If a Kalshi settlement went against you and you believe the exchange got it wrong, here is how the real, public complaint path works. It has four steps: re-read the market's own rules, ask the exchange to review the outcome, file a free complaint with the CFTC's Division of Enforcement, and, in the narrow cases where it fits, file a reparations claim on CFTC Form 30. All of it is public, and the free parts you can start online today, without a lawyer.
What that path is not is a refund button. Each step does something different, costs something different, and carries a different realistic outcome. The angriest posts about prediction market settlements almost never distinguish between them; this walkthrough does. By the end you will know what each of the three reparations procedures costs, which claim sizes they were built for, and the eligibility screen that decides whether any of them reaches an exchange at all.
The Quick Answer
To formally complain about a prediction market settlement, you (1) re-read the market's written rules, (2) put the dispute on Kalshi's record, through its published review process before settlement or through support after, (3) submit the CFTC's free online complaint form, which goes to its Division of Enforcement, and (4) if your claim qualifies, file a reparations complaint on Form 30 with a filing fee of $50 to $250. The full step-by-step, the fee table, and the eligibility catch that decides whether that last door is even open are all below.
Why Settlement Complaints End Up At The CFTC
Settlement disputes are the single angriest theme in prediction market communities, and the anger is not abstract. One r/Kalshi trader: "Highway robbery. The event happened, there's proof, he said the word. … How does a no resolve if they don't count the video available as valid?" Another: "I got scammed by Kalshi on a bet I won. I bet in August on steelers over 8.5 wins. They got their 9th win on Sunday and Kalshi marked my bet as lost … support … will only refund me my cost."
Some of these disputes have already escalated past message boards. A class action filed March 5, 2026, Risch v. KalshiEX LLC, claims the exchange improperly invoked a "death carveout" to avoid paying roughly $54 million on its Khamenei market; the plaintiffs allege breach of contract and fraud, and those claims are allegations, untested in court. We are not telling you who is right. What matters for this guide is the advice traders now pass around in those threads: "Everyone needs to submit to CFTC — Kalshi failed rule 6.3 … You can also file a Reparations complaint with CFTC Form 30."
The advice is directionally real. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated exchange, the CFTC does take complaints, and Form 30 exists. But the process behind it has rules, fees, deadlines, and one eligibility screen that decides everything. Here is the whole ladder, step by step, starting with the one that decides whether you have a case at all.
Step 1: Re-Read The Market Rules Before You File Anything
Every complaint on this ladder ultimately gets measured against one document: the market's own rules. Each Kalshi contract names its settlement source and payout criteria in advance, and the exchange settles against that text, not against what a reasonable person watching the event assumed. Most settlement rage, including several of the disputes quoted above, lives in the gap between the market's title and its fine print. We broke down how that gap works in what happens at settlement on Kalshi and in the settlement traps that catch mention-market traders.
So before you file anything, pull up the contract terms for your market and read them like a lawyer would: the named source, the deadline, every carveout. If the rules support the outcome you expected, you have a real complaint. If they support the exchange's outcome, every step above this one will check the same text and reach the same conclusion, and your real lesson is about how these markets are built, not about this settlement. That reading also determines what you can credibly allege later, because a CFTC complaint that says "the market resolved against its own written rules" is a different animal from one that says "the rules were unfair."
Step 2: Put The Dispute On The Exchange's Record
Here is the honest headline for this step: Kalshi publishes no appeal form for a market that already settled. Its named process runs the other direction, before settlement. In the app, Kalshi's help center describes a "Request to Settle" feature: "Start by clicking on the options icon located in the lower right corner of the specific market," choose Request to Settle, and "our markets team will thoroughly review all the settlement requests." Once a market has settled, the documented fallback in trader complaints is plain support contact, the same channel the Steelers bettor quoted above used, with the market title and your specific rules argument attached. Either way, you want the dispute in writing on the exchange's record, because the rulebook machinery below is what governs the answer.
The machinery lives in Kalshi's rulebook (PDF copy hosted by Robinhood, which distributes Kalshi's contracts; the quotes here come from the version stamped January 27, 2025, and the current text lives on Kalshi's regulatory page). Rule 7.1 lays out the Market Outcome Review Process: "Before Settlement, Kalshi may initiate the Market Outcome Review Process, at its sole discretion," and if it does, "the Outcome Review Committee will determine the final Market Outcome" and "shall review all relevant evidence and determine a final Market Outcome within a 24 hour period." When it cannot be determined whether a contract's payout criterion covers the actual outcome, Rule 6.3(b) lets Kalshi set the payouts itself, and it "may use the last traded price of the Contract to determine the payout"; reporting on the Khamenei market says a last-price settlement is what those traders got. Only if a last traded price "is not available," or Kalshi decides it does not represent a fair settlement, does the Outcome Review Committee make its "binding determination of fair allocation."
