Kalshi Auto Sell: How to Set, Edit and Turn It Off
The Short Answer
Auto Sell is a take-profit order Kalshi offers right after a buy order fills. You drag a slider to a target price, submit, and your contracts sell automatically if the market reaches it. Kalshi says the lowest target you can choose is at or above your purchase price, so an auto sell will not sell your contracts for less than you paid. It appears in your Orders list as a resting limit sell, where you can edit or cancel it. To stop being asked, turn off the auto-sell prompt in settings.
Auto Sell is one of the few Kalshi features that people search for by name and then struggle to find documentation on, usually because they meet it as a pop-up immediately after a trade and dismiss it without reading. It is a genuinely useful order type and it behaves differently from the take profit and stop loss orders Kalshi offers on perpetual futures. Here is exactly what it does, how to set it, how to remove it, and when it is the wrong tool.
Key Takeaways
- Auto Sell is take-profit only. Kalshi states the lowest target you can choose is at or above your purchase price, so it cannot be used as a stop loss on event contracts.
- Once set, it appears under Orders as a resting limit sell, and Kalshi says you can edit the price or cancel it there at any time before it fills.
- Fills can be partial. If there are not enough buyers at your target, some contracts sell and the rest keep resting.
- Take profit and stop loss orders are a different product. Those apply to Kalshi's perpetual futures and work in both directions.
What Auto Sell Actually Is
After a buy order fills, Kalshi may ask whether you want to set an automatic sell at a higher price. You choose the target with a slider and submit. If the market later trades up to that level, your contracts sell at that price without you being there.
The important detail is what it becomes once submitted. Kalshi says your auto sell appears under Orders as a resting limit sell. That explains its behavior: it follows the same fill rules as any limit order, it can rest unfilled until the market closes, and because it sits on the book it executes as a maker order rather than paying the taker fee.
It also explains why a position can sell while you are away and you find out afterward. Nothing unusual happened. An order you placed got hit.
How to Set It
After a buy order fills, Kalshi may show the prompt. Drag the slider to the price you want to take profit at, then tap Submit. Setting one is a deliberate action, so closing the prompt without submitting means no auto sell is created. The prompt is also not guaranteed to appear on every fill.
Kalshi restricts the target to at or above your purchase price. That is a deliberate guard. Auto Sell is designed to lock in a gain, not to cut a loss, and the interface will not let you use it the other way around. It is not the same as being loss-proof: a target set right at your purchase price still leaves you down the trading fee.
Pick the target the way you would pick any limit sell. A target one cent above your entry will probably fill and earn you almost nothing after fees. A target far out of the money will not fill at all. The useful range is a price the market plausibly reaches while your thesis is still intact.
How to Edit, Cancel or Remove It
| What you want | Where to do it | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Change the target price | Orders list, edit the resting sell | Order rests at the new price |
| Cancel a single auto sell | Orders list, cancel the order | Position stays open, no automatic exit |
| Stop being asked after every buy | Settings, turn off the auto-sell prompt after buy | Existing auto sells are unaffected |
| Dismiss the prompt permanently, quickly | Choose the do not show again option on the prompt | Syncs across mobile and web |
The distinction in the last two rows is the one people get wrong. Turning off the prompt only stops Kalshi asking. Kalshi states that turning the prompt off does not change any auto sell you have already placed, and those stay live under Orders. If you want out of the order itself, cancel it there.
On mobile the setting sits under trade mechanics; on web it is under trade preferences in account settings. Kalshi says the setting syncs across web and mobile, so switching it off in one place turns it off in the other.
Auto Sell Is Not Take Profit and Stop Loss
Kalshi documents a separate feature called take profit and stop loss, and searching for one will often surface the other. They are not the same thing and they do not apply to the same product.
Take profit and stop loss orders belong to Kalshi's perpetual futures. They close a position automatically when price hits a level set in advance, and they work in both directions: take profit above entry on a long and below entry on a short, stop loss the other way around. Kalshi recommends stop losses in particular at higher leverage. It also warns that a position cannot be closed while a resting limit order is active on it, and advises canceling that order first if it may conflict with your TP/SL.
Auto Sell on event contracts has none of that. One direction, no leverage, no stop. Kalshi documents stop losses only for perpetual futures and documents no stop-order type for event contracts, so there is no built-in way to set one today. You would have to watch the market and sell manually, or set an alert somewhere that can watch it for you.
When Auto Sell Is the Wrong Tool
Auto Sell is a good fit for a position you are happy to leave, in a liquid market, with a target you would genuinely be pleased to hit. It fits badly in three situations.
The first is thin markets. A resting sell in a market nobody trades will not fill, and you can end up believing you have an exit plan when you do not. The second is news-driven markets, where the price can pass through your target and keep going, leaving you sold out of a position that was about to be worth far more. A limit order takes your price, not the best price.
The third is anything where the risk is on the downside. Auto Sell cannot help. That is the gap worth planning around before you enter, not after.
Knowing Where to Set the Target
The hard part of a take-profit order is not the mechanics, it is choosing the number. A target is only sensible relative to what the contract is actually worth, and one order book is a narrow view of that.
Predictefy matches the same event across 15+ venues, so a Kalshi contract can be read against Polymarket, Opinion, Limitless and others at the same moment. Its arbitrage API is free to use, which means the comparison can feed a script rather than a second monitor.
The practical use here is straightforward. If Kalshi is at 60 cents and three deeper books are at 68, a take-profit at 62 is leaving money on the table. If Kalshi is the expensive venue, the same target looks very different. That context is not visible from the market screen you are trading on.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you set auto sell on Kalshi?
After a buy order fills, Kalshi may show an auto sell prompt. Drag the slider to your target price and submit. The target must be at or above what you paid. The order then rests under Orders as a limit sell and fills automatically if the market reaches that price.
How do you remove or turn off auto sell on Kalshi?
To cancel one order, open your Orders list and cancel the resting sell. To stop the prompt appearing after every buy, turn off the auto-sell prompt in settings, under trade mechanics on mobile or trade preferences on web. Turning off the prompt does not cancel auto sells you already placed.
Can Kalshi auto sell be used as a stop loss?
No. Kalshi restricts the target to at or above your purchase price, so it can only take profit. Paired take profit and stop loss orders are documented only for Kalshi's perpetual futures, and Kalshi documents no stop-order type for event contracts at all.
Why did my Kalshi position sell by itself?
Almost always because an auto sell was set after a previous buy and the market reached that price. It rests as an ordinary limit sell, so it fills whenever a buyer meets it. Check your Orders and fill history, and cancel any resting sells you no longer want.
What price should I set an auto sell at?
Pick a level the market can plausibly reach while your thesis holds, not one cent above entry where fees eat the gain. Comparing the same event across venues helps: Predictefy matches events across 15+ venues with a free arbitrage API, so you can see whether Kalshi is cheap or expensive first.
Conclusion
Auto Sell rests as a limit sell with a guard rail that stops you pointing it downward. Once you know that, everything else follows: it can be edited and canceled like any order, it fills partially, it needs liquidity, and turning off the prompt does not touch orders you already have working.
One housekeeping note: this is information, not financial, tax or legal advice. Product behavior and settings change, so confirm anything that matters against Kalshi's own help center before relying on it.