How to read a Polymarket leaderboard

What the two Polymarket rankings measure

The page has a Profit/Loss toggle and a Volume toggle, plus a category filter that defaults to All Categories. Each row shows a rank, a username linked to a profile, a dollar profit figure and, in smaller type, the trader's volume.

Polymarket's public leaderboard API exposes the same data. The endpoint is /v1/leaderboard, with orderBy set to PNL or VOL and timePeriod set to DAY, WEEK, MONTH or ALL. Each entry carries rank, userName, vol, pnl, proxyWallet, xUsername and a verifiedBadge flag.

The API docs describe pnl only as "Profit and loss for this trader" and vol as "Trading volume for this trader". They do not say whether open positions are marked to market or whether fees are netted, so treat the number as Polymarket's figure rather than a realized P&L you can audit.

• Profit table: who made the most dollars in the window.
• Volume table: who traded the most dollars in the window. A market maker or an arbitrageur can top it while barely profiting.
• Categories: OVERALL, POLITICS, SPORTS, ESPORTS, CRYPTO, CULTURE, MENTIONS, WEATHER, ECONOMICS, TECH, FINANCE.
• API limits: up to 50 rows per call and an offset of at most 1,000, so the public feed stops around the top 1,050.

Monthly versus all-time

The all-time table rewards size and tenure. A wallet that has been active since 2024 with a large bankroll will outrank a newer wallet with a better hit rate, because the ranking is dollars, not return on capital.

The monthly and weekly tables reset the clock, which surfaces streaks and one-off wins. Polymarket shows a "Biggest wins this month" list under the main table for exactly this reason: a single large position can put a wallet at the top for one window and nowhere the next.

For copying or following, read the same wallet across all four windows. A name that appears in the monthly and the all-time profit tables has done it more than once. A name that appears only in Today has, so far, done it once.

Why the Kalshi leaderboard is opt-in

Kalshi's help center says the leaderboard lets you "track your trading performance and compete against other traders", and that "you're automatically opted out of the leaderboard by default" with the option to opt in at any time.

The name shown is the Kalshi username, which the help center says can be changed once every 30 days. Kalshi does not publish a per-account public API for leaderboard positions the way Polymarket does, so there is no public wallet-level record to rebuild a ranking from.

The practical result: the Polymarket table is a census of every wallet that traded, because Polygon transactions are public. The Kalshi table is a sample of accounts that chose to be seen. Absence from the Kalshi leaderboard says nothing about a trader's results.

What trackers add on top

Third-party trackers exist because the venue tables rank by raw dollars and stop there. The useful ones recompute the ranking with costs, hit rate and copyability in mind.

Polycopy's Copy Score subtracts slippage, venue fees and its own 0.5% fee from a trader's finished trades over a 90-day lookback, and flags market making, arbitrage and high-frequency styles as ones that do not copy well. The score is free on all traders; automated bots are $30 per month.

PredictFolio is free and rebuilds trader performance from Polygon chain data, which is the same source the venue table draws on but with the calculation visible. KalshiSpy covers the Kalshi side: it scores what it describes as ID-verified accounts by realized P&L, win rate and volume, keeps the top 1,247 as a whale list, and charges $61 per month.

• Net-of-cost P&L instead of gross dollars.
• Win rate and average position size, which the venue tables omit.
• Open positions for a tracked wallet, which the venue leaderboard does not show at all.
• Category breakdowns, so a politics specialist is not judged on a sports bet.

A reading checklist

Start on the Profit toggle, Monthly window, then switch to All and see who is still there. Then flip to Volume and note the wallets whose volume dwarfs their profit; those are trading a style you probably cannot copy at retail size.

Open the wallet's profile before acting on any rank. The row gives you a username and two numbers. The profile gives you the trades behind them.