# Kalshi Trades API: Whale Trades, Odds & Order Books (`wellbuilt_zythem/kalshi-trades-api`) Actor

Every Kalshi trade with the market question attached: side, price, contracts and dollars paid. Filter whale trades by size, series (Fed, CPI, weather, sports) or category. Also markets with odds, volume and open interest, order books and price history. Official API, no key.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/wellbuilt_zythem/kalshi-trades-api.md
- **Developed by:** [Carlos Escanez](https://apify.com/wellbuilt_zythem) (community)
- **Categories:** Developer tools, AI, Agents
- **Security:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $1.00 / 1,000 trades

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Kalshi Trades API: Whale Trades, Odds & Order Books

Every trade on Kalshi as it prints, with the **market's question on the same row**: which side was bought, at what price, how many contracts and how many dollars went in. Filter the tape down to the whale trades, one topic (Fed, inflation, weather, elections, sports) or one market.

Also in the same actor: every market with odds, volume and open interest, full order books, and price history in minute, hour or day candles.

Straight from Kalshi's official public trade API. No API key, no Kalshi account, no browser. You pay per row delivered.

### Why this one

Most Kalshi actors give you markets and prices. This one gives you **the trades**: the tape of who-bought-what-size, across the whole exchange or any series, with the dollars already worked out. That is the data you need to spot large bets the moment they happen, or to study how money moved on the Fed decision last month.

Measured on 29 October 2026, one hour of the whole exchange (05:32 to 06:32 UTC):

| What | Measured |
|---|---|
| Trades on all of Kalshi | 445,012 |
| Trades of $1,000 or more | 1,432 ($4.3M in total) |
| Of those, paying 95 cents or more per contract | 565 |
| Trades of $10,000 or more | 56 |

The biggest trades of that hour that paid 95 cents or less:

| Time (UTC) | Paid | Bought | Market |
|---|---|---|---|
| 05:41:57 | $33,361 | YES at $0.33 | Will Republicans win the Senate race in Texas? (Ken Paxton) |
| 06:20:55 | $22,500 | YES at $0.09 | Will Republicans win the House in 2026? |
| 06:01:56 | $22,100 | YES at $0.78 | Alibek Kachmazov wins |
| 05:59:19 | $19,111 | NO at $0.86 | Jil Teichmann wins |

### Try it now

The prefilled input reads the last hour of the whole exchange and returns the 50 newest trades of $1,000 or more that paid 95 cents or less. On Apify it took 11 seconds.

### What you get for each trade

| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| `tradedAt` | Time of the trade, UTC. |
| `marketTitle`, `yesOutcome` | The market's question, and what a YES contract pays on (for example "Above 5.50%"). |
| `side` | `yes` or `no`: the side the incoming order bought (Kalshi's taker side). |
| `price` | Price paid per contract, in dollars from 0 to 1. It is also the market's implied probability for that side. |
| `contracts` | Contracts traded. Kalshi allows fractions. |
| `costUsd` | Dollars paid: contracts x price. Kalshi's fees are not included. |
| `payoutIfRightUsd`, `profitIfRightUsd` | What those contracts pay if that side wins, and the profit over the cost. |
| `yesPrice`, `noPrice` | Both prices of the trade. |
| `isBlockTrade` | Kalshi's block trade flag. |
| `ticker`, `eventTicker`, `seriesTicker`, `seriesTitle`, `category` | Where the market sits: KXFED-26DEC-T4.50, KXFED-26DEC, KXFED, Economics. |
| `marketCloseTime` | When the market stops trading. |
| `tradeId`, `source` | Kalshi's trade id, and `live` or `historical`. |

### Four modes

- **Trades** (default): the tape, filtered by minimum dollars, series, event, market, category or keyword. Newest first.
- **Markets**: question, last price, mid, bid and ask on both sides, 24 h change, volume, 24 h volume, open interest, close time, rules and result. Most traded first.
- **Order books**: best YES bid and ask, spread, every price level per side and the contracts resting on each side.
- **Price history**: candles per minute, hour or day with open, high, low, close and mean price, closing bid and ask, volume and open interest.

### How to use it

1. **Whale trades right now:** Minimum trade size `10000`, Lookback `1`.
2. **Every Fed trade of the last month:** Series tickers `KXFED`, Lookback `720`, Minimum trade size `0`, Maximum price `100`.
3. **Big bets on one topic:** Keyword `bitcoin` or Categories `Elections`, plus a minimum size.
4. **The most traded economics markets:** What to get `Markets`, Categories `Economics`, Minimum 24 h volume `1000`.
5. **Order books of the busiest Fed markets:** What to get `Order books`, Series tickers `KXFED`, Markets for order books `5`.

Tickers are on every Kalshi market page; the series is the first part (`KXFED` in `KXFED-26DEC-T4.50`).