Kalshi later codified the death carveout at the center of the Khamenei fight. In a rule filing submitted to the CFTC on March 2, 2026, effective March 17, 2026, it added Rule 6.3(e), which says that when "a natural person who is the primary subject of a Contract's Underlying or Payout Criterion dies prior to Expiration, Kalshi may, in its sole discretion, settle the Contract at the last traded price prior to the death," with the same closing line: determinations under the rule "are final and not subject to review." The filing left the existing text intact but renumbered the subsections that follow the new (e), so subsection letters in the January 2025 PDF may not line up with the current rule.
Now the part the angry threads skip, quoted in full, because it frames everything after it: "Determinations of the Outcome Review Committee are final and not subject to review." Inside the exchange's own walls, there is no appeals court. That one sentence is why the rest of this article exists, and it is exactly the moment to move up the ladder.
Step 3: File The Free CFTC Complaint
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is the federal regulator that oversees Kalshi, part of the same framework we mapped in our guide to prediction market legality. One housekeeping note before you file anything: none of this is legal advice; it is the public map. The complaint intake itself is free and can be completed online:
- Go to the CFTC's online complaint form, or call 866-366-2382.
- Describe the market, the settlement, and the specific rule you believe was violated, with dates, screenshots, and your position size.
- Submit. Per the CFTC, complaints go "directly to the Division of Enforcement."
If you have inside, non-public information about wrongdoing, there is a separate whistleblower Form TCR, which carries anti-retaliation protections and potential awards of up to 30% of collected funds. A trader who simply disagrees with a settlement is filing the general form, not that one.
Set your expectations here: this complaint informs Enforcement; it is not the CFTC's forum for awarding you individual damages. Enforcement lawyers read these filings, look for patterns, and sometimes build actions on them. A docket of near-identical settlement complaints about one market is precisely how a pattern becomes visible. But nobody at the CFTC calls you back with a payout. If what you want is your money, the Commission's answer is the final step, and this is where Form 30 finally enters.
Step 4: The Reparations Complaint, CFTC Form 30
The CFTC Reparations Program is the Commission's customer claims forum, in its own words "an inexpensive, impartial, and efficient forum for customer complaints," one the CFTC describes as serving complaints against futures industry professionals. You file Form 30 online or by mail to the Office of Proceedings, pay a filing fee, and a CFTC administrative judge decides the dispute under the Part 12 reparations rules. Three procedures exist, and your claim size largely picks for you:
| Procedure | Filing Fee | Claim Size | Hearing | Appeal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voluntary | $50 | Any amount | None | None, for either side |
| Summary | $125 | $30,000 or less | Written, oral or phone if needed | To the Commission, then a U.S. Court of Appeals |
| Formal | $250 | Over $30,000 | Possible in-person hearing | To the Commission, then a U.S. Court of Appeals |
Every filing fee is non-refundable, an appeal to the Commission carries its own $50 fee, and the voluntary track requires all parties, respondents included, to consent to it.
Three constraints matter as much as the fees. First, the deadline: a reparations complaint must be filed within the program's two-year window from the conduct you are complaining about. Second, per the CFTC's eligibility checklist, you must allege that the respondent "violated the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) or CFTC regulations," not merely that an outcome felt wrong, and you cannot be "involved in other actions involving the same claim." The CFTC's stated examples are NFA arbitration and civil court; whether passively belonging to an uncertified class action counts is not spelled out, so if Risch matters to your situation, ask the Office of Proceedings before you file. The checklist also screens out respondents in bankruptcy or receivership, and non-citizens may need to post a bond or a waiver.
Third, the catch the Reddit advice never mentions: the CFTC's checklist requires that the individual or firm you name was "registered with the CFTC at the time of the alleged wrongdoing or at the time the complaint is filed." The program was built for claims against registered trading professionals, your classic brokers and advisors. Kalshi operates as a CFTC-designated contract market, which is a different regulatory category, and whether a reparations claim against the exchange itself clears that screen is a question the Office of Proceedings answers case by case, not something anyone can promise you in advance. Filing costs you the fee either way, so file with your eyes open.
