Football is the most heavily wagered sport on the planet. From the English Premier League to obscure lower divisions, bookmakers publish thousands of odds lines every matchday. A soccer odds API gives developers programmatic access to that data, whether you need live in-play prices, pre-match markets, or years of historical lines for building prediction models.
This guide covers the main betting markets you can pull from an API, compares the leading providers on pricing and coverage, walks through a working Python example, and outlines realistic use cases for football odds data.
Football/Soccer Betting Markets Explained
Before choosing an API, it helps to understand the market types you will be working with. Each market represents a different way to bet on a football match, and not every provider covers all of them.
Match Result (1X2)
The most common football market worldwide. You get three outcomes: home win (1), draw (X), or away win (2). Premier League odds for a typical 1X2 market might look like 1.85 / 3.40 / 4.20 in decimal format. Almost every soccer odds API includes this market, and it is usually the first one returned in a response.
Both Teams To Score
A straightforward yes/no market. The bet wins if both sides score at least one goal during the match. BTTS has grown in popularity because it is easy to understand and does not require picking a winner. APIs that cover European football typically include BTTS alongside 1X2.
Over/Under Goals
The bookmaker sets a line, usually 2.5 goals, and you bet on whether the total goals in the match will be over or under that number. You will also find lines at 0.5, 1.5, 3.5 and higher depending on the match and the bookmaker. This is one of the most liquid football betting markets and is available from virtually all odds API providers.
Asian Handicap
Asian handicap removes the draw outcome by giving one team a goal advantage or deficit before kickoff. Lines come in quarter-goal increments like -0.25, -0.75, or -1.5. A half-goal line (like -0.5 or +1.5) produces a clear winner, while quarter-goal lines split the stake across two adjacent handicaps. This market is especially popular in Asian betting exchanges and is essential for serious football betting analytics. Not all free API tiers include Asian handicap data, so check provider documentation before committing.
Correct Score
You predict the exact final score of the match, such as 2-1 or 0-0. Correct score markets carry high odds because the probability of any single scoreline is low. Some APIs return correct score odds as a flat list of all possible scorelines, while others group them by home and away goal counts.
Best APIs for Football/Soccer Data
Four providers stand out for football odds coverage. Each takes a different approach to pricing, data depth, and market breadth.
API-Football: Coverage and Pricing
API-Football (part of the API-Sports family) covers over 1,200 leagues and cups across 170+ countries. Every plan, including the free tier, gives access to all endpoints: fixtures, standings, lineups, events, pre-match odds, live in-play odds, predictions, and player statistics.
Pricing is straightforward and based on daily request limits:
- Free: 100 requests/day (limited seasons)
- Pro: $19/month for 7,500 requests/day
- Ultra: $29/month for 75,000 requests/day
- Mega: $39/month for 150,000 requests/day
- Custom: up to 1,500,000 requests/day
Live match data updates every 15 seconds. The football betting odds include both pre-match and in-play markets from multiple bookmakers. For developers who need a football API that covers stats and odds under one roof, API-Football is a strong starting point.
SportMonks: Coverage and Pricing
SportMonks covers 2,500+ football leagues with a Premium Odds Feed that pulls from 145+ bookmakers across 42 different market types. That makes it one of the widest odds data sources available. Markets include match result, over/under, Asian handicap, correct score, BTTS, and dozens of specialty lines.
A key feature is odds movement tracking. SportMonks records opening odds for every fixture and logs every subsequent change, so you can reconstruct the full price history of any market.
Plans are organized by geographic coverage and data depth:
- Free: selected leagues (Danish Superliga, Scottish Premiership, and others)
- European Basic: EUR 39/month (27 leagues)
- European Standard: EUR 59/month
- European Advanced: EUR 69/month
- Worldwide Basic: EUR 129/month (111 leagues)
- Worldwide Standard: EUR 189/month
- Worldwide Advanced: EUR 219/month
- Enterprise: custom pricing (2,200+ leagues)
If you are building an odds comparison tool that needs deep bookmaker coverage, SportMonks is worth evaluating. For a broader look at how it stacks up, see our comparison of the best football APIs.
