• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Rapid Blog

  • Enterprise
  • API Hub
  • Add Your API
  • About
  • Docs
    • API Glossary
  • Blog
    • What is an API?
    • REST API Tutorials
    • Most Popular APIs
    • Write for Us
  • Sign Up
    • Log In
Blog » APIs » The Best Sports APIs for Developers (Updated for 2022)
Sports APIs on RapidAPi

The Best Sports APIs for Developers (Updated for 2022)

By RapidAPI Staff // January 24, 2022

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.

View the Best Sports APIs List

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.

Soccer APIs on RapidAPI.com

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 10 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
  • SportScore API

Top 9 Best Sports APIs for 2022

API-FOOTBALLBest for Football (Soccer) DataConnect to API
Cricket Live ScoresBest for Cricket DataConnect to API
API-NBABest for NBA DataConnect to API
The RundownBest for Real-time Odds and ScoresConnect to API
Football PredictionBest for Football (Soccer) PredictionsConnect to API
Soccer - Sports Open DataBest for Historical Soccer DataConnect to API
Live Sports OddsBest for Live Odds for NFL, NBA, MLB, EPL, & AFLConnect to API
ElenaSport.ioBest for Live & Historical Football (Soccer) DataConnect to API
SportsMonk Football ProBest for Reliable Football DataConnect to API
SportScoreBest for Data for Multiple SportsConnect to API

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
API-FOOTBALL

Popularity Score: 9.9/10

Best For
Football (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.


Cricket Live Scores

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.

API-NBA

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.


The Rundown

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


Football Prediction

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.


Soccer - Sports Open Data

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.


Live Sports Odds

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.


ElenaSport.io

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.


SportsMonk Football Pro

Popularity Score: 9.7/10

Best For
Reliable Football Data


Connect to API

10. SportScore

The SportScore API is the best REST API for data across multiple sports.

With the API, you can query:

  • live scores
  • teams
  • players
  • lineups
  • game incidents
  • stadiums
  • odds and odds-history
  • match locations
  • video goals and highlights
in JSON formatted content.

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


SportScore

Popularity Score: 9.9/10

Best For
Data for Multiple Sports


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,
there is no doubt that there is an API available for those needs.

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

APISports CoveredHistorical DataReal-Time DataFree Plan Available?Paid Plans
API-FOOTBALLFootball (Soccer)YesYesYesStarting from $19/Month
Cricket Live ScoresCricketYesYesYesStarting from $6.99/Month
API-NBABasketballYesYesYesStarting from $12/Month
TheRundownFootball (American), Basketball, Baseball, HockeyNoYesYesStarting from $49.99/Month
Football PredictionFootball (Soccer)NoYesYesStarting from $14.99
Soccer - Sports Open DataFootball (Soccer)YesYesYesStarting from $25/Month
Live Sports OddsNFL, NBA, MLB, EPL, AFLNoYesYesStarting from $25/Month
ElenaSport.ioFootball (Soccer)YesYesYesStarting from $10/Month
SportsMonk Football ProFootball (Soccer)YesYesYesStarting from $49/Month
SportScoreMultiple SportsYesYesYesStarting from $29/Month

Be sure to check out RapidAPI Marketplace for more Sports APIs and 1000s of other APIs to test and connect to.

Here are the APIs by sport:

  • Soccer
  • Football
  • Basketball
  • Golf
  • Tennis
  • Baseball
  • Hockey
  • Cricket
  • Rugby
  • Motorsport

Which Sports API do you not see on our list? Let us know in the comments below.

Related Resources

  • Top Sports Scores APIs
  • March Madness APIs
  • Sports Data APIs
  • More Popular Sports APIs

Tutorials

  • Create a Sports Betting App with Python (TheRundown API)
  • Sports Ruby Tutorial

Additional FAQ

What is the best Sports API?

After reviewing over 31 sports APIs, we found these 7 APIs to be the very best and worth mentioning:

  • API-FOOTBALL
  • Cricket Live Scores
  • API-NBA
  • The Rundown
  • Football Prediction
  • Soccer - Sports Open Data
  • Live Sports Odds
What is the best sports stats API?

These are some of the best APIs that provide sports statistical data by sport:

  • Soccer/Football
    • API-Football
    • Fifa World Cup
    • Soccer Sports Open Data
    • Football Prediction
  • Basketball & NBA
    • API-NBA
    • TheRundown
    • Live Sports Odds
    • Free NBA
  • American Football & NFL
    • TheRundown
    • Live Sports Odds
    • NFL Arrest
  • Baseball & MLB
    • MLB Data
  •  Cricket
    • Cricket Live Scores
  • All Sports
    • Sportspage Feeds 
    • LiveScore 
    • AllSportDB.com 
    • Sports Scores
    • TheRundown
    • Live Sports Odds
    • TheSportsDB
What is the best NFL & Football API?

After reviewing all the NFL & Football APIs, we found these 6 APIs to be the very best and worth mentioning:

  • Football Sentiment
  • TheRundown
  • Live Sports Odds
  • NFLArrest
  • Sports Scores
  • AllSportDB

Read More Here.

Does ESPN have an API?

