The Best Sports APIs for Developers (Updated for 2021)

I think you’ll agree with me when I say:

Having a reliable sports API that provides historical data, real-time updates & affordable/free would be AWESOME.

Well, it turns out, RapidAPI provides a great deal of sports APIs with many capabilities.

And in today’s post, we’ll go over some of the top APIs related to sports and how to use them.

APIs can provide developers with the opportunity to gain access to sensitive data in a particular category.

In this case, we take a look at competitive sports, and how APIs can provide access to:

• regular season data,
• real-time odds,
• and other historical stats that could be beneficial to a platform.

News flash:

APIs take a lot of time out of developing a program from scratch, especially since many of these APIs are capable of performing real-time data updates with advanced data feeds.

There are APIs in the sports industry that pretty much cover every:

• soccer,
• football,
• tennis,
• basketball,
• and auto racing league that you could imagine.

Some APIs focus on their data feeds to update in real-time, while others focus on providing more information when responding to a query.

Some developers may require access to more complete information.

For example:

The entire box score for a soccer or football match.

Some users may want access to specific and in-depth player information in the sport of hockey.

There are APIs that can provide information on specific lineup formations, scratches, and gaming winning goal scorers.

However:

It is important to select the right API when looking to connect it with a platform...

...as choosing the wrong one could provide less detailed information than what is desired.

In most cases, finding an API that supports complete match data is optimal for most platforms.

There are APIs that also cover more than one specific league when looking at a specific sport.

For example:

One API could cover the Premier League as well as the La Liga soccer league in the same API.

Anyways, let's dive into some of the best paid and free sports APIs for developers.

What is the best sports API?

After reviewing over 34 sports APIs, we found these 9 APIs to be the very best and worth mentioning:

• API-FOOTBALL API
• Cricket Live Scores API
• API-NBA API
• The Rundown API
• Football Prediction API
• Soccer - Sports Open Data API
• Live Sports Odds API
• ElenaSport.io API
• SportsMonk Football Pro API

Top 9 Best Sports APIs for 2021

Our Top Picks for Best Sports APIs

When choosing a sports API, you'll want to make sure it satisfies all your requirements. For example, which sports does the API cover? Which regions and parts of the world are covered? Leagues? Bookmakers?

Related: How to Create a Sports Website using Ruby

We'll briefly go over the most popular sports APIs to help you decided which is best for you.

Here are a few of our top picks for the best sports APIs:

1. API-FOOTBALL

API-Football is the most popular Football/Soccer API that covers over 500 major and minor football leagues.

Developers can use this API to get:

• Live Scores
• Pre-match odds
• Events
• Line-ups
• Player stats and data
• Standings
• Statistics

Read More about the API Details.

For more Football or Soccer APIs, browse this collection.

API-Football Tutorials

• API-Football Python

Popularity Score: 9.9/10

---

Best ForFootball (Soccer) Data

Connect to API

2. Cricket Live Scores

The Cricket Live Scores API is the best REST API for cricket sports data.

With the API, you can query:

• live scores
• get a list of available matches
• get scorecards
• test scores
• ODI scores
• T20 scores
• BBL scores
• IPL scores
• World Cup scores

in JSON formatted content.

Learn more about the API's FAQ here, and See more Cricket APIs here.

Popularity Score: 9.9/10

---

Best For Cricket Data

Connect to API

3. API-NBA

The API-NBA is the most popular NBA data API on RapidAPI.com.

With the API, you can get data about:

• NBA Seasons
• League Data
• Teams Stats
• Player Info
• Games
• Game Details
• Standings
• Other Statistics

Read our full NBA API review.

Also check out the API-Basketball API for global hoops.

Popularity Score: 9.6/10

---

Best For NBA Data

Connect to API

4. The Rundown

TheRundown is a website that provides real-time live odds for the:

• NFL
• NBA
• MLB
• NHL
• NCAAF
• NCAAB

It pulls data from popular sportsbooks including:

• 5Dimes
• Pinnacle
• Matchbook
• Betcris
• Lowvig
• TheGreek
• Justbet
• Tigergaming
• Betonline
• Bookmaker
• Sportsbetting
• Intertops

with more to come.

TheRundown API grants access to this data to query events and odds data by sport. Get openers, moneylines, spreads and more.

Browse more Sports Odds APIs in this collection.

Popularity Score: 9.5/10

---

Best For Real-time Odds and Scores

Connect to API

5. Football Prediction

The Football Prediction API (by boggio-analytics) is exactly as the name suggests: A RESTful API that provides predictions for upcoming football (soccer) matches.

