Polymarket VS Robinhood

★ The verdict these records support

First recorded difference that usually settles it: pricing tier — Polymarket records Free; Robinhood records Freemium. This page does not name a winner. The fee notes below carry the formulas, and what a given trade costs depends on that formula, the contract price and how many contracts are traded — not on the pricing tier.

• › Pricing tier: Polymarket records Free; Robinhood records Freemium.
• › Platforms: Polymarket records Web, iOS, Android; Robinhood records iOS, Android.
• › Eligibility: Polymarket records Two products with separate eligibility. polymarket.com is the international, crypto venue: signup is an email address or a self-custody wallet, and trading is closed to US IPs, which the geoblock documentation classes as close-only on both frontend and API, alongside a long restricted list that includes the UK, Germany, France, Australia, Brazil, Singapore, Thailand and four Canadian provinces, with OFAC-sanctioned countries blocked outright. polymarket.us is the US venue, operated by QCX LLC as a CFTC-designated contract market: US residents open an account in the app and must pass KYC (legal name, residential address, date of birth, phone, Social Security number, plus a government ID and selfie check if the automated check asks for more) before they can deposit or trade. Eligibility is not the same as legality: the geoblock endpoint is the operational test for the international venue, and state courts are still contesting the US product. Sources: Polymarket Documentation, 'Geographic Restrictions'; Polymarket US Documentation, 'Create an Account' and 'What is Polymarket US?'; checked 2026-10-21; Robinhood records US residents aged 18 or older, with an individual Robinhood brokerage account and a separately approved Robinhood Derivatives account, applied for inside the app. Event contracts are not available in all states: Maryland and Nevada residents cannot trade sports event contracts, and Michigan residents could not open new sports event contracts as of 9 September 2026. Robinhood says further state restrictions may apply and that the app holds the current list. Source: Robinhood Help Center, 'Event contracts overview', checked 2026-10-21.
• › Data and API access: Polymarket records Documented for both venues. The international stack at docs.polymarket.com is split into a Gamma API (gamma-api.polymarket.com) for events and market metadata, a CLOB API (clob.polymarket.com) for order-book reads and order placement, a Data API v2 for positions, activity and leaderboards, WebSocket streams for market and account events, and a geoblock endpoint that reports whether the caller's IP may trade. Public reads need no key; trading is signed by the account's signer key. Polymarket US has its own documented API at docs.polymarket.us: a keyless public gateway (gateway.polymarket.us) for markets, events and search, and an authenticated api.polymarket.us for orders, portfolio and balances with two WebSocket streams, keys issued through the app after identity verification. Sources: docs.polymarket.com, 'Overview' and 'Geographic Restrictions'; docs.polymarket.us, 'Introduction' and 'Authentication'; checked 2026-10-21; Robinhood records None published for event contracts. Robinhood's developer documentation at docs.robinhood.com covers the Robinhood Crypto Trading API only, and prediction markets can be traded in the mobile app only, so there is no documented endpoint for reading or placing event-contract orders. Sources: Robinhood Help Center, 'Trading event contracts'; docs.robinhood.com, checked 2026-10-21.

This page does not model what a trade costs, how much liquidity sits behind a market, or how many markets are open today. Those numbers change daily and belong to the venues; each pricing note below names the document it came from and the date it was read.