If you're thinking about paying for a Kalshi trading bot, ours included, these are the questions worth asking first. A good bot should pass all of them without hand-waving.
1. Does your money stay in your own account?
A bot should trade your Kalshi account through Kalshi's API. It should never ask you to send funds to a wallet, a pool or the seller. If a product needs custody of your money, that's a different kind of product with very different risks.
2. How does it connect, and who holds the key?
Kalshi lets you create API keys from your account settings. A sensible bot stores that key on your machine, uses it only to place and manage your orders, and never needs your Kalshi password. Ask where the key lives and what happens to it if you cancel. You can revoke a key from your Kalshi account at any time.
3. Does it do the fee math?
On Kalshi the price you pay is roughly the win rate you need, and fees push it higher. At 93¢ you need about a 94% hit rate on a single contract just to break even. A bot that doesn't calculate break-even after fees before each trade is guessing. (See the break-even table and maker vs taker.)
4. Can you see why it skipped a trade?
Most good setups get skipped. A bot that logs a reason for every trade and every skip lets you check its logic instead of trusting it. If all you get is a P&L number, you can't tell skill from luck.
5. Are the results honest?
Be wary of win rates without losses, screenshots without dates, or "guaranteed" anything. Honest results show the number of trades, the wins and the losses, profit after fees, and the time period. Even then, a few days is a small sample. Our own 265-trade write-up shows a 94% hit rate producing only a thin profit, which is the reality of buying favorites.
6. What are the risk limits, and who sets them?
You should be able to cap contracts per trade, total exposure and daily losses, and pick which markets and sides it trades. Nothing should trade until you switch it on.
7. Where does it run?
Some bots run in the seller's cloud; others run on your own computer. Running locally means your key stays with you, but the computer has to stay on and online while it trades. Know which one you're buying and what happens if the connection drops mid-trade.
8. How do you cancel?
Monthly, cancel-anytime pricing with no lock-in is the norm for good tools. Check before you pay.
How DeskBot answers these
- Your money stays in your Kalshi account; DeskBot uses your own API key, stored on your computer.
- It calculates break-even after Kalshi's fee on all 19 15-minute markets every round.
- Every trade and every skip comes with a written reason on the dashboard.
- You set contract size, sides and risk caps, and nothing trades until you switch it on.
- It runs on Windows or a Mac that stays on while it trades.
- $19.99/month, cancel anytime.
See how DeskBot works, read the FAQ, or try the free break-even calculator first.
Educational content, not financial advice. Trading event contracts can lose money, and no bot guarantees profits. DeskBot is independent software and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Kalshi.