A year ago, Kalshi was pulling roughly 1 million US website visits per month. By July 2026, that number hit 15.4 million, according to Similarweb data. That’s a 1,520% increase.
The traffic surge tells only half the story. Kalshi’s notional trading volume in August clocked in at approximately $40 billion, up roughly 4,500% from $874 million a year earlier. The New York-based prediction market platform now accounts for about 79% of the entire industry’s $50.7 billion in monthly volume, per Dune Analytics data.
Sports contracts are the engine
Contracts tied to sporting events made up 83% of Kalshi’s July trading volume, transforming the platform from a niche political forecasting tool into something that looks a lot more like a mainstream betting operation.
New Jersey has escalated the debate all the way to the US Supreme Court, petitioning the justices to clarify whether states have authority to regulate prediction-market sports contracts under existing gambling laws. Michigan is pursuing its own restrictions, and Nevada’s gaming regulators have raised similar concerns. Kalshi operates under the oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which classifies its offerings as event contracts rather than wagers.
Global demand outpaces legal access
Canadian traffic hit approximately 450,000 visits in July, while UK visits reached around 296,000, both representing sharp year-over-year increases despite Kalshi’s terms of service explicitly barring users in those jurisdictions.
Dominance and its discontents
Founded in 2018, Kalshi spent its early years building credibility as a CFTC-regulated venue for event contracts covering everything from economic data releases to weather patterns. The pivot toward sports contracts, and particularly parlay-style products that let users combine multiple predictions into single positions, has been the catalyst for the current growth phase.
A Supreme Court ruling affirming state authority over sports-related prediction contracts could force Kalshi to restructure or withdraw offerings in key jurisdictions. Michigan’s push for restrictions offers a preview of what state-level opposition looks like in practice.