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Updated September 25, 2026 · facts checked against the dated sources listed below
A Polymarket price is what you pay for a share that returns $1 if an outcome happens, so a price of 10¢ reads as a 10% chance. This guide walks through one live market, US recession by end of 2026?, as it stood at about 10:30 UTC on September 25, 2026: the headline chance, the order book behind it, the payout and fee, the conversion to sportsbook odds and the rules.
Open the market on Polymarket and the first number is the chance: 10% for Yes. Polymarket says the displayed figure is the midpoint of the bid-ask spread in the order book, and that when the spread is wider than 10 cents it shows the last traded price instead. The market page spells out the reading: a Yes price of 10¢ means traders collectively put about a 10% chance on the event, and a Yes share bought at 10¢ pays $1.00 if it happens.
Around the chance you will find the total traded, $2,130,889 here, the end date, December 31, 2026, a price chart with ranges from one hour to all time, the order book, the rules and the comments. A Market Context panel is labeled an experimental AI-generated summary that plays no role in how the market resolves, so read the rules, not the summary.
See also: Implied probability · Midpoint price
The chance is an average of two prices. At 10:32 UTC the Yes side had a best bid of 9¢, with about 4,993 shares wanted, and a best ask of 10¢, with about 1,458 shares offered. The midpoint is (9 + 10) ÷ 2 = 9.5¢, which the page rounds to 10%, and the spread is 1 cent, narrow enough that the midpoint is the number shown.
Buying Yes now means paying the ask, 10¢, and only for the first 1,458 shares; a larger order would fill at 11¢ and then 12¢. Selling Yes means taking the 9¢ bid. The No side mirrors the Yes side, because a Yes share and a No share together always pay $1: the 9¢ Yes bid appears as a 91¢ No offer, and the 10¢ Yes offer as a 90¢ No bid, so No shows about 90.5%.
See also: How to read a Polymarket order book · How to spot a thin order book
Each share pays $1 if its side wins and nothing if it loses. So 100 Yes shares at 10¢ cost $10 and return $100 if this market's recession test is met, a $90 profit, or nothing if it is not. No at 91¢ is the mirror bet: $91 for 100 shares that return $100, a $9 profit, if there is no recession by the market's definition.
Takers also pay a fee here. Polymarket's formula is shares × fee rate × price × (1 − price), and the rate for economics markets is 0.05, so 100 Yes shares at 10¢ carry 100 × 0.05 × 0.10 × 0.90 = $0.45 in fees and cost $10.45 in all. To break even, Yes has to be more likely than 10.45%, not the 10% in the headline.
See also: Polymarket fee calculator · How to calculate profit on Polymarket
Decimal odds are 1 ÷ price: the 9.5% midpoint is 10.53, and the 10¢ you would actually pay is 10.00. For a price under 50%, American odds are (1 − price) ÷ price × 100 with a plus sign, so 9.5% is about +953 and 10¢ is +900. For a price over 50%, they are price ÷ (1 − price) × 100 with a minus sign, so No at 91¢ is about −1011.
When you compare with a sportsbook, convert the price you would pay rather than the headline, and take the bookmaker's margin out of its odds first; the converter linked below does both.
See also: Sportsbook odds to Polymarket price converter · Implied probability calculator
The question on the card is short; the rules decide the payout. This market resolves Yes if the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth between the second quarter of 2025 and the fourth quarter of 2026, or if the National Bureau of Economic Research announces a US recession in 2025 or 2026 by the time the advance estimate for the fourth quarter of 2026 comes out. Unless one of those happens sooner, it stays open until that estimate is published.
A differently worded question is a different bet. Kalshi's Recession this year? market counts only two negative GDP quarters, which is one reason the two exchanges can price a recession differently.
See also: How Polymarket markets resolve · How to compare Polymarket and Kalshi odds
A price is what traders were willing to pay at one moment, not a forecast by Polymarket and not a guarantee. It moves: this site's page for the same market showed Yes at 10.5% at 00:50 UTC, a point above the 9.5% midpoint ten hours later. It says little about size, since only 1,458 shares were offered at 10¢. And it leaves out fees, the months your money is tied up until the market resolves, and how often prices at this level have come true, which this site's accuracy study tracks for resolved markets.
See also: US recession odds on this site · How accurate is Polymarket?
A Yes share costs about 10¢ and pays $1 if the event happens, so traders put the chance near 10%. The figure is the midpoint of the best bid and ask, not a price you can necessarily buy at.
You buy at the ask, which sits above the midpoint by half the spread, and takers pay a fee on most markets. In the example above, a 9.5% midpoint became a 10.45% break-even.
Each side's buy price is its own ask. With a 9¢ bid and a 10¢ ask on Yes, Yes costs 10¢ and No costs 91¢, $1.01 together; the extra cent is the spread.
No. It means traders price it at about 90%, so it should fail about one time in ten if prices are well calibrated. Our accuracy study shows how often prices at each level came true.
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