The exchange under the app
Novig is an anonymous central limit order book for sports. Every order matches against another trader, Novig never takes the other side, and no futures commission merchant sits between you and the exchange. The company was founded in 2021 by Jacob Fortinsky and Kelechi Ukah, has raised more than $105 million with a $75 million Series B led by Pantera Capital in February 2026, and signed on as the New York Mets' exclusive prediction market partner in July 2026, the first deal of its kind for an MLB franchise.
The catalog is sports, full stop. MLB, NFL, WNBA, ATP and WTA tennis, UFC, and the PGA Tour were live at launch, with game markets, player props, futures, and Combination Contracts, Novig's parlay-style multi-leg product. No politics, no economics, no crypto. The regulatory story behind the August 4 launch, including the four state lawsuits and the September 11 hearing, is covered in Is Novig legit.
The fee schedule, measured
Novig's homepage says no fees. The exchange's actual schedule charges takers 0.03 times the contract price times one minus the price, capped near $0.0075 per contract. Work it through: a contract at 50 cents carries the full three quarters of a cent, and a contract at 10 cents carries about a quarter of a cent. Makers pay nothing and can earn a credit worth up to half the taker fee for adding liquidity. Since the August 4 launch, parlay taker fees alone have totaled $415,132.
That schedule is cheap by any measure in this category. ProphetX charges 2 percent of net winnings on straight trades. A sportsbook prices its margin into the line itself, invisibly and permanently. Novig's cost per trade rounds to pennies, and the homepage's no-fee framing still oversells it. Read the schedule, then trade it on the merits, which are strong.
What the reviews actually say
The money mechanics first. Deposits run through cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo, Trustly, and Aeropay with a $10 minimum, and withdrawals clear within minutes on Venmo and Trustly and in 2 to 3 business days on cards, once identity verification is done. Nothing exotic, and it works.
The averages are healthy: 4.66 stars across 3,796 iOS ratings and 4.44 across 984 on Google Play as of August 20, 2026. The recent reviews are bimodal, mostly fives and ones, and the ones cluster on the same three gripes. Withdrawals run slower than the sweepstakes era. The signup promo, $25 in trade credits on a $10 deposit, arrives as five separate $5 pieces that cannot be pooled on parlays. And parlays black out many selections outright.
The fives cluster too, on pricing. Traders describe roughly 50/50 markets without a book's built-in margin, and beginners call it the easiest exchange to learn. Novig's own marketing claims 43 percent of its users are profitable. That number is Novig's, unaudited, and no independent source has verified it. Treat it as a pitch, and treat the fee schedule and the order book as the product.
The scale question
Novig reported $18 million traded on launch day, $148.4 million in week one, and a daily average above $20 million in the second week, enough to rank as the fourth-largest CFTC-regulated prediction market two weeks in. Every one of those numbers comes from Novig. The distance to the front is the fact a trader has to hold: Kalshi cleared $33 billion notional in June 2026, and its iOS ratings base is 125 times larger.
So the review lands here. Novig is a legitimate, well-funded exchange with the best posted fee schedule in sports prediction markets and product edges still being sanded off. It is one venue with one young book. The alternatives with deeper books are Kalshi and Polymarket, and a fill at the price the book actually holds beats a cheap fee on an order that never matches. Kairos trades Kalshi, Polymarket, and Predict.fun from one order book. Event contracts carry real market risk on every venue.
Sources
Every fee, volume, ratings, and funding claim on this page comes from dated coverage or the venue's own materials.
- DeFi Rate, August 4, 2026: the launch-day catalog, the non-intermediated exchange structure, Bitnomial clearing, and the maker credit program.
- OddsAssist, August 12, 2026: the taker fee formula, the cap, and the maker credit terms.
- InGame, August 19, 2026: the launch-day, week-one, and second-week volume figures, the fourth-place ranking, and the $415,132 parlay fee total, all Novig-derived.
- PR Newswire, February 18, 2026: the $75 million Series B led by Pantera Capital.
- PR Newswire, July 30, 2026: the Mets partnership.
- Dimers, updated August 14, 2026: deposit rails, the $10 minimum, and withdrawal timing.
- App ratings and review themes read directly from the Apple App Store review feed and Google Play on August 20, 2026.