Is Polymarket down? Is Kalshi down? How to check, and what to do with your open positions
Where to check Polymarket’s and Kalshi’s status, Kalshi’s weekly Thursday maintenance window, what happens to open orders during an outage, and a checklist for when you cannot trade.
If Polymarket is not loading, check status.polymarket.com first. It is Polymarket's official status page and shows each part of the platform separately. Kalshi does not run a public status page, but it pauses trading every Thursday from 3:00 to 5:00 AM Eastern for scheduled maintenance, which explains many "Kalshi is down" moments.
Your positions are not lost during an outage. An outage stops you from trading; it does not change what your contracts pay when the market settles.
How to check if Polymarket is down
status.polymarket.com lists each component with its current state and 90 days of history:
| Component | What breaks when it is down |
|---|---|
| Polymarket Web App | The website and app interface |
| Authentication | Logging in |
| Predictions Trading API (CLOB) | Placing and cancelling orders |
| CLOB WebSocket and RTDS WebSocket | Live prices and order updates |
| Markets and Position Data | Market pages, balances and positions |
| On-chain Settlement (Polygon RPC) | Trades confirming on the Polygon blockchain |
| Perpetuals API, Market Data and Trading | Polymarket's perpetual futures products |
You can subscribe to updates by email, Slack, Discord, webhook or RSS. During an incident Polymarket also posts on its official X account and Discord.
A useful detail: the page can say "operational" while one market misbehaves. If only one market is stuck, the problem is usually that market (paused for a rule clarification or resolution), not the platform.
How to check if Kalshi is down
- Is it Thursday between 3:00 and 5:00 AM ET? That is Kalshi's weekly maintenance window. During it a trading pause applies: you cannot place or change orders, but you can cancel them, and resting orders stay in the book.
- Check Kalshi's official X account and Discord, where outages are announced.
- Check a third-party monitor such as Downdetector or StatusGator, which aggregate user reports. They are not official.
Kalshi's API documentation draws one more line worth knowing: a full exchange pause outside the Thursday window means a temporary Kalshi outage, and during an exchange pause you cannot even cancel orders.
Recent outages
Both platforms have struggled at peak moments:
- Kalshi degraded during several of 2025–2026's busiest events: Saturday college football in October 2025 (it blamed "extreme demand"), an NFL game in December 2025 when some users saw $0 balances, and Super Bowl LX in February 2026. In at least one incident, trading through the API and through Robinhood kept working while Kalshi's own app did not.
- Polymarket had app problems during the 2026 World Cup after June updates, a July 2026 incident it acknowledged on Discord, and downtime in December 2025 caused by a disruption on the Polygon network.
Big events are exactly when outages are most likely, so plan for them.
What happens to your orders during an outage
| Polymarket | Kalshi | |
|---|---|---|
| Your positions | Held in your wallet onchain; unaffected | Held in your Kalshi account; unaffected |
| Resting limit orders | Usually stay in the book; the exchange can switch to cancel-only mode during incidents | Stay in the book during pauses, unless you set them to cancel on pause (an API option) |
| Settlement | Follows the market rules once systems recover | Follows the market rules once systems recover |
The real risk is the price moving while you cannot act: a resting order filling at a price you no longer want, or being unable to exit before a result.
Checklist when you cannot trade
- Check the status page (Polymarket) or the time and Kalshi's announcements.
- Rule out your side. Try the website instead of the app, update the app, switch networks. Polymarket blocks restricted countries and Kalshi checks your location, so a VPN or a location error can look like an outage.
- Do not spam the order button. Duplicate orders can fill all at once when the system recovers.
- Cancel risky resting orders if cancellation still works.
- Hedge elsewhere if it matters. The same event often trades on the other platform; a position there can offset yours (how to hedge a bet; compare prices across platforms).
- Take screenshots of your positions and any error messages, then contact support.
Before big events, consider placing limit orders in advance rather than trading live (limit orders vs market orders).
Is Polymarket down? Frequently asked questions
Is Polymarket down right now?
Check status.polymarket.com for the official status of each component, and Polymarket's X account for incidents.
Does Kalshi have a status page?
Not a public one. Kalshi announces incidents on X and Discord, and runs scheduled maintenance every Thursday from 3:00 to 5:00 AM ET.
Why can't I place orders on Kalshi on Thursday morning?
That is the weekly maintenance trading pause. You can still cancel orders.
Will I lose my money if Polymarket goes down?
No. Your shares are held in your wallet and pay out by the market rules once trading resumes.
Why is Polymarket not working in my country?
Polymarket's global site blocks the US and several other countries; that is a restriction, not an outage (where Polymarket is legal).
