Kalshi Player Props: How to Trade, Arbitrage and Automate Them
Player props have moved from the sportsbook to the exchange. Here's how they work on Kalshi and Polymarket, what they cost, where the edges are, and the settlement rule that decides whether a props arbitrage is real.
TL;DR
A player prop on Kalshi is a yes or no contract on one player's statistic in one game, such as 12 or more rebounds. On 15 November 2026 Kalshi's public data listed about 200 series of player and stat props across six sports, and Polymarket listed props such as anytime touchdown scorer and three-pointers made. You can trade them three ways: arbitrage between venues, value bets against a reference price, and market making. The catch is settlement. If a player does not play, Kalshi settles the prop at a fair price while Polymarket resolves it to No, so the same prop can pay differently on two venues. Claw Arbs trades props before the game and in play on Kalshi, Polymarket, Polymarket US and other venues.
For years, player props were the sportsbook's best product and the bettor's worst deal: high margins, low limits, and an account that got restricted the moment you were good at them. Kalshi player props change the setup. The prop is now a contract on an exchange, with an order book, a visible fee and another trader on the other side instead of the house.
That opens three ways to trade props that a sportsbook never allowed. It also brings one trap that most guides skip. This article covers both, using what Kalshi's and Polymarket's own public data showed on 15 November 2026.
What Is a Player Prop on Kalshi?
A player prop is a yes or no contract on one player's statistic in one game. Kalshi writes the line as a threshold: LeBron James: 12+ rebounds pays $1 if the player gets 12 or more, and nothing if not. The price sits between 0 and 1 dollar and reads as a probability. When we pulled that market from Kalshi's public data it was 7 cents bid and 10 cents offered, so the market gave it roughly a 7% to 10% chance.
Three things are different from a sportsbook prop:
- You can take either side. Buying No is as easy as buying Yes, so you can bet against a player reaching a number.
- You can set your own price. Leave a bid in the order book below the offer and wait for someone to sell to you.
- You can get out early. A contract you own can be sold before the game ends, at whatever the market pays.
Kalshi also sells combos, its version of a parlay, which join several legs into one contract. Many of them are built from player props. If you came here looking for a Kalshi parlay, that's the product, and it has its own fee rule (see the fees section).
Which Props Do Kalshi and Polymarket List?
Kalshi's first NFL player props arrived at the start of the 2025 season, it filed for NBA player props that November, and it has kept adding sports since. On 15 November 2026 its public data listed about 200 series of player and stat props:
| Sport | Examples of prop series on Kalshi |
|---|---|
| Football | Touchdowns, passing yards, passing touchdowns, rushing yards, receiving yards, receptions, interceptions, and college football props |
| Basketball | Points, rebounds, assists, threes, steals, blocks, double doubles, triple doubles, points ladders |
| Soccer | Goalscorer, first goalscorer and assists in the Premier League and other leagues |
| Baseball | Hits, home runs, strikeouts, hits allowed |
| Hockey | Goalscorer, assists, points, goaltender saves |
| Tennis | Aces |
The NBA rebounds series alone had 455 open markets that day. Depth is another matter: 320 of them had not traded at all, and the 20 busiest carried about 78% of the volume.
Polymarket lists props too. Its public market list that day included anytime touchdown scorer, player assists over or under a line, and three-pointers made over or under a line. Polymarket writes its lines the sportsbook way, as over or under a half number, which matters when you compare the two venues. Polymarket US, the separate exchange for US residents, lists player props as one of its contract types too.
The Rule That Decides Everything: What If the Player Sits Out?
This is the part most guides leave out, and it's the part that costs money. A prop depends on one person playing. Each venue has its own rule for when that person doesn't, and the rules are not the same.
| Situation | Kalshi (rules of the props we read) | Polymarket (rules of the prop we read) |
|---|---|---|
| Player is inactive or never enters the game | The market settles at a fair price | The market resolves to No |
| Player leaves in the first half and does not return | Normal props settle on the statistics. Protected props settle at the fair price from before the game, unless the player already reached the number | Settles on the statistics |
| Game cancelled or not played in time | The market settles at a fair price | The market resolves 50-50 |
We read these in the rules attached to the markets themselves on 15 November 2026: an NBA rebounds prop, a protected NFL touchdowns prop and a protected NBA double double prop on Kalshi, and an NBA three-pointers prop on Polymarket. Rules can differ from one market to the next and they change over time, so read the rules of the exact market you trade. Kalshi marks protected props with "Protected" in the name. It listed 18 protected series that day, covering NBA and NFL props.
