Data: sub-cent taker buys on Polymarket, July to September 2026

Every taker buy below 1 cent a contract on Polymarket's international exchange from July 1 to September 30, 2026, behind the Field Notes article A billion cheap contracts, $2.7 million.

Allocations: 6,732,960
Markets: 106,276
Events: 49,047

Splitrule November 6, 2026

Download every buy

Version 2, with names

July 2026 (CSV) 897,054 rows, 42.2 MB gzip
August 2026 (CSV) 2,904,872 rows, 156.3 MB gzip
September 2026 (CSV) 2,931,034 rows, 158.6 MB gzip
July to September (Parquet) 6,732,960 rows, 275.6 MB

Columns ending in _micro are millionths.

Search the buys

Each row is one allocation: the part of a buy that one maker order filled.

Summary totals

The same buys, summed by month, price, fee category, and settlement status, for checking the article's totals.

More downloads

Buys with names (version 2)

Events (CSV) 6.3 MB gzip One row for each of the 49,047 events, with its title and totals.
Markets (CSV) 30.6 MB gzip All 419,133 markets in the four price bands, with names and their sources.
Buys from 1¢ to below 2¢ (Parquet) 2,165,925 rows, 93.4 MB
Buys from 2¢ to below 5¢ (Parquet) 4,319,255 rows, 170.8 MB
Buys from 5¢ to below 10¢ (Parquet) 6,827,265 rows, 281.6 MB
Field definitions Each column's meaning, unit, and source.
Reconciliation Checks against the study, the article, and version 1.
Checksums SHA-256 of every trade file.

Summary tables (version 1)

Cells 405 rows Totals by month, price, fee category, settlement status, and flags.
Core cells 36 rows Cells summed over fee category and flags.
Event counts 32 rows Distinct events by period, price, and 30-day status.
All taker buys by price band 24 rows Buys at every price, behind the shares of contracts and money.
Timing scopes 25 rows Settled money by timing class.
Read me, field definitions, reconciliation, provenance, and checksums

Figures

Figure 1, “Lots of contracts, little money”: PNG, SVG, and values
Figure 2, “What the money did”: PNG, SVG, and values
Figure 3, “Per dollar and per event”: PNG, SVG, and values
Figure 4, “Where the per-event average comes from”: PNG, SVG, and values
Figure 5, “A few events decide the answer”: PNG, SVG, and values
Figure 6, “The timing check covers a small part”: PNG, SVG, and values
Paid by 30-day status, the values behind the methods' status table

Version 1, without names (archived)

The same rows and values: July, August, September, July to September in Parquet, events, the 1 to 2 cent, 2 to 5 cent, and 5 to 10 cent bands, field definitions, and checksums. The checksums also list the old version 1 search files, which are no longer served.

About the data

What the rows cover

Taker buys below 1 cent a contract on Polymarket's two exchange contracts on Polygon, by block time from July 1, 2026, 00:00 UTC through September 30, 2026, 23:59:59 UTC.
Settlement is read from the chain through November 3, 2026. “Not settled within 30 days” doesn't mean the market is still open, and a payout shows only for markets settled by that date.
Fee category and scheduled end come from the November 3 and 4 snapshot of Polymarket's market data, so they can differ from what the venue showed at the time of a buy.
No wallet addresses or token ids. Transaction hashes open on Polygonscan.
Taker sells aren't included anywhere. Buys at 10 cents or more appear only in the totals by price band.

Units

Columns ending in _micro hold millionths: divide by 1,000,000 for contracts or US dollars. The rows of one match add up exactly to the amounts recorded on chain.
Paid is the collateral before the fee plus the taker fee.
Return per dollar is total payout divided by total paid, minus one, for buys settled within 30 days.

Where the names come from

Market questions, event titles, and listed outcomes come from Polymarket's Gamma market data, saved November 3 and 4, 2026. The outcome bought comes from the Data API token record that the study used.
91 of the 106,276 sub-cent markets had no Gamma record. They take the Data API's market title, which matched Gamma wherever both existed, and an event title from another market in the same event where there is one. 7 events have no title and show as unknown.
3 buys in 2 markets have no outcome label and show as unknown.
Names are as Polymarket wrote them at the snapshot. Titles can change, so join on the ids.

Data: Polygon chain logs and Polymarket's public Gamma and Data APIs. Analysis: Splitrule.