The API has endpoints that can:

• Get prediction details
• Get next 24h/48h predictions
• Get performance stats
• List available federations
• List available markets

Learn more on their website

Popularity Score: 9.3/10

---

Best For Football (Soccer) Predictions

Connect to API

6. Soccer - Sports Open Data

The Soccer Sports Open Data API is another football/soccer API that provides extensive data about the sport. This is the first open data service for Soccer data that began in 2015. Created by users for users. Users can contribute to the open source project. Learn more on their website.

What sets this API apart is that it provides additional data such as:

• Data about Season Rounds
• Referees
• Top Scorers
• Stadium data
• Lists of Events

Read more about the Soccer API details.

Popularity Score: 9.3/10

---

Best For Historical Soccer Data

Connect to API

7. Live Sports Odds

The Live Sports Odds API is another API that provides real-time sports odds. This RESTful API specializes in the NFL, NBA, MLB, EPL, and AFL from US, UK and Australia bookmakers.

The API has 2 simple endpoints:

1. Odds
2. Sports

Read more about the API Details here.

Popularity Score: 8.3/10

---

Best For Live Odds for NFL, NBA, MLB, EPL, & AFL

Connect to API

8. ElenaSport.io

The ElenaSport.io API is a fast, cheap, and reliable football analysis API that provides real-time as well as historical soccer data.

The API also provides data for Rugby, Tennis, and more to come.

See the full list of football leagues they cover here.

Popularity Score: 9.2/10

---

Best For Live & Historical Football (Soccer) Data

Connect to API

9. SportsMonk Football Pro

The SportMonks Football Pro API offers 900+ Leagues and the fastest real-time Livescores in the market with a rich set of other features like (live) Odds, Statistics, Line-ups, Standings, and many more features.

Popularity Score: 9.7/10

---

Best For Reliable Football Data

Connect to API

All APIs mentioned above and accessible on RapidAPI.com are available in the following programming languages:

• Node.js
• PHP
• Python
• Ruby
• Objective-C
• Java (for Android)
• C# (.net)
• cURL
• RapidQL

To learn more how to get started with these RapidAPI SDKs, visit our docs.

Conclusion

The APIs that were mentioned in the top ten are diverse in features...

...but also provide access to some of the worlds greatest sports leagues.

Whether you are looking for

• fantasy sports data,
• league historical data,
• or specific player statistics,

These platforms work from some of the most advanced databases in sports and allow access to some great functions in order to retrieve complicated sports information.

