A Kalshi price shows up looking like 56c, and a bettor who has only ever seen odds in a sportsbook app has no reason to know what that means. In plain terms, 56c is the cost of a contract that pays exactly one dollar if the outcome happens and nothing if it doesn’t, so a price of 56 cents means buyers are treating that outcome as roughly 56% likely to happen.
That’s the whole idea behind a Kalshi price, and once it clicks, everything else on the page follows from it. The sections below cover what a contract actually is, how to turn a cents price into odds a sportsbook bettor already knows, where the number comes from since no bookmaker is setting it, and how to compare a Kalshi price to a sportsbook line without fooling yourself on the fee.
A Kalshi contract is a bet on one dollar. Buy a "Yes" contract for 56 cents and one of two things happens: the outcome occurs and the contract pays a dollar, or it doesn’t and the contract pays nothing. There’s no third result and no partial payout.
The price is quoted in cents because it’s literally a fraction of that dollar. A contract at 25 cents costs a quarter and pays a dollar. A contract at 75 cents costs three quarters and pays the same dollar. The higher the price, the more of that dollar buyers are already paying for, which is the next idea worth understanding.
Read a Kalshi price as a percentage. A contract at 60 cents means the market is pricing that outcome at about 60%. A contract at 25 cents is pricing its outcome at about 25%. There’s no conversion step beyond moving the decimal.
A sportsbook bettor already reads probability every day, just in a harder format. A 60% chance at a sportsbook shows up as -150. A 25% chance shows up as +300. Even money is 50%. The table on this page lines up cents prices against the odds format a sportsbook bettor already knows, so a price like 56c can be checked against a familiar number instead of being converted by hand every time.
| Kalshi price | Sportsbook odds | Implied chance | Profit if it hits, per 100 contracts |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5c | +1900 | 5% | $95 on $5 |
| 10c | +900 | 10% | $90 on $10 |
| 20c | +400 | 20% | $80 on $20 |
| 25c | +300 | 25% | $75 on $25 |
| 33c | +203 | 33% | $67 on $33 |
| 40c | +150 | 40% | $60 on $40 |
| 50c | +100 | 50% | $50 on $50 |
| 60c | -150 | 60% | $40 on $60 |
| 67c | -203 | 67% | $33 on $67 |
| 75c | -300 | 75% | $25 on $75 |
| 80c | -400 | 80% | $20 on $80 |
| 90c | -900 | 90% | $10 on $90 |
| 95c | -1900 | 95% | $5 on $95 |
Price is cents per contract; each contract pays $1. Profit is before Kalshi’s taker fee, which is about 7% of that profit.
A sportsbook posts a line and takes the other side of every bet. Kalshi doesn’t work that way. Every contract is bought from another trader who is willing to sell it, so the price is wherever a buyer and a seller actually agreed to trade.
That’s why a Kalshi price shows up as three numbers instead of one. The bid is the most a buyer is currently offering to pay. The ask is the least a seller is currently willing to take. The mid is halfway between the two, and it’s the fairest single read of where the market has the probability.
A buyer doesn’t get the mid. A buyer pays the ask, since that’s the price a seller has actually agreed to sell at. On a busy contract the bid and ask sit close together and the mid is close to what a buyer pays. On a thin contract with few trades, the gap can be wide, and the ask can sit noticeably above the mid.
Kalshi charges a fee on top of the ask, so the ask isn’t the full cost of the trade. The fee runs about 7% of the expected profit on the contract, and it’s largest near a 50 cent price (about 1.75 cents per contract on a 100-contract order) and shrinks toward either end of the price range (about 0.8 cents per contract at a 13 cent price).
That means the real cost of buying a contract is the ask plus the fee, and that’s the number that belongs next to a sportsbook’s own price when comparing the two. Comparing a sportsbook price to a bare Kalshi ask, with no fee added, isn’t a fair comparison.
To bet the other side of a game or a total, buy "No" instead of shopping for a different contract. A No price is one dollar minus the Yes price, so a Yes contract at 56 cents makes the No side worth 44 cents before the fee, and it’s this side that prices something like an underdog or the under on a win total.
On BetFirm’s boards the Kalshi column shows the price a buyer would actually pay, the ask plus the fee, converted to sportsbook odds so it sits next to the book’s price in the same format. The mid appears under it as the market’s fair read, the number nobody can actually buy at. The weekly game comparison, the Super Bowl board and the win totals board all follow that layout.
On any of these boards, "cheaper after fees" means the ask plus the fee comes out lower than the cost of making the same bet at a sportsbook, not just that the raw ask looked lower. It’s the number worth checking before assuming a Kalshi price is the better one.
Once a price looks worth taking, BetFirm’s payout calculator turns it into dollars: enter the price and the number of contracts, and it shows the exact cost, the fee, and the payout if the contract hits, so there’s no mental math between a cents price and what actually lands in an account.
See also: Kalshi vs. the sportsbooks: this week’s NFL games · Kalshi payout and fee calculator · Super Bowl odds by sportsbook, with Kalshi.