Novig Replaces Polymarket by Giving API Trading to Retail With Maker Rebates and Zero Pregame Taker Fees
Updated: Oct 25
Novig has opened its sports trading API to ordinary account holders, giving retail traders direct access to automated order placement, live market data, positions, fills, and order books without requiring a professional market maker agreement.
The timing is notable. Polymarket US moved its maker rebate program to volume tiers on October 19, leaving traders below $10 million in prior month maker volume with no standard maker rebate. Novig is moving in the opposite direction, offering API access alongside cash Maker Credits that are available to ordinary eligible members with no minimum trading volume for the base program.
Novig API trading is available directly from a normal account
Novig users can create an API management key from Profile, Settings, Novig API on the Novig website. The management key can create separate trading subaccounts, fund them, and issue individual trading keys for automated strategies.
The trading API supports placing and cancelling individual or batch orders, reading markets and order books, monitoring positions and fills, and following private and public market activity through WebSocket streams. Traders can use resting GTC orders, timed orders, immediate or cancel orders, fill or kill orders, and post only orders.
That makes Novig substantially more useful for systematic trading than a platform that merely exposes market prices. A program can monitor prices, place liquidity, cancel stale orders, react to fills, separate strategies into different subaccounts, and manage positions without operating through the consumer interface.
Novig also provides a Paper environment for testing strategies before connecting them to real funds.
Pregame API trading has no maker or taker fee
The simplest part of the current Novig fee schedule is also one of its strongest advantages.
Pregame straight trades placed through the API currently carry no maker fee and no taker fee. The same zero fee treatment applies to pregame straight trading through the Novig app and website.
A trader taking an existing 50 cent pregame price therefore pays 50 cents per contract rather than paying a transaction fee on top of the position. A trader posting the 50 cent order as a maker also pays nothing.
For automated strategies that enter and exit frequently before games begin, removing transaction fees changes the economics considerably. Small pricing advantages that would disappear after repeated taker charges can remain profitable if the underlying trades themselves have positive expected value.
Live makers can earn 25% of the taker fee
Novig does charge takers once a game moves into live trading.
The current live taker fee uses the formula 0.06 × price × (1 − price) × contracts. At a 50 cent contract price, where the fee reaches its maximum, a taker pays 1.5 cents per contract.
The maker pays no trading fee. Under the Maker Credit Program effective October 22, the trader whose resting order supplied the liquidity receives a cash credit equal to 25% of the taker fee on a qualifying live fill.
Novig calls these payments Maker Credits rather than rebates, but the economic mechanism is familiar. Novig collects a fee from the trader taking liquidity and returns part of that money to the trader who supplied it.
How much can Novig Maker Credits actually make?
The amount depends heavily on trading volume and where contracts are priced, since the taker fee changes with the contract price. Contracts around 50 cents generate the largest fee and therefore the largest Maker Credit.
At a 50 cent price, 5,000 live contracts ($2500) would earn $18.75 per day in Maker Credits.
A small account could churn through as little as $500 5x and begin generating about $560 a month. Scale that to 10,000 qualifying live contracts and the Maker Credits become $37.50. At 100,000 qualifying contracts, the same calculation produces $375.
Those credits are separate from whatever trading profit or loss the strategy itself produces. A trader who repeatedly buys at 48 cents and later sells at 50 cents can potentially earn from the two cent market move while also collecting Maker Credits when qualifying resting orders are filled.
The rebate can therefore turn market making into two separate revenue sources. One comes from successfully buying lower and selling higher. The other comes directly from Novig paying the trader for supplying liquidity.
Futures currently pay a 50% Maker Credit
Eligible futures markets receive even stronger maker treatment.
The maker again pays no fee, while the taker is charged using the 0.06 fee coefficient. The trader whose resting order supplied the liquidity currently receives 50% of the taker fee as a Base Maker Credit.
At a 50 cent price, 1,000 qualifying futures contracts produce $15 in taker fees and therefore $7.50 in Maker Credits for the maker.
At 10,000 contracts, that becomes $75. At 100,000 contracts, it becomes $750, before considering any trading profit or loss from the contracts themselves.
Unlike the live credit, the futures credit does not require the underlying sporting event to be in progress. Eligible futures generate the credit whenever the resting maker order fills.
Golf and tennis futures are currently excluded from the Futures Trading fee under Novig's public fee schedule, so they do not generate the corresponding Base Maker Credit.
Performance makers can earn even more
Novig has also created a second layer called the Performance Maker Credit.
Eligible traders can enroll in supported leagues and attempt to meet Novig's standards for quote width, available depth, market coverage, and uptime. A trader who satisfies those requirements can receive an additional 50% of the taker fee on qualifying live fills, on top of the standard 25% Base Maker Credit.
That creates a potential total live credit equal to 75% of the taker fee.
At a 50 cent contract price, 1,000 qualifying contracts generate $15 in taker fees. A trader receiving the full 75% credit would collect $11.25.
At 10,000 qualifying contracts, the credit would be $112.50. At 100,000 contracts, it would reach $1,125.
This portion is aimed at much larger liquidity providers. Novig says meeting the standards requires substantial funds committed to resting orders across many contracts simultaneously and recommends an account balance of at least $250,000 for traders considering the Performance program.
The ordinary 25% live and 50% futures Base Maker Credits do not carry that capital recommendation.
Why zero taker fees can be valuable too
Maker Credits are direct payments, but Novig's zero fee pregame structure can create value in another way.
Suppose an automated strategy finds a pregame contract available at 48 cents and calculates its fair probability at 50%. If the platform charged one or two cents in effective transaction costs, most or all of that theoretical advantage could disappear.
With no Novig taker fee on the pregame straight trade, the strategy can take the 48 cent offer without adding another exchange charge to the entry.
That does not guarantee the trade makes money. The trader still has to estimate the contract correctly, manage spreads, deal with changing prices, and avoid being systematically wrong. What Novig removes is an additional transaction cost that can consume small statistical edges.
Novig and Polymarket are moving in opposite directions for smaller API traders
The contrast with Polymarket US is difficult to miss.
Polymarket US changed its maker rebate system on October 19 so traders with less than $10 million in prior month maker volume receive no standard maker rebate. Its rebate tiers now favor increasingly large liquidity providers.
Novig's base program currently has no comparable minimum volume tier. An eligible retail trader whose resting live order gets filled can receive the 25% Base Maker Credit, while eligible futures makers receive 50%.
The exchange is not simply offering rebates either. Pregame straight trades have no taker fee in the first place, so an automated strategy can cross the spread when necessary without paying a separate Novig transaction charge.
Liquidity still determines whether any strategy produces a profit. A rebate cannot rescue consistently bad prices, but API access combined with zero pregame trading fees and cash maker incentives gives retail traders considerably more room to build automated strategies around small pricing advantages.
Sign up for Novig
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Once the account is active, API access can be configured from the Novig account settings. Traders interested in automated strategies can also use Novig's Paper environment before placing orders with real funds.
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