Summary: Best Sports APIs for Developers

Complete List of the Best Sports APIs

• Horse Racing - Horse racing API - UK & Ireland
• Live-Score-API - Live-score API provides affordable and high-quality football api. We currently provide live-scores, fixtures, standings, match events, statistics, head2head, history data with lineups, pre-match odds, live odds, and country flags coming down the development pipe.
• Sportspage Feeds - Real-time scores, schedules, and betting odds for US leagues. Unbeatable value.
• MLB Data - Baseball MLB Data about players, teams, reports, and other stats.
• AllSportDB.com - Get API access to information on our web site AllSportDB.com
• API-FOOTBALL - We cover 500 football major and minor leagues and many more to come. Livescore, pre-matchs odds, events, line-ups, players, standings, statistics.
• API-BASKETBALL - 115 Basketball Leagues & Cups with Livescore, Odds, Bookmakers, Statistics, Standings, Historical Data, Countries, Seasons
• API-NBA - All NBA Stats DATA, Games, Livescore, Standings, Statistics, Teams, Players, Seasons, Leagues.
• API-pandascore - Access e-sports data. Find League of Legends Matches and corresponding game/team/player stats.
• Bundesliga Live Scores - Bundesliga Live Scores API allows to retrieve historical data as well as current season results, scorers, lineups, substitutes, events, statistics, odds and much more all with live updates, for the top professional German football league. And more features are coming…
• Champions League Live Scores - Champions League Live Scores API allows to retrieve current season results, scorers, lineups, substitutes, events, statistics and much more all with live updates, for EUFA Champions League. And more is coming…
• Cricket Live Scores - Cricket Live Scores API provides invaluable data to develop cricket related apps. The API accepts GET calls and returns JSON formatted content. Cricket Live Scores API is able to deliver a list of available matches as well as cricket scores, cricket scorecards, Test scores, ODI scores, T20 scores, BBL scores, IPL scores, World Cup scores
• Eredivisie Live Scores - Eredivisie Live Scores API allows to retrieve current season results, scorers, lineups, substitutes, events, statistics and much more all with live updates, for the top professional Dutch football league. And more is coming…
• Europa League Live Scores - Europa League Live Scores API allows to retrieve current season results, scorers, lineups, substitutes, events, statistics and much more all with live updates, for EUFA Europa League. And more is coming…
• European Football Club Cups - SSG Football Clubs API allows you to search and visualize all games played in the European Football Club Cups up to date (more than 25 000 matches). The API has several different search criteria to be utilized, such as team vs country, country vs team, tournament and venue. So, you can see how a specific team have fared vs any team from any country in any tournament anywhere.
• FIFA World Cup - Keep up with the FIFA World Cup action using this API that returns teams, rounds and matches in JSON format.
• Football betting tips - Passionate about sports betting? Tipsxpert.com provides your daily free betting tips and a collection of the best free bets !
• Football Prediction - The Football Prediction API provides predictions for upcoming football matches, average bookie odds, results for past matches and prediction performance statistics for past results.
• Free Football (Soccer) Videos - Embed codes for the latest goals' videos and video highlights from the matches of the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga and many more
• Free NBA - Unofficial NBA API for Historical NBA Data
• Health - Data to regulate your physical condition, Calculate Your BMI (body mass index).
• La Liga Live Scores - La Liga Live Scores API allows to retrieve historical data as well as current season results, scorers, lineups, substitutes, events, statistics, odds and much more all with live updates, for the top professional Spanish football league. And more features are coming…
• Liga NOS Live Scores - Liga NOS Live Scores API allows to retrieve current season results, scorers, lineups, substitutes, events, statistics and much more all with live updates, for the top professional Portuguese football league. And more is coming…
• Ligue 1 Live Scores - The Ligue1 Live Scores API allows to retrieve historical data as well as current season results, scorers, lineups, substitutes, events, statistics and much more all with live updates, for the top professional French football league. And more features are coming…
• Live Sports Odds - Odds for NFL, NBA, MLB, EPL, AFL and loads more, from US, UK and Aussie bookmakers. Get started for free!
• NFLArrest - Get NFL Arrest data using the NFL Arrest API.
• Premier League Live Scores - Premier League Live Scores API allows to retrieve historical data as well as current season results, scorers, lineups, substitutes, events, statistics, odds and much more all with live updates, for the top professional English football league. And more is coming…
• Russian League Live Scores - Russian League Live Scores API allows to retrieve current season results, scorers, lineups, substitutes, events, statistics and much more all with live updates, for the top professional Russian football league. And more is coming…
• SerieA Live Scores - SerieA Live Scores API allows to retrieve current season results, scorers, lineups, substitutes, events, statistics, odds and much more all with live updates, for the top professional Italian football league. And more is coming…
• skicams - Italian Ski Webcam Database / API
• Soccer - Sports Open Data - Sports Open Data is a project started in June 2015 created by Paolo Riva, Riccardo Quatra and Fabio Sgroi. This project was born by a need we've found when looking for statistics in Sports: no website offers its data in an Open Data way. Sports Open Data will work in this way: by providing a JSON REST API, Sports Open Data allow you to manage data for every single match we've stored on our database. And that's not over: Sports Open Data has been structured as an Open Organization: feel free to partecipate to our project or simply be part of our community to make it grow day by day. Open Data created by users for users.
• Soccer Livescore - Soccer Livescore API provides information about all live, finished and pending football matches
• Sports Scores - All Sports results, fixtures, and live data
• TheRundown - Real-time odds and scores from major sportsbooks. NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, NCAA Football, & NCAA Basketball with more sports soon. Over a dozen sportsbooks currently integrated: 5Dimes, Pinnacle, Matchbook, Betcris, Lowvig, TheGreek, Justbet, Tigergaming, Betonline, Bookmaker, Sportsbetting, Intertops & more coming soon. Moneyline, Spread, & Total for full-games, 1st half, 2nd half, 1st Quarter/Period, 2nd Quarter/Period, 3rd Quarter/Period, and 4th Quarter/Period with more markets coming soon. See more at https://therundown.io/

Related Blog Posts

How to Use the Basketball Data API with Python, PHP, Ruby & JavaScript Examples

5 Steps to Fueling a Successful Local Analytics Product Using Data Axle’s Data on RapidAPI

How to Use the Horoscope API with Python, PHP, Ruby & Javascript Examples

What Are Microservices?

How to Use the CalorieNinjas API with Python, PHP, Ruby & Javascript Examples

8 Common API Error Examples and Use Cases