Lowest Juice Betting Apps in 2026: What Each One Actually Costs

The quick answer

• Cheapest for a normal bet: Novig. Charges nothing before kickoff.

• Best for patient bettors: Polymarket US. Pays you to post your own price.

• Widest board: Kalshi. About 61,000 open markets, and it reaches you through Robinhood.

• Best if you lose often: ProphetX. Only charges you when you win.

• Best where betting is not legal: DraftKings Predictions. The only one that lists sports there.

Novig is the cheapest way to place an ordinary bet. A straight bet on one team to win, placed before kickoff, costs nothing on either side of the trade. A standard two-way sportsbook line at -110 carries about $4.55 per $100 inside the odds, so you never see it charged. The prediction markets sit in between, charging a visible fee of $1.50 to $2.00 on a $50 bet at even money.

How we compared them

Every cost below is what you'd pay on a single $50 bet on one team to win, placed before the game starts, at even odds. That's the most common bet anyone makes, and it's the fairest way to line up an app that charges a fee against a sportsbook that hides one.

These apps price fees per contract, not per dollar staked, using some version of price x (1 minus price). A $50 stake buys 100 contracts at 50c but 500 contracts at 10c, so the same $50 costs a different amount at a different price. Every figure here is the even-money case, and we say where that changes the ranking.

Fees come from each company's own published schedule, checked on 10 September 2026. The sportsbook figures come from state gambling regulators, who publish what each book actually kept. We didn't measure any odds ourselves.

Which app charges the least?

ProphetX sits at four on a different basis from the rest. It bills a share of what you win rather than a share of what you stake, so there's no single dollar figure for a $50 bet until the bet settles.

1. Novig: no fee before kickoff

Free before kickoff, available in every state but three.

Novig matches you against another user instead of against the house. Nobody is setting the price to make a profit off you, so there's no hidden cut. On the most common bet there is, one team to win placed before kickoff, it charges no fee to either person in the trade.

It charges in three places:

• In-game bets: up to 0.75c per contract, which is 75c per 100 contracts, reached at even odds.

• Season-long bets: double that, at up to 1.5c per contract. Golf and tennis futures carry no fee as of 10 September 2026.

• Parlays: the most expensive of the four, and the one to watch. That fee is already inside the price you're quoted, so nothing gets added at checkout and you'd never spot it.

Novig has said that on thin markets it expects most trades to be against Novig itself, at spreads of 1% to 4%. That figure comes from Novig's own writing in August 2024, before it relaunched as a CFTC-regulated exchange in August 2026, and its current fee page doesn't mention market-making at all.

Best for: ordinary bets on one team to win, placed before the game.

2. Polymarket US pays you to wait

Polymarket US is the only app here that pays you a rebate for posting your own price.

Most apps charge you for taking a price that's already sitting there. Polymarket does too, up to $1.50 on a $50 bet at even money. But if you name your own price and wait for someone else to take it, Polymarket pays you about 31c. Clear $250,000 of taker volume in a calendar month and it refunds 10% of your taker fees, rising to 25% above $1M and 50% above $10M, paid out weekly.

Polymarket's international site won't let US users open new positions and routes them to a separate American app, though you can still close out anything you already hold there. Make sure you're on the right one.

Best for: anyone happy to set a price and come back later.

3. Kalshi has the widest board

About 61,000 open markets, and you can reach it through your brokerage.

Kalshi lists roughly 61,000 open markets across every category, and unlike the others here it isn't sports-only. You can get to it through Robinhood, Webull or Interactive Brokers. A $50 bet costs $1.75 at even odds.

Three things people get wrong about it:

• The fee is upside down from what you'd guess. It falls as the price rises, so a heavy favorite is cheap and a longshot is expensive. That same $50 costs 35c at 90c and $3.15 at 10c.

• The resting side pays too, on the big markets. A maker fee of up to 44c per 100 contracts applies to 108 of Kalshi's 3,760 sports series, the marquee ones. It comes out of the person sitting on the other side of your trade, not out of your $1.75.

• Going through a brokerage costs double. Robinhood charges 10% of price x (1 minus price) per contract, which is 2.5c at even money, or 5% with a Gold subscription. Kalshi adds $0.01 per contract per side on top. The same $50 trade runs $1.75 direct and $3.50 through Robinhood.

Best for: bettors who want choice, or who already have a Robinhood account.

4. ProphetX charges only winners

Charges nothing on a losing bet.

ProphetX takes 2% of your net gains in a market on straight trades, and nothing at all when you lose. If you're the sort of bettor who has plenty of losing weeks, that's cheaper than paying a fee on every single bet. If you have a huge winning week, it's the most expensive place here.

Parlays run on a separate formula and cost more on longshots, where they can run several times what the same bet costs on Kalshi. Above about 42c the relationship flips and ProphetX comes out cheaper.

