Polymarket adds fees to 15-minute markets

Polymarket updated its documentation, adding sections on Fees and the Maker Rebates Program. The platform, which has operated without fees since launch, now introduces charges for 15-minute cryptocurrency markets.

The fee model follows a maker-taker structure: buyers at market price (takers) pay fees, while order creators (makers) receive rewards from the shared pool. Fees are dynamic – maximum 3.15% at odds around 50%, and nearly zero at extreme values (0% or 100%). For example, buying 100 shares at 0.50 costs $1.56 in fees, while at 0.05 it’s only $0.05.

The change is limited to ultra-short crypto markets; other categories, including politics and entertainment, remain fee-free.

Alongside the documentation update, Polymarket’s team made changes to the public GitHub fee module repository for the first time in five months. No comparable fee changes were made during Polymarket’s 2024 growth phase.

The new system shifts incentives between market participants. Bots operating through market orders lose margin due to mandatory fees. Arbitrage strategies with limit orders, conversely, gain double advantage – no fees plus referral payments when orders execute. According to public data, some maker bots now earn an additional $58 per trade thanks to the new program.

The Copymarket team, a platform for copying trades on Polymarket, responded positively, arguing that taker fees make simple bot strategies unprofitable and may deepen liquidity in 15-minute markets. They emphasized that maker bots will become the main beneficiaries, effectively launching a competition for building more sophisticated bots capable of interacting with the order book more efficiently.

Trader response has been divided: some traders see this as a logical monetization step, while others view it as an attempt to push high-frequency strategies out of the ecosystem.