electoral events.

6. Webull Prediction Markets 

Webull also offers prediction markets through its brokerage interface, primarily through partnerships with regulated exchanges like Kalshi.  

While millions of Webull account holders can access these event contracts, the company does not publish separate figures for prediction‑market participation or revenue. However, its broad retail base gives the feature significant visibility.  

7. Augur 

Augur is one of the earliest attempts at a decentralized prediction market, launching on Ethereum after a 2018 Initial Coin Offering (ICO). Built to let anyone create markets for any outcome, it demonstrated how smart contracts could automate prediction‑market settlement without centralized intermediaries.  

Despite its pioneering role, Augur never matched the scale or liquidity of Polymarket or Kalshi. On‑chain activity is transparent but fragmented, and reliable data on cumulative volume and user engagement is limited.  Yet, its concept laid important groundwork for later blockchain‑based forecasting platforms. 

8. Manifold Markets 

Manifold Markets was founded in late 2021 by Austin Chen and others as a play-money forecast platform utilizing a virtual currency called “Mana.” Unlike real‑money prediction markets, Manifold’s model focuses on community engagement and probabilistic forecasting without financial risk. 

 While it has attracted a significant community of forecasters and hosted thousands of active markets, there are no widely cited independent statistics on total users, revenue, or trade volumes from authoritative sources.  

9. Metaculus 

Launched in 2015 by researchers Anthony Aguirre, Max Wainwright, and Greg Laughlin, Metaculus is a forecasting platform focused on aggregating expert and crowd predictions. Rather than trading contracts, Metaculus uses a reputation and scoring model to quantify forecast accuracy over time. 

The platform has hosted millions of individual forecasts across thousands of open questions, according to the company. However, Metaculus does not operate as a trading venue with revenue streams or tokenized markets, and it does not publish user counts or financial results in audited disclosures. Its influence is measured more qualitatively via its research citations and academic engagement than through revenue or volume metrics. 

10. Myriad Markets 

Launched by DASTAN Media (the parent company formed by the merger of Decrypt and Rug Radio) around 2024–2025, Myriad Markets integrates prediction markets directly into digital media consumption.  

Third‑party data suggests that the platform's browser extension saw over 60,000 downloads and facilitated millions of predictions in its initial months of operation, showcasing early adoption momentum within the Web3 media ecosystem.