ESPN is a US-based sports television channel that provides daily news on all sports matches and leagues. The ESPN API allows access to their sports data including information about scores, players, teams, and more. Now that the ESPN API is retired, you may want to look into an alternative. Check out the sports APIs in this collection as possible replacements to the ESPN API. The sports APIs in this collection have data on all sports and leagues including:

  • Basketball
  • Football (Soccer)
  • Football (American)
  • Tennis
  • Cricket
  • Hockey
  • and more!

Use these APIs to enrich your mobile application or website. Sign up today for a FREE RapidAPI account to begin testing these APIs!

Browse ESPN Alternatives here.

What is RapidAPI?

RapidAPI is an API Marketplace for developers to find, connect, and manage their API connections. ... If you have an API you've created, use RapidAPI to make it available to hundreds of thousands of developers already utilizing APIs through RapidAPI.


View the Best Sports APIs List

4.8/5 - (65 votes)

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/
« How to Create an App with Kairos Facial Recognition API in Javascript
How To Use the TripAdvisor API to Build a Simple Travel App »

Related Blog Posts

State of APIs: growth and more growth on tap for 2023
State of APIs: growth and more growth on tap for 2023

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

What Are Microservices?
What Are Microservices?

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


Filed Under: APIs Tagged With: API Roundup, basketball, Fantasy Sports, football, mlb, nba, nfl, nhl, soccer, sports, sports api, sports apis

Avatar photo

RapidAPI Staff

The RapidAPI staff consists of various writers in the RapidAPI organization. For support, please email us at support@rapidapi.com.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Eric says

    January 8, 2019 at 6:36 am

    Very strong combination of solid tools without doubts! But for larger brands more desirable will be more comprehensive solution. Much more options in one tool. Any thoughts?

    Reply
  2. Lisa Brown says

    February 20, 2019 at 8:35 pm

    Thanks for sharing the nice content for sports betting API. I want to appreciate your efforts. you understand about API in simple way for cricket betting App development. Thanks again.

    Reply
  3. khairi says

    October 30, 2019 at 4:12 am

    Do you cover Arab leagues in football?

    Reply
    • Avatar photoRapidAPI Staff says

      October 30, 2019 at 3:36 pm

      Hi Khairi,

      Check out the API-Football API, it covers multiple Aarab leagues. See their entire coverage here.

      Reach out to support@rapidapi.com if you have additional questions.

      Reply
  4. Sportspage Feeds says

    November 4, 2019 at 3:00 pm

    Sportspage Feeds has recently been made available on RapidAPI. We offer schedules, scores, and odds data for NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, NCAAF, and NCAAB games and will be adding Club and International Soccer soon. We provide full odds histories so that odds can be tracked from open to the current line and at better price points than similar APIs.

    Reply
  5. Mark Owen says

    November 27, 2019 at 2:34 am

    Hi RapidApi Team!

    I’m looking to hire a soccer API through RapidApi, but I’m not sure because the ones you recommend, for me don’t seem the best.

    For example, what about this one and does not appear in your article?

    https://rapidapi.com/SoccersAPI/api/soccersapi

    It seems to be most complete than the others, what do you think?

    Thanks in advance

    Reply
  6. ben azzi says

    December 17, 2019 at 5:09 am

    The RapidAPI staff consists of various writers in the RapidAPI organization. merci

    Reply
  7. Rene says

    March 24, 2020 at 4:00 pm

    please,whats the best api for inplay/live betting odds ? i would like to build a live betting tool with various bookmakers. as it seems its all concentrated on pre-match odds. some help in the right direction would be nice. thx

    Reply
  8. Jon says

    May 20, 2020 at 8:12 am

    Football Pro from SportMonks has Inplay Odds available as well as pre-match Odds of 30+ bookmakers .

    Reply
  9. John says

    March 6, 2021 at 6:11 am

    I don’t see anything covering horse racing. Would like API for racecards and full race results with odds and distances.

    Reply
    • Avatar photoRapidAPI Staff says

      March 8, 2021 at 10:24 am

      Hi John,

      Take a look at this search on our marketplace: https://rapidapi.com/search/horse – You may find a few APIs that provide relevant data.

      Thanks!

      Reply
  10. Codeaxia Digital Solutions says

    May 4, 2021 at 12:06 am

    Extremely nice! I really liked your article. Thank you very much ..

    Reply
  11. Patrick says

    July 11, 2021 at 11:36 am

    Help me understand this please, does all the links lead you to https://rapidapi.com/collection/football-soccer-apis

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Build anything with APIs, faster.

Discover, evaluate, and integrate with any API. RapidAPI is the world’s largest API Hub with over 4 Million developers and 35,000 APIs.

Browse APIs »

Footer

  • API Guides
  • API Courses
  • API Glossary
  • API Testing
  • API Management
  • How to use an API
  • For API Providers
  • Most Popular APIs
  • For Developers
  • Free APIs List
  • Learn REST API
  • Build API’s
  • About
  • Team
  • Careers
  • Contact Us
  • Write for Us
  • API Directory
  • Press Room
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use

© 2023 RapidAPI. All rights reserved.