Polymarket Perps: perpetual futures explained

Quick steps

1. Check you are allowed to trade. Perps orders are not permitted from the United States, Canada and several other countries and regions. If you are in one of them, don't use Perps and don't try to get around the block.
2. Move pUSD into your Perps account. Perps use a separate account. Deposit at least 10 pUSD from your Polymarket balance into it.
3. Pick a market and low leverage. Choose an instrument and set leverage well below the maximum. Lower leverage puts more distance between you and liquidation.
4. Place the order. Open a long if you expect the price to rise or a short if you expect it to fall. Limit orders that rest on the book pay the lower maker fee.
5. Watch margin and funding. Check your equity against maintenance margin and remember that funding is charged or paid every hour.

What Polymarket Perps are

A perpetual future (“perp”) is a contract that tracks the price of an underlying asset and never expires. You do not own the asset. You hold a long position that gains when the price rises or a short that gains when it falls, and it stays open until you close it or the system liquidates it.

This is a different product from Polymarket's prediction markets. Outcome shares are worth between $0 and $1 and settle on a real-world event. A perp has no settlement date and no $1 cap, and because of leverage your loss can equal your whole margin. Polymarket launched Perps in September 2026. At launch there were 67 markets: 24 crypto, 36 linked to equities, 3 indices and 4 commodities, including bitcoin, ether, gold, oil, the Nasdaq 100 and large US stocks. The list changes; the app shows what is live.

Three prices to know

• Traded price: where orders on the Perps order book match.
• Index price: built from external price feeds of the underlying asset.
• Mark price: used for your account equity, margin checks and liquidation. It is the price that decides whether you get liquidated.

Perps trade 24/7, including when stock and commodity exchanges are closed. Outside those hours, only the external feeds behind the index and mark prices change, so prices can gap when the underlying market reopens.

Funding your Perps account

Perps have their own account, funded in pUSD. The minimum deposit is 10 pUSD and deposits settle on Polygon. Withdrawals back to your wallet must leave enough collateral for open positions, including a reserve of 10% of the notional value of those positions, so what you can withdraw can be less than what you can trade with. If you still need pUSD, see how to deposit.

Perps fees

Fees are a percentage of the trade's notional value (price × quantity), paid in pUSD. Tiers depend on your trailing 30-day volume and are re-checked every UTC day.

Example: a $1,000 position opened and closed with market orders at the base tier costs about $0.40 each way, $0.80 in total. That looks small, but fees are charged on the full leveraged notional, not on your margin. With 10x leverage on $100 of margin, $0.80 is 0.8% of your money per round trip. These fees are separate from the taker fees on prediction markets.

Leverage and margin

Crypto, the S&P 500, oil, gold and silver allow up to 20x. Most other real-world-asset markets allow up to 10x. Larger positions are capped at lower leverage through tiers.

• Initial margin = notional ÷ leverage. A $100 position at 20x needs $5.
• Maintenance margin = notional × (0.5 ÷ maximum leverage). On a 20x market that is 2.5%.
• If equity falls below initial margin you can only reduce exposure or add collateral. Below maintenance margin, liquidation begins.

The web app uses isolated margin by default: each position is backed only by the collateral assigned to it. Cross margin, where positions share collateral, is only available through the API on some instruments.

How liquidation works

When your equity drops below maintenance margin, resting orders in that market are cancelled and the position is closed with market-priced orders against whatever liquidity is on the book. You pay a liquidation fee on top of the normal fee. In severe cases a position can be handed to an insurance fund, or closed against traders on the other side through auto-deleveraging (ADL). If you are a profitable, highly leveraged trader on the other side, ADL can close part of your winning position without you choosing to.

At 20x, a move of roughly 2.5% against you can be enough to trigger liquidation once fees and funding are counted. Crypto often moves that much in an hour.

Funding payments

Funding keeps the perp near the index price. It is settled every hour. When the perp trades above the index, longs pay shorts; when it trades below, shorts pay longs. The hourly rate is capped at ±4%, which is very high: in a strongly one-sided market funding alone can eat into a position you hold for days.

Who can use Perps

Placing Perps orders is not permitted from the United States, Canada and several other countries and regions, including Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. US residents are pointed to Polymarket US, a separate regulated exchange. Other countries may restrict leveraged derivatives under their own law even where Polymarket does not block them. Check where Polymarket is legal, and never use a VPN to get around restrictions.

Frequently asked questions