Polymarket Perps (2026): How Perpetual Futures Work and the API

What is Polymarket Perps?

It is a perpetual futures exchange that runs alongside Polymarket's prediction markets. A perp tracks an underlying asset, such as the S&P 500, gold or bitcoin, and never expires, so a position stays open until you close it or it is liquidated. Nothing settles at $1 or $0 the way prediction market shares do.

The exchange is hybrid. Matching, margin and funding run off-chain, deposits and withdrawals settle on Polygon, and state root commitments posted on-chain let observers verify the ledger. The books trade 24/7.

How do you get access to Polymarket Perps?

You need a Polymarket account with pUSD to deposit, at least 10 pUSD. Order placement is not permitted from the United States, Canada, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Crimea, Donetsk or Luhansk, and Polymarket tells builders to block those users rather than just warn them. Read-only market data is not restricted.

Invite codes double as referral codes. Each account has one, shared as https://polymarket.com/perps?c={code}, and it is applied automatically when a new trader opens Perps through that link. A code starts with 10 invites and can unlock up to 500 as combined Perps volume grows, and referrers earn 20% of their referrals' trading fees, paid weekly. Anyone can check a code:

curl -s "https://api.perpetuals.polymarket.com/v1/info/invite?code=YOUR_CODE"

{"valid":false,"error":"code not found"}

That is what an unknown code returned in our checks on 3 October 2026.

What markets can you trade on Polymarket Perps?

On 3 October 2026, GET /v1/info/instruments returned 88 markets, all quoted in pUSD with hourly funding and a $10 minimum order value:

Four markets allowed 50x: BTC-USD, ETH-USD, SP500-USD and NAS100-USD. Polymarket's FAQ quotes up to 20x for crypto, the S&P 500, oil, gold and silver, so read leverage from the endpoint. Caps also fall as positions grow: BTC-USD allowed 50x below $250,000 of notional and 25x from there.

How do leverage and margin work on Polymarket Perps?

Initial margin is notional divided by your leverage. Maintenance margin is 0.5 divided by the market's maximum leverage, so 1% of notional on a 50x market. Both are checked against the mark price, a median of three signals updated every 200 milliseconds, not the last trade.

The web app uses isolated margin by default, and cross margin is opt-in through the API. Withdrawals must leave at least 10% of your open notional. Liquidation closes positions with reduce-only orders against the book and adds a liquidation fee, 0.5% of notional on every market on 3 October 2026. Severe breaches go to the insurance fund instead, or to auto-deleveraging when the fund cannot absorb them. At 50x, a move of about 1% against a fully leveraged position can trigger liquidation.

How does funding work on Polymarket Perps?

When a perp trades above its index, longs pay shorts, and below it, shorts pay longs. Payments go between traders, and Polymarket takes no cut.

Every 5 seconds, the engine walks each side of the book for 1,000 pUSD and samples the premium over the index. Each hour, it runs the average through an 8-hour formula with a fixed 0.01% interest leg, scales it by 1.0 for crypto or 0.5 for other markets, divides by 8, caps it at 4% an hour and settles every open position. With no premium, that leaves 0.00125% an hour for crypto and 0.000625% elsewhere. In our checks on 3 October 2026, ETH-USD showed exactly 0.0000125 and the S&P 500 market 0.00000625.

What are the fees on Polymarket Perps?

Each fill pays abs(Price * Quantity) * Rate in pUSD, at a rate set by trailing 30-day volume. The schedule in Polymarket's docs matched GET /v1/info/fees on 3 October 2026:

Only the top tier earns a maker rebate. Prediction market trading is priced differently, as covered in Polymarket fees explained.

How do you use the Polymarket Perps API?

Public data sits under /v1/info/ and needs no key:

This lists each market's leverage cap, mark price and hourly funding, with Node 18 or newer:

const BASE = 'https://api.perpetuals.polymarket.com';

const [instruments, tickers] = await Promise.all([
  fetch(`${BASE}/v1/info/instruments`).then((r) => r.json()),
  fetch(`${BASE}/v1/info/tickers`).then((r) => r.json()),
]);

const tickerById = new Map(tickers.map((t) => [t.instrument_id, t]));

const rows = instruments.map((i) => {
  const t = tickerById.get(i.instrument_id);
  return {
    symbol: i.symbol,
    category: i.category,
    maxLeverage: i.max_leverage,
    mark: t?.mark_price,
    fundingPerHour: t ? `${(Number(t.funding_rate) * 100).toFixed(4)}%` : null,
    nextFunding: t ? new Date(t.next_funding).toISOString() : null,
  };
});

console.table(rows.slice(0, 8));

On 3 October 2026, exchange stats showed about $105 million of volume over 24 hours, $2.77 billion over 30 days and $77 million of open interest.

Trading needs delegated credentials: you sign an EIP-712 CreateProxy message for a fresh proxy key, and POST /v1/account/proxy returns a secret for private reads. Each IP gets 1,000 weighted request tokens a minute, and the default account tier allows 5,000 trading actions a minute and 1,000 open orders. The @polymarket/client SDK wraps the credentials in openPerpsSession(), and its gasless deposits use a Relayer API key, covered in the Polymarket Relayer API guide. We type-checked this read against version 0.13.0 and ran it live:

import { createPublicClient } from "@polymarket/client";

const client = createPublicClient();

const instruments = await client.fetchPerpsInstruments();
const btc = instruments.find((i) => i.symbol === "BTC-USD");
if (btc === undefined) throw new Error("BTC-USD not listed");

console.log(btc.maxLeverage, btc.riskTiers);

const stream = await client.subscribe([
  { topic: "perps.tickers", instrumentId: btc.id },
]);

for await (const event of stream) {
  const { markPrice, indexPrice, fundingRate } = event.payload;
  console.log({ markPrice, indexPrice, fundingRate });
  await stream.close();
}

How do you stream Polymarket Perps data in real time?

Public channels need no authentication:

This streams the best bid and offer and the trade tape for BTC-USD, instrument 6, in Node 22 or newer:

const ws = new WebSocket('wss://ws.perpetuals.polymarket.com/v1/ws');
const channels = ['bbo::6', 'trades::6'];

ws.addEventListener('open', () => {
  ws.send(JSON.stringify({ id: 1, req: 'sub', chs: channels }));
  setInterval(() => ws.send(JSON.stringify({ id: 0, req: 'post', op: { type: 'ping' } })), 25_000);
});

ws.addEventListener('message', (event) => {
  const msg = JSON.parse(event.data);
  if (msg.ch?.startsWith('bbo::')) {
    console.log('bid', msg.data.bp, 'ask', msg.data.ap);
  } else if (msg.ch?.startsWith('trades::')) {
    for (const t of msg.data) console.log(t.side, t.qty, '@', t.p);
  }
});

Prediction market streams work differently and are covered in the Polymarket WebSocket API guide. If your app follows those markets too, the Predictefy API provides normalized data from 15+ venues and streams prediction-market order books through one WebSocket.

How do Polymarket Perps liquidity rewards work?

Every Perps account is considered automatically. The program pays $75,000 a day in pUSD, split evenly across active markets, for periods running 12:00 UTC to 12:00 UTC. An account needs at least 1% of trailing seven-day maker volume, and its score multiplies maker share, two-sided depth and uptime. Only orders within 20 basis points of the midpoint count, up to $100,000 per tier and side, and bid and ask combine through a harmonic mean, so a one-sided book scores zero.

A second program pays 6% APR on open interest when an account's rewards entity averages at least $5 million a day. Rewards lower the cost of quoting, but a fill against a fast move can cost more than a day's share.

Frequently Asked Questions