A Worked Example: Pricing A Real $600 Settlement Dispute
Put real numbers on it, from a real dispute. One trader in the r/PredictionMarkets threads over the Khamenei market described his position: "I bet $60 @ roughly 10-1 on yes," on contracts he says Kalshi then declined to pay out under the death carveout. At $1 per winning contract, that position would have returned roughly $660; net of his $60 stake, the disputed winnings come to about $600, on the same settlement the Risch class action now contests. That makes it the perfect size to walk through this ladder.
The exchange review is free, so it always comes first. The Division of Enforcement complaint is free, so it always happens too; it costs you nothing but the writeup and adds your dispute to the regulator's pattern file. The reparations decision is where you actually do math. A $600 claim fits the voluntary procedure at $50, which is about 8% of the claim, non-refundable, decided on written submissions with no appeal for either side. There is a wrinkle even there: the CFTC requires every party, respondents included, to consent to the voluntary track, so it is not the claimant's unilateral pick, and if consent does not come, the floor becomes the $125 summary procedure. Summary is appealable to the Commission and then a U.S. Court of Appeals, with an oral or phone presentation only if the judgment officer finds one necessary. But now you have staked about a fifth of the claim on a proceeding the CFTC says typically runs 12 to 18 months, with the registration screen from Step 4 still ahead of you, and actively joining the class action could close the reparations door under the concurrent-claim screen. That math changes completely as a claim grows toward the program's $30,000 procedural line, and that is the honest shape of it: reparations was priced for disputes with brokers over real money, not for $60 tickets on a single political contract. For a small claim, Steps 1 through 3, the free ones, plus a paper trail may be all the process that is economically rational.
What Else Is On The Table
Start with the clock, because it shrinks every option here. Rule 11.3(b) of Kalshi's rulebook bars any action against a Kalshi party "unless it brings such action within 2 years of the first occurrence" of the act complained of. Two years sounds long; traders who spent a year arguing with support have burned half of it.
The rulebook also contains an arbitration chapter, and its text matters: Rule 10.1 covers "any Claim by the Participant against a Participant," with awards "final and binding" and the prevailing party entitled "to recover from the other party all costs, expenses and reasonable attorneys' fees." By its own wording that is trader-versus-trader machinery, whether it reaches a claim against the exchange turns on the current rulebook's definitions, and the fee-shifting line makes it a poor bet at $600 stakes regardless: lose, and you may owe the other side's lawyers.
Beyond that sit the courts: small claims, which triggers the concurrent-claim screen above, and class actions like Risch, which exist precisely because individual claims are small and the alleged conduct is shared. Risch was filed March 5, 2026 and is young as lawsuits go, so check its current status before making any decision that depends on it. We are not lawyers, and this is not legal advice; it is the map of what exists.
FAQ: Kalshi Settlement Complaints
Does filing a CFTC complaint get your money back?
Not by itself. The free complaint form goes to the Division of Enforcement, which investigates violations; it does not adjudicate your individual loss. The reparations program on Form 30 is the CFTC channel that can actually award damages, and it comes with the fees, the two-year deadline, and the registration screen covered above.
Does Kalshi ever change a market outcome after review?
The rulebook allows it before settlement: under Rule 7.1 the Outcome Review Committee weighs the evidence and sets the final market outcome within 24 hours of a review being opened. Whichever path triggers the committee, the rulebook declares its determinations final, and Rule 6.3's versions add "not subject to review," so post-settlement reversals are not something the written process offers.
The Bottom Line
The distance between "they stole my money" and "here is my remedy" is a specific, boring, public process, and the practical split is simple. The free CFTC complaint creates a regulator-readable record, so it is always worth filing. Form 30 is a paid litigation decision, not customer support, and it turns on four things: the contract text you read in Step 1, the CEA or regulation violation you can actually allege, the two-year clock, and a registration screen that was never designed with exchanges in mind. Traders who walk that ladder calmly are the ones regulators can act on, because enforcement runs on dockets, not vibes.
And the cheapest remedy of all is the one from Step 1, applied before you trade: the settlement terms are the instrument, so read them first, every market, every time. We keep a running breakdown of how these disputes actually play out as they happen. If this whole saga has you wanting plays that get graded in the open instead, our free expert picks hub publishes picks with transparent results, no filing fee required.
