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How to read a Kalshi order book

Live example refreshed with the odds pages · checked September 24, 2026 at 19:49 UTC

On FedEx Open de France Winner (Matt Fitzpatrick), the best bid to buy YES is 16¢ and the best offer is 18¢, a spread of 2¢ around a 17.0¢ midpoint. The offer comes from the other side of the book: a NO bid at 82¢ is the same as selling YES at 18¢, because one YES and one NO always pay $1 together.

Bids, offers, spread and depth

Bid: the highest price someone is willing to pay for YES right now. Offer (ask): the lowest price someone will sell YES for; on Kalshi it comes from the NO side, at $1 minus the best NO bid. Spread: the gap between the two, which you pay whenever you buy at the offer and later sell at the bid. Depth: how many contracts wait at each price; thin books move against a large order.

The price shown on market pages, here and elsewhere, is usually the midpoint between the bid and the offer, or the last trade. It is a probability estimate, not a price you are guaranteed to get.

Live example: FedEx Open de France Winner

Order book for FedEx Open de France Winner (Matt Fitzpatrick), read from Kalshi's public data September 24, 2026 at 19:49 UTC. It changes by the second; open the market on Kalshi for the current book.

Bids to buy YES

PriceContracts
16¢25,458
15¢12,788
14¢16,741
13¢3,819
12¢137
11¢150

Offers to sell YES (from NO bids)

YES priceContractsNO bid
18¢43,82082¢
19¢38,10581¢
20¢20,50680¢
21¢23,00079¢
22¢23,75078¢
25¢2175¢

Spread: 2¢ · midpoint 17.0¢ · contracts bid within 5¢ of the midpoint: 58,943 · offered within 5¢: 125,432.

What it costs to buy YES right now

ContractsAverage pricevs best offer
10018.00¢+0.00¢
1,00018.00¢+0.00¢
10,00018.00¢+0.00¢

Walking the offers from the best price up, before fees. Bigger orders fill at worse prices: that is slippage. The slippage calculator does this for any book.

Related

Costs of a trade: fee calculator, slippage calculator, payout calculator and APY calculator. All live prices: Kalshi odds today.

Frequently asked questions

How do you read the Kalshi order book?

On FedEx Open de France Winner (Matt Fitzpatrick), the best bid to buy YES is 16¢ and the best offer is 18¢, a spread of 2¢ around a 17.0¢ midpoint. The offer comes from the other side of the book: a NO bid at 82¢ is the same as selling YES at 18¢, because one YES and one NO always pay $1 together.

Why does Kalshi only show bids?

Every contract has a YES and a NO side that together pay $1, so a bid to buy NO at a price is the same as an offer to sell YES at $1 minus that price. Listing bids on both sides therefore shows the whole book.

What is a good spread on Kalshi?

On busy markets the best bid and offer are often a cent or two apart; thin markets can be several cents wide. The wider the spread, the more you pay to trade in and out, on top of the fee.