Why does this matter so much? Because of what it does to a hedge. Keep reading.
Three Ways to Trade Player Props
1. Arbitrage between venues
When the same prop is priced differently in two places, you can buy Yes where it's cheap and No where that's cheap. If the pair costs less than $1 after fees, one of the two pays $1 and you keep the difference. It's the same idea as any Kalshi vs Polymarket arbitrage, with two extra checks.
Check the line. Kalshi's "5+ assists" and Polymarket's "over 4.5 assists" are the same bet. "5+" and "over 5.5" are not. One number of difference turns a hedge into two separate bets.
Check the rule. Here's a made-up example to show why. Say you buy Yes on "5+ assists" on Kalshi at 46 cents and No on "over 4.5 assists" on Polymarket at 50 cents. The pair costs 96 cents and pays $1 whether the player gets five assists or not. That's 4 cents before fees.
Now suppose the player is ruled out an hour before the game. Your Polymarket No wins and pays $1. Your Kalshi Yes doesn't go to zero, it settles at a fair price. You come out ahead of plan. But if you had built the pair the other way round, with Yes on Polymarket and No on Kalshi, your Polymarket Yes would lose everything while your Kalshi No only gave back a fair price. A "risk-free" trade would have lost most of one stake.
So a props arbitrage has a safe direction and an unsafe one. Before you take a pair, ask what each leg pays if the player doesn't play. If one leg loses in full and the other only returns a fair price, it isn't an arbitrage. And like every two-leg trade, it can leave you with one leg filled and the other missing, which we cover in naked leg arbitrage.
2. Value bets against a reference price
A value bet is one leg only. You buy a side because its price is better than what you believe is fair, and you accept that single bets win and lose. On props, the fair price usually comes from sportsbook prop lines with the margin removed. Our guide to Kalshi value betting explains the method.
Be more careful with props than with match winners. Fewer books price a given prop, their limits are lower, and the lines jump on team news. A reference built from one book's prop line is a weak reference. Ask for a bigger edge than you would on a main market, and expect it to be wrong more often.
3. Market making
Prop order books are thin. In the NBA rebounds series that day, the typical gap between the best bid and the best offer was 3 cents, which is a lot on a contract priced at 10 or 20 cents. A market maker posts both sides, buys a little under fair value and sells a little over it, and earns part of that gap. On most Kalshi markets a resting order pays no fee, which helps.
The danger is news. A market maker's quotes are a free option for anyone who sees an injury report first. If a starter is scratched and your bid is still sitting there, you'll be filled at a price that is already wrong. Props are more exposed to this than game lines, because one piece of news about one player moves them all the way. Quote small, pull quotes around lineup announcements, and read our guide to market making on Kalshi and Polymarket before you try it.
What Player Props Cost on Each Venue
All three venues charge the same kind of fee: a rate, times the number of contracts, times the price, times one minus the price. That makes the fee largest at 50 cents and small near the ends. Only the rate differs. These are the figures on each venue's own fee page on 15 November 2026:
| Venue | Taker fee | Resting orders |
|---|---|---|
| Kalshi | Rate 0.07 on most markets: 1.75 cents per contract at a price of 50 cents | Free on most markets. Combos charge half the taker fee |
| Polymarket | Rate 0.05 on sports: 1.25 cents per contract at 50 cents | Never charged |
| Polymarket US | Rate 0.095, falling to 0.0695 as your 30 day volume grows: about 2.4 cents down to 1.7 at 50 cents | See its fee page |
In the made-up example above, the Kalshi leg at 46 cents costs about 1.7 cents in fees and the Polymarket leg at 50 cents costs 1.25 cents. That leaves about 1 cent of the 4 cent gap. Small gaps on props disappear once you count both fees, which is why you count them first. Most Polymarket sports markets also carried a one second delay on orders when we looked. Our prediction market calculator does the Kalshi arithmetic for you.
One cost isn't a fee at all: the gap between bid and offer. On a thin prop, crossing a 3 cent gap usually costs more than the fee. That's why the order book matters more here than on a game winner market.
Pre-Match Props vs Live Props
Before the game, props move on news: injury reports, lineups, a coach's comments. The edges come from one venue catching up to that news more slowly than another. You have minutes, not seconds.