Best for: bettors who lose plenty of individual bets.

5. DraftKings Predictions costs the most

Most expensive here, and the only one that lists sports in states with no legal betting app.

Two things drive the cost:

• You pay the fee twice. On a $50 position in a 50c market that's $2.00 to open and $2.00 to close, $4.00 round trip. These apps let you cash out early, and DraftKings bills you both times.

• The fee stops shrinking where it matters. DraftKings charges a flat 2c per contract from 30c all the way to 94c, tapering only at the extremes. Kalshi's and Polymarket's fees keep falling as the price rises, so on a 90c favorite DraftKings takes about three times what Kalshi does, and the gap widens deeper in.

DraftKings only offers sports markets in the 17 states where it doesn't run a sportsbook, and the two lists don't overlap at all. If regular betting apps are legal where you live, this one will not let you bet on sports.

Best for: anyone in a state where the normal betting apps aren't available.

What this comparison doesn't tell you

• We didn't measure any odds. Fees come from published schedules and the sportsbook figures from regulators. No published study ranks US sportsbooks against each other on price, so there's nothing to check this against.

• What a book keeps isn't the same as the price it offers. A book can show mediocre odds and still keep very little, or the other way round, depending on what its customers bet.

• We left offshore books out on purpose. Sites like BetOnline and Bookmaker get listed as cheap, but those figures only ever appear on sites paid to promote them, none is licensed in any US state, and the Massachusetts Attorney General ordered BetOnline to stop taking bets in the state in June 2025.

Where can you actually use these?

The legal position on prediction markets is unsettled and changing, so treat any list as a snapshot. Two federal appeals courts have ruled and they disagree: the Third Circuit sided with Kalshi against New Jersey in April 2026, and the Ninth Circuit sided with Nevada on 28 August 2026. Four more circuits are still weighing it, and New Jersey has asked the Supreme Court to resolve the split.

As of 10 September 2026:

• Novig: works everywhere except Arizona, Michigan and Nevada, and it checks where you are, not where you live.

• ProphetX: says it operates nationwide and publishes no state list. Nevada is blocked in practice, so 49 states plus DC.

• Kalshi: sports markets blocked or restricted in Nevada, Michigan, Utah, Washington, Massachusetts, Maryland and Ohio, disputed in Arizona and about seven other states.

• Polymarket US: covers most states.

Check the app itself before you deposit, because a court ruling can change this overnight.

Lowest juice FAQ

What betting app has the lowest juice?

Novig, for the most common kind of bet. One team to win, placed before kickoff, costs nothing on either side. A standard -110 line carries about $4.55 per $100 on the same bet. Novig does charge on parlays, in-game bets and most season-long bets.

What sportsbook has the lowest juice?

Caesars kept the least of the seven sportsbooks licensed in Massachusetts, which publishes a hold percentage per operator: $6.75 per $100 over the year to July 2026, against FanDuel's $11.36. That's what it kept, not the odds it showed.

Which app has the lowest vig on moneylines?

A prediction market, because a moneyline there has no house cut built into it at all. Among normal sportsbooks, moneylines are cheaper than point spreads. Research across 155,563 contests puts the moneyline cut at 2.77% on baseball and 3.28% on hockey, against the roughly 4.55% built into a standard -110 spread. Those are different leagues from different sources rather than two bet types at one book, and the odds archive behind the study mixes offshore with Las Vegas prices.

Is "no vig" the same as "free"?

No. No vig means nothing is hidden in the odds. Novig charges nothing on a standard pre-game bet, but it does charge on parlays, in-game bets and season-long bets, and on thin markets you may get a slightly worse price.

Does Circa really have reduced juice?

Circa's low-vig reputation is built by affiliate and review sites. Circa's own Sports Betting 101 page says the opposite: "Like most other sportsbooks, our point spread bets have a 'juice' or 'vig' of -110 unless otherwise noted." Its house rules say the same. What Illinois regulator data does show is that bettors beat Circa's app in December 2025, January 2026 and February 2026.

Sources

Massachusetts Gaming Commission monthly revenue reports and its player-limiting memorandum of 30 September 2025. Massachusetts Attorney General cease-and-desist letters of 27 June 2025. Michigan Gaming Control Board and Illinois Gaming Board revenue files. Colorado Division of Gaming sports betting proceeds, July 2026. Flutter Entertainment Q2 2026 earnings release, and its Investor Day of 25 September 2024 for the margin targets. Robbins, "Weak Form Efficiency in Sports Betting Markets," American Journal of Management 23(2), 2023. Circa Sports house rules and Sports Betting 101. Published fee schedules for Novig, Kalshi, Polymarket US, ProphetX, DraftKings Predictions and Robinhood Derivatives, retrieved 10 September 2026.