The Odds API: Coverage and Pricing
The Odds API takes a different approach. It is purely an odds aggregator covering 70+ sports and 40+ global bookmakers. For football, it returns odds for major leagues including the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Champions League, and many others.
Pricing is credit-based rather than request-based:
- Starter (Free): 500 credits/month
- 20K: $30/month
- 100K: $59/month
- 5M: $119/month
- 15M: $249/month
All tiers include all sports, all bookmakers, and all betting markets. The API also provides historical odds snapshots going back to 2020, a scores and results endpoint, and Excel/Google Sheets add-ons. It does not include team stats, lineups, or player data, so you would pair it with a separate stats API if needed.
Football-Data.org: Coverage and Pricing
Football-Data.org is a community-oriented API that has offered free football data since its early days. The free tier covers 12 major competitions and always will:
- Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1
- Eredivisie, Primeira Liga, Championship
- Brazilian Serie A
- Champions League, World Cup, European Championship
The free plan allows 10 requests per minute and includes fixtures, results, and league tables. Scores are delayed on the free tier.
Paid plans add more competitions, faster rate limits, and deeper data:
- Free with Livescores: EUR 12/month (12 competitions, 20 req/min)
- Standard: EUR 49/month (25 competitions, 60 req/min)
- Advanced: EUR 99/month (50 competitions, 100 req/min)
- Pro: EUR 199/month (100 competitions, 120 req/min)
Odds are available as a separate add-on at EUR 15/month covering 40 competitions with pre-match data. A statistics add-on (also EUR 15/month) provides corners, fouls, possession, shots, and cards. Football-Data.org is an excellent choice for hobbyist projects and prototyping where soccer odds are a secondary concern.
Data Available via API
Regardless of which provider you choose, football odds APIs generally expose four categories of data.
Pre-Match Odds and Lines
Pre-match odds are published hours or days before kickoff and update periodically as bookmaker lines move. A typical API response includes the bookmaker name, market type, selection name, and decimal or fractional odds. Most providers update pre-match football odds every 5 to 15 minutes. For Premier League odds specifically, you will usually see lines from 20 or more bookmakers per match.
Live/In-Play Odds
In-play odds change continuously during a match based on goals, red cards, momentum, and time remaining. APIs that support live odds either push updates via websocket or provide a polling endpoint with sub-minute refresh rates. API-Football updates live data every 15 seconds. SportMonks and The Odds API also offer in-play markets, though update frequency varies by plan and provider.
Historical Odds Data
Historical odds let you backtest betting strategies and train prediction models. The Odds API stores snapshots going back to 2020. SportMonks logs every odds movement from the time a market opens. Football-Data.org provides historical match data across multiple seasons, though odds history requires the paid add-on. The depth of historical football betting odds data is often the deciding factor for quantitative analysts.
Player and Team Statistics
APIs like API-Football and SportMonks go beyond odds to include player-level statistics (goals, assists, pass completion, minutes played) and team-level stats (xG, possession, shots on target). Combining these stats with odds data is how most prediction models are built. The Odds API and Football-Data.org focus primarily on match-level data and odds, with limited or no player stats.
Code Example: Fetch Football/Soccer Odds with Python
This example uses The Odds API to fetch current Premier League odds. The same pattern applies to other providers with minor URL and parameter changes.
Setup and Authentication
Sign up at the-odds-api.com to get a free API key. The free tier gives you 500 credits per month, enough to test and prototype.