During the game, a prop reprices with every play. A player with eight rebounds at half time is a different contract from the one you saw before tip-off. Edges are bigger and shorter, order books get thinner, and anything done by hand is too slow. If you trade props in play, the things that matter are fresh prices on both venues and orders that either fill in full or not at all. Our guide to live value betting covers how in-play pricing works.
Automating Props Trading
There are hundreds of prop markets a night, each with its own line and its own rule. Nobody watches those by hand. A bot that trades props has to do five things well:
- Find the same prop on two venues: same player, same statistic, same line.
- Know how each venue settles it if the player doesn't play.
- Read the order book, not only the top price, so the size it wants is really there.
- Count both venues' fees before it calls something an edge.
- Place both legs together, and have a plan for when only one fills.
If you want to build that yourself, our Kalshi trading bot tutorial in Python shows the Kalshi side with working code, including how to pull the rebounds markets used in this article.
If you'd rather have it done, props trading is part of Claw Arbs for all members. It trades player props before the game and in play, with agents for arbitrage, value betting and market making, on Kalshi, Polymarket, Polymarket US and other venues. You choose the venues, the stake and the limits, and you can run an agent on paper before it touches real money. See the Kalshi bot and Polymarket bot pages for how it's set up. New members can start with a 7-day free trial.
The Risks, Plainly
- Thin markets. Most props trade little. A price you can see is not a price you can get in size.
- Settlement differences. As shown above, two venues can pay the same prop differently.
- News. One injury report moves a prop from 60 cents to 5. Resting orders get picked off.
- One-leg fills. An arbitrage with one side missing is a plain bet.
- Rules where you live. Whether you may trade sports contracts on these venues depends on your state or country, and the question is still being argued between US states and federal regulators. See is Kalshi legal and is Polymarket legal.
Nothing here is betting or financial advice. Value bets lose often, and an arbitrage is only as safe as its weaker leg. Trade what you can afford to lose.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are player props on Kalshi?
A player prop on Kalshi is a yes or no contract on one player's statistic in one game, for example a player to get 12 or more rebounds. The price, between 0 and 1 dollar, is the market's estimate of the chance. If it happens the contract pays one dollar, and if not it pays nothing.
Does Polymarket have player props?
Yes. When we checked Polymarket's public market list on 15 November 2026 it included player props such as anytime touchdown scorer, player assists over or under a line, and three-pointers made over or under a line.
What happens to a Kalshi player prop if the player does not play?
Kalshi's rules for the props we read say the market settles to a fair price if the player is inactive or never enters the game. Protected versions go further and also settle at a fair price if a player plays in the first half but not after it, unless the player already reached the number. Polymarket's rules for the prop we read say the market resolves to No if the player does not take the court, so the same prop can settle differently on the two venues.
Can you arbitrage player props between Kalshi and Polymarket?
Yes, when the same prop is priced so that Yes on one venue plus No on the other costs less than one dollar after fees. The line and the settlement rules must match first. A 5 or more line on Kalshi equals over 4.5 on Polymarket, and the two venues treat a player who does not play differently, which can turn an apparent arbitrage into a one-sided bet.
What fees apply to player props on Kalshi?
Most Kalshi markets charge takers 0.07 times the number of contracts times the price times one minus the price, rounded up, which Kalshi's fee schedule shows as 7 cents to 1.75 dollars per 100 contracts. Resting orders pay nothing on most markets. Combos charge makers half the taker fee.
Does Polymarket charge fees on player props?
Yes. Polymarket's fee page lists a taker fee for sports markets of 0.05 times the number of shares, times the price, times one minus the price, and resting orders pay nothing. Polymarket US uses the same shape of formula with a rate between 0.0695 and 0.095 that depends on your trading volume over the last 30 days.
Can a bot trade player props automatically?
Yes. Props are ordinary exchange markets with an API, so a bot can read the order book and place orders the same way as on a game winner market. Claw Arbs trades player props before the game and in play, with arbitrage, value and market making agents, on Kalshi, Polymarket, Polymarket US and other venues.
Bottom Line
Kalshi player props turn the sportsbook's most profitable product into something you can trade from either side, at a price you set, without an account limit. That creates real edges in arbitrage, value bets and market making. It also creates one new way to lose: two venues that settle the same prop differently when a player sits out. Match the line, read the rule, count the fees, and only then call it an edge. And when the number of markets gets too large to watch, which happens on the first night, let Claw Arbs watch them for you.