Kalshi Offers Brokers Up to 55% of Perps Fees, and Nothing in the Filing Bars Kalshi Prime

Brokers that bring customers to Kalshi’s perpetual futures will get back 40% to 55% of the exchange fees on those customers’ trades, under a program Kalshi filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Thursday, Oct. 15. The share rises with volume, from 40% on a broker’s first $2 billion of monthly trading to 55% above $6 billion, and the program runs from no earlier than Oct. 29 through the end of 2027.

The same day, Kalshi cut the refund it pays big trading firms and market makers that clear their own trades, from 100% of their perps fees to 98%. That program ends Dec. 31, 2026.

Perpetual futures, or perps, are leveraged bets on a price that never expire. Kalshi became the first U.S. venue to offer them in June, CNBC reported, and they’ve done about $77 billion in notional volume since, a measure that counts the full leveraged size of each trade, according to The Block’s data. Crypto contracts came first. Gold and silver were added in September.

Who can collect

The market-maker filing says, “Kalshi is excluding any affiliate of Kalshi from becoming an Eligible Participant under the Program.” The broker filing opens its program to “all FCM Members of the Exchange clearing Perpetual Contracts,” meaning futures commission merchants, the regulated brokers that hold a customer’s margin. Its only affiliate rule keeps out trades a broker or its affiliates make for their proprietary accounts. The formula for the payments sits in an appendix Kalshi asked the CFTC to keep confidential.

Kalshi Prime, formerly Kinetic Markets, is a registered futures commission merchant wholly owned by Kalshi Inc., according to a July announcement with its surveillance vendor. “Most retail users on Kalshi trade perpetuals currently through Kalshi Prime,” Kalshi’s help center says. In a Sept. 23 notice on stock-based perps, Kalshi told the SEC that Kalshi Prime, “an affiliate of the Exchange,” would be subject to its rules “on equal terms” with other brokers.

Robinhood’s perps

Robinhood, which launched its prediction-markets hub through a Kalshi partnership, announced on Sept. 29 that its perps would run through Robinhood Derivatives, its futures broker, on Bitstamp. Robinhood bought that exchange last year, Bloomberg reported. Robinhood is charging 1 basis point, a hundredth of a percent, per trade through the end of the year.

Kalshi Prime’s fee disclosure, dated Oct. 6, lists a 12 basis point commission for a customer with under $100,000 of monthly volume on an order that fills right away against one already resting on the book.

The broker filing calls its rebate schedule “fixed and identical for all Eligible FCM Members.” An outside broker still has to bring customers to collect, and Robinhood took its perps customers to an exchange it owns, at a twelfth of Kalshi Prime’s commission for a small trader.

Unless the confidential appendix carves Kalshi Prime out, every rebate paid on its customers’ trades moves money from Kalshi’s exchange to Kalshi’s broker, and the parent company pays real money out only when a broker it doesn’t own signs up.

Sources

• CFTC: KalshiEX LLC, FCM Perpetuals Fee Rebate Program (Oct. 15, 2026)
• CFTC: KalshiEX LLC, Temporary Perpetual Fee Rebate Program Update (Oct. 15, 2026)
• Federal Register: SEC notice, KalshiEX LLC listing standards for security futures products (Sept. 23, 2026)
• Kalshi Help Center: Applying for Perpetuals Access
• Kalshi Prime LLC: Fee Disclosure Statement (as of Oct. 6, 2026)
• Solidus Labs: Kinetic Markets taps Solidus Labs for trade surveillance (July 28, 2026)
• Robinhood: HOOD Summit 2026 announcements (Sept. 29, 2026)
• Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance: Robinhood debuts weekend trading, perpetual futures (Sept. 29, 2026)
• CNBC: Kalshi perps cross $1 billion in volume within a week of launch (June 9, 2026)
• The Block: Kalshi Perpetuals Cumulative Volume