Install the requests library if you do not have it:
pip install requestsFetching Current Odds
import requests
API_KEY = "your_api_key_here"
SPORT = "soccer_epl"
REGIONS = "uk,eu"
MARKETS = "h2h,totals,spreads"
url = f"https://api.the-odds-api.com/v4/sports/{SPORT}/odds"
params = {
"apiKey": API_KEY,
"regions": REGIONS,
"markets": MARKETS,
"oddsFormat": "decimal",
}
response = requests.get(url, params=params)
data = response.json()
print(f"Events returned: {len(data)}")
print(f"Credits used: {response.headers.get('x-requests-used')}")
print(f"Credits remaining: {response.headers.get('x-requests-remaining')}")The SPORT parameter uses the key soccer_epl for the English Premier League. Other football leagues have their own sport keys (soccer_spain_la_liga, soccer_italy_serie_a, soccer_germany_bundesliga, and so on). The REGIONS parameter controls which bookmakers appear in the response: uk for British bookmakers like William Hill and Ladbrokes, eu for European books, us for DraftKings and FanDuel.
Parsing the Response
for event in data:
home = event["home_team"]
away = event["away_team"]
print(f"\n{home} vs {away}")
print(f" Kickoff: {event['commence_time']}")
for bookmaker in event["bookmakers"]:
print(f" {bookmaker['title']}:")
for market in bookmaker["markets"]:
if market["key"] == "h2h":
for outcome in market["outcomes"]:
print(f" {outcome['name']}: {outcome['price']}")A single event in the response contains the home and away team names, the kickoff time in ISO 8601 format, and an array of bookmaker objects. Each bookmaker object contains an array of markets (h2h, totals, spreads), and each market contains an array of outcomes with the selection name and decimal price. This structure is consistent across all sports, so code written for soccer odds works with minimal changes for other sports.
Use Cases
Football odds data from an API supports a wide range of applications beyond simple score displays.
Building a Betting Dashboard
A dashboard that aggregates live Premier League odds from multiple bookmakers gives users a single view of the market. You pull odds from an API on a schedule (every 30 to 60 seconds for live matches), store them in a database, and render them in a frontend. The key technical challenge is handling the volume: a full Premier League matchday with 10 games, 30 bookmakers, and 5 markets each produces thousands of data points per refresh cycle.
Odds Comparison Tool
An odds comparison tool finds the best price across bookmakers for any given bet. For example, if Bookmaker A offers 2.10 on Arsenal to win and Bookmaker B offers 2.25, the tool highlights the better deal. This requires pulling odds from a provider that covers many bookmakers (The Odds API with 40+ or SportMonks with 145+) and comparing prices in real time. The commercial model is usually affiliate referrals to the bookmakers.
Prediction Models and Analytics
Combining historical football betting odds with match statistics (xG, possession, shots) lets you build models that estimate the true probability of outcomes. If your model says a team has a 55% chance of winning but the bookmaker odds imply only 45%, that gap represents potential value. APIs like API-Football and SportMonks provide both the stats and the odds in one place, which simplifies the data pipeline for this use case.
FAQ
What is the best free football/soccer API?
For football data including fixtures, standings, and basic stats, Football-Data.org covers 12 major competitions for free with no time limit. API-Football offers a more comprehensive free tier with 100 requests per day across all endpoints and 1,200+ leagues, but limits you to current season data. The Odds API provides 500 free credits per month for odds data across all sports. Your choice depends on whether you need stats (API-Football or Football-Data.org) or odds (The Odds API).
How often do football/soccer odds update?
Pre-match odds typically update every 5 to 15 minutes depending on the provider and plan. Live in-play odds update much faster: API-Football refreshes every 15 seconds, and other providers offer similar or faster rates on paid plans. Odds movement accelerates around kickoff time and immediately after goals or red cards.
Can I get historical football/soccer odds data?
Yes. The Odds API stores historical snapshots going back to 2020 for major markets. SportMonks logs every odds change from market opening through kickoff, giving you granular movement data. Football-Data.org offers historical match data across multiple seasons, with odds history available on the paid add-on (EUR 15/month for 40 competitions). Historical data access is generally limited on free tiers, so plan for a paid subscription if backtesting is your primary use case.