Polymarket not opening or not working? The usual causes

Polymarket runs a public status page with separate components for the web app, account access and sign-in, and trading, and you can subscribe to updates by email or RSS. Planned engine restarts are announced about two days ahead on its Telegram and Discord channels and are followed by a couple of minutes in which you can only post orders, not take them. If the status page is green, the cause is more likely on your side.

Polymarket decides access by where you physically are, “rather than residency”, from your IP address. There are three outcomes:

• Blocked entirely: countries under US sanctions, such as Iran, Syria, Cuba and North Korea.
• Close-only: you can close existing positions but not open new ones. Polymarket’s developer docs put the US, the UK, four Canadian provinces including Ontario and Quebec, France, Germany, Italy, Australia and others here.
• Open: everywhere else.

Polymarket’s own lists do not fully agree: its help centre lists about 40 countries as “completely restricted”, including Ireland, Japan and the Netherlands, while its developer docs class many of the same countries as close-only and those three as restricted on the website only. The quickest way to know what applies to you is the check Polymarket itself uses: polymarket.com/api/geoblock returns whether your connection is blocked and which country it sees.

In the US, polymarket.com shows that trading is blocked and offers view-only mode or Polymarket US. Its help centre says “US residents must use the Polymarket US app”, a separate product whose accounts are not connected to polymarket.com; it is on iOS, with Android listed as coming soon. Whether that is legal where you are is covered in is Polymarket legal in the US?.

Polymarket “strictly prohibits the use of VPNs or similar tools to bypass geographic restrictions”. Before trading, users confirm they are not doing so, and Polymarket reserves the right to put a wallet into close-only mode; an account flagged this way sees a “Trading Halted” message saying it has been placed into close-only mode over a potential breach of the terms. If you see that message, contact support rather than switching servers. A VPN that is on for other reasons can also cause the errors below.

Polymarket’s help centre says “the most common cause of network errors is the use of a VPN, proxy, or anonymization tool”. Its suggested fixes, in order:

• Turn off any VPN, proxy or anonymiser.
• Set your device clock to update automatically.
• Clear Polymarket’s site data in your browser, then sign in again.
• Wait 5–10 minutes, log out and back in, or try another device or network.

If you cannot sign in, check you are using the method you signed up with — Google, email with a six-digit code, or a crypto wallet such as MetaMask — as Polymarket’s sign-up guide describes. Never share the six-digit login code with anyone.

Polymarket’s support page lists the chat icon at the bottom right of the site, support@polymarket.com for the website, and support@polymarket.us for the US app. Developers whose API calls fail can check the same status page; see the Polymarket API.