Polymarket remains the most searched prediction-market brand in the US despite Kalshi commanding substantially higher trading volumes, highlighting a widening difference between consumer attention and actual activity on the two platforms.
Data from iGaming analytics company Blask shows Polymarket held 57.8% of branded prediction-market search demand in August 2026, compared with 35.8% for Kalshi. However, the gap has narrowed sharply since January, when Polymarket controlled 74.3% and Kalshi accounted for 23.1%.
Blask measures this through its Brand’s Accumulated Power, or BAP, metric, which tracks the proportion of relevant branded search demand captured by competing companies rather than transaction volumes, revenue or active users.
Between January and August, Polymarket’s share dropped 16.56 percentage points while Kalshi gained 12.7 points. Combined, the two operators still dominated the category, although their share declined from 97.4% to 93.6%. Novig recorded the fastest Blask Index growth among smaller competitors between January and July, rising 64.9%.
Kalshi closes the search gap
Kalshi’s biggest gains came around the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Its BAP increased from 18% in May to 29% in June and 36% in July. Over the same period, Polymarket fell from 80% to 69% and then 61%.
The change was not solely caused by weaker Polymarket search demand. Kalshi’s own Blask Index rose 22.8% between January and July while the broader prediction-market category contracted by 22%, indicating an increase in absolute branded search activity for Kalshi.
That stronger brand momentum contrasts with an even more significant lead in trading.
Gambling Insider, citing The Block data, reported that Kalshi generated $37.17 billion in August volume, compared with $8.16 billion across Polymarket and Polymarket US combined.
The World Cup helped accelerate that activity. Reuters reported that Kalshi generated around $27 billion in trading volume during the tournament and attracted approximately three million users, roughly double the company’s earlier expectations.
Broader industry data also shows how rapidly prediction markets expanded during the tournament. Pew Research Center’s analysis of The Block data found that combined Kalshi and Polymarket monthly volume rose from $25.7 billion in May to almost $53 billion in July. Sports trading accounted for most of the increase, with more than $58 billion traded on Kalshi sports markets across June and July and nearly $22 billion on Polymarket.
Search interest and trading tell different stories
Blask’s data suggests that high transaction volumes do not automatically translate into equivalent increases in branded searches.
Its prediction-market Index reached its highest level of 2026 on March 2, one day before the year’s first US midterm primaries in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas. The reading was more than four times a mid-May baseline, while Super Bowl Sunday exceeded that baseline by more than three times. The highest World Cup reading was only around half the March 2 peak. Blask cautioned that the timing alone does not establish that election-related interest caused the March increase.
The World Cup produced a longer-lasting effect instead. Median daily prediction-market search demand during the six-week competition was 38% higher than during the four weeks before kickoff.
Mobile data points to strong customer acquisition at the same time. Sensor Tower found that average weekly Kalshi downloads during the first three weeks of the World Cup were nearly twice their Super Bowl LX level, while Polymarket downloads were almost four times higher. The analytics company identified prediction markets as the main source of growth among US sports-wagering apps during the tournament.
The figures indicate that search demand, app downloads and trading volume are measuring different parts of customer behaviour. Users can discover an operator through app stores, advertising, referrals or social media without searching for its brand, while existing customers can repeatedly trade without generating new search activity.
Blask has previously reported a strong relationship between share of search and market performance in traditional iGaming, but it has not established whether the same relationship applies to prediction-market trading. For now, its data provides a measure of brand attention rather than a direct indicator of transaction volume or overall market share.