### Speed

Measured on 29 October 2026:

| Request | Time |
|---|---|
| Last hour, newest 50 trades of $1,000 or more | 11 s |
| Whole exchange, one full hour, trades of $1,000 or more | 154 to 160 s |
| Fed series, 30 days (247 markets), trades of $100 or more | 76 s |
| All 155,000 open markets, Economics only | 32 s |

### Good to know

- **Trades are anonymous.** Kalshi does not publish who traded.
- **Near-certain bets are left out by default.** Many large trades buy an outcome that is already decided (NO at $0.999 on a 15-minute Bitcoin market, for a few dollars of profit). Maximum price `95` skips them; set it to `100` to keep every trade.
- **The whole exchange is a lot of tape.** Kalshi lets a keyless client read about 3 pages of 1,000 trades per second, so the whole exchange reads at about 2.5 minutes per hour of trades: a one-hour run covers about 20 hours. For days or weeks, give Series, Event or Market tickers: the actor then asks Kalshi market by market, and 30 days of the Fed series took 76 seconds.
- **Older trades** (before Kalshi's historical cutoff, 29 August 2026 today) are read from Kalshi's historical archive automatically, with `source: historical`.
- **Combo contracts** (parlays) are left out unless you turn them on.
- **Order books:** Kalshi only lists bids. The best YES ask is $1 minus the best NO bid.
- **Price history** comes only for periods with activity, and only for markets still in Kalshi's live API.

### Pricing

Pay per event: one charge per row delivered, whatever the mode (trade, market, order book or price point). Trades and markets filtered out are not charged. Set a maximum total charge on the run if you want a hard cap; when it is reached the run stops and keeps what it already delivered.

### Run summary

Each run saves `RUN_SUMMARY` in the key-value store: trades and pages read, markets looked up, how far back the run got, why it stopped, and the HTTP status of every request.

# Actor input Schema

## `mode` (type: `string`):

Trades: every trade as it prints, with side, price, contracts, dollars paid and the market's question. Markets: odds, volume and open interest. Order books: every price level. Price history: candles per minute, hour or day.

## `minTradeUsd` (type: `integer`):

Trades mode. Only trades where the buyer paid at least this much (contracts x price). In one measured hour (29 Oct 2026) Kalshi printed 467,931 trades and 59 of them were $10,000 or more. 0 keeps every trade.

## `maxPriceCents` (type: `integer`):

Trades mode. Skip trades that paid more than this per contract. In a measured hour, 39 % of the trades of $1,000 or more paid 95 cents or more: someone buying an outcome that is already decided, for a few dollars of profit. 95 by default; 100 keeps every trade.

## `lookbackHours` (type: `integer`):

Trades mode: hours back from now. With Series, Event or Market tickers the actor asks Kalshi market by market: 30 days of the Fed series (247 markets) took 76 seconds. Without them it reads the whole exchange, about 2.5 minutes per hour of trades. Up to 2160 (90 days).

## `startDate` (type: `string`):

Trades mode. UTC date like 2026-10-28 or time like 2026-10-28T14:00:00Z. Overrides Lookback. Older trades are read from Kalshi's historical archive automatically.

## `endDate` (type: `string`):

Trades mode. Defaults to now. A date without a time includes that whole day.

## `seriesTickers` (type: `array`):

Kalshi series, for example KXFED (Fed rate), KXCPI (inflation), KXHIGHNY (New York high temperature). The series is the first part of any market ticker.

## `eventTickers` (type: `array`):

Kalshi events, for example KXFED-26DEC (the December 2026 Fed meeting).

## `marketTickers` (type: `array`):

Exact markets, for example KXFED-26DEC-T4.50. In Trades mode Kalshi filters these on its side, so months of trades come back quickly.

## `categories` (type: `array`):

Kalshi categories: Politics, Elections, Economics, Financials, Sports, Crypto, Climate and Weather, Entertainment, Companies, Science and Technology, Mentions, Commodities, Health, World.

## `keyword` (type: `string`):

Only markets whose question or outcome contains this text, for example fed, bitcoin or lakers.

## `includeCombos` (type: `boolean`):

Kalshi's multi-leg combo contracts. Off by default: they were 13.5 % of a measured sample of 150,000 trades, and each one mixes several unrelated events.

## `status` (type: `string`):

Markets, Order books and Price history modes. Closed and settled markets need Series or Event tickers.

## `minVolume24h` (type: `integer`):

Markets modes: drop markets with fewer contracts traded in the last 24 hours. Kalshi listed 155,167 open markets on 29 Oct 2026 and most are empty.

## `minOpenInterest` (type: `integer`):

Markets modes: drop markets with fewer contracts still open.

## `maxMarkets` (type: `integer`):

Order books and Price history modes, when no Market tickers are given: the most traded markets of the last 24 hours that match the filters.

## `orderbookDepth` (type: `integer`):

Price levels kept per side. Totals per side always count the whole book.

## `historyInterval` (type: `string`):

Price history mode. Kalshi only returns candles for periods with activity.

## `historyDays` (type: `integer`):

Price history mode: days back from now.

## `maxResults` (type: `integer`):

Rows delivered per run. Trades come newest first; markets come most traded first.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "mode": "trades",
  "minTradeUsd": 1000,
  "maxPriceCents": 95,
  "lookbackHours": 1,
  "includeCombos": false,
  "status": "open",
  "minVolume24h": 0,
  "minOpenInterest": 0,
  "maxMarkets": 10,
  "orderbookDepth": 10,
  "historyInterval": "hour",
  "historyDays": 7,
  "maxResults": 50
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

No description

## `runSummary` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "minTradeUsd": 1000,
    "maxResults": 50
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("wellbuilt_zythem/kalshi-trades-api").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "minTradeUsd": 1000,
    "maxResults": 50,
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("wellbuilt_zythem/kalshi-trades-api").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "minTradeUsd": 1000,
  "maxResults": 50
}' |
apify call wellbuilt_zythem/kalshi-trades-api --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,wellbuilt_zythem/kalshi-trades-api"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/jgK4C4Owtl3rrpYvY/builds/gXkt2xgwlzbVn9RNl/openapi.json