SportsGameOdds publishes the clearest spec sheet in this market: every tier states its object allowance, its rate limit, its update frequency and exactly how many leagues and bookmakers it unlocks, and the free tier needs no card (sportsgameodds.com/pricing, read 2026-09-01). That is genuinely good practice. The trade-off is that coverage is the thing being tiered, so the plan you can afford decides which leagues and books you see. ParlayAPI tiers volume instead of catalogue.
SGO is a self-serve odds and sports-data API with an unusually explicit per-tier specification. Read the tier rows, not the headline.
Their pitch is “The easiest way to add sports and odds data to anything. Set up in 5 minutes. Migrate in an hour,” and the catalogue behind it is stated as over 85 bookmakers, over 67 leagues, over 28 sports and over 875 markets, with hundreds of player props alongside game and team props. Normalisation across books is the thing they sell hardest, and it is the right thing to sell hardest.
Pricing is per object with an explicit update frequency per tier. Amateur is free for testing and prototyping at 2.5k objects/month, 10 requests/min and a 10 minute update frequency, with 8 leagues and 9 bookmakers. Rookie showed $99/month with 100k objects, 50 requests/min, 3 minute updates, 17 leagues and 77 bookmakers. Pro showed $299/month with unlimited objects, 300 requests/min, sub-minute updates, 53 leagues and 82 bookmakers plus historical access. All-Star is “Let's talk” and adds WebSocket streams. Read those two figures carefully: the page has an annual/monthly toggle advertising up to 40% off and it lands on Annual, so $99 and $299 are the billed-annually rates rather than the month-to-month ones. Their own roundup states the month-to-month prices as $149 for Rookie and $499 for Pro (sportsgameodds.com/blog/top-5-odds-apis-for-sports-betting-data, read 2026-09-01).
We publish this page to win business, so it starts with the case against us. Everything in this section is SportsGameOdds's own description of SportsGameOdds, read 2026-09-01 and linked in verify it yourself. If one of these paragraphs describes your project, buy from them.
Every tier states objects per month, requests per minute, update frequency, league count and bookmaker count in one row. Nobody else here makes it that easy to work out what you are actually buying, and a vendor who publishes an update frequency per tier is a vendor who expects to be held to it. We think that is admirable and we say so on our own comparison pages too (sportsgameodds.com/pricing, read 2026-09-01).
Their Pro tier is listed with unlimited objects per month and sub-minute update frequency at a published monthly price. If your workload is high-volume and predictable, an unmetered plan removes an entire category of budgeting anxiety, and it is a genuinely different shape from credit metering (sportsgameodds.com/pricing, read 2026-09-01).
“Set up in 5 minutes. Migrate in an hour” is a promise about developer experience, and their normalisation story across books is the part that makes it plausible. If you are replacing a home-grown collector next week rather than architecting for next year, that focus is worth something (sportsgameodds.com, read 2026-09-01).
They publish an official MCP server for AI coding tools, invoked as npx -y sports-odds-api-mcp and named for Claude Code, Cursor and Copilot, plus first-party SDKs for JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Ruby, Go and Java. We ship an MCP server too, but we do not match five language SDKs, and if your team is on Ruby, Go or Java their client list is simply better than ours (sportsgameodds.com, read 2026-09-01).
ParlayAPI figures are measured against our own production API and catalogue as of 2026-09 and are checkable on live public endpoints. SportsGameOdds figures are read from their own pages on 2026-09-01, with the URL in every row. Where SportsGameOdds publishes no number, the cell says so rather than guessing.
| Feature | ParlayAPI | SportsGameOdds |
|---|---|---|
| Getting a key | Self-serve signup, key immediately, no card, plus a keyless demo endpoint you can call before signing up | Self-serve: “Get Your Free API Key,” free tier needs no card |
| Published pricing | Fixed tiers at /pricing, plus a cost calculator for your own call pattern | Fixed tiers published: Amateur free, Rookie $99/month, Pro $299/month, All-Star “Let's talk”.read 2026-09-01. The annual/monthly toggle lands on Annual, so those two are the billed-annually rates; their own roundup gives the month-to-month prices as $149 and $499, read 2026-09-01 |
| What the tiers meter | Volume only. Every tier sees the full source and sport-key catalogue | Volume and catalogue: leagues and bookmakers are scoped per tier (8 leagues and 9 bookmakers on free, 17 and 77 on Rookie, 53 and 82 on Pro) |
| Free tier terms | 1,000 credits/month, no card, full book and sport-key list | Amateur: 2.5k objects/month, 10 requests/min, 10 minute update frequency, 8 leagues, 9 bookmakers, described as for testing and prototyping |
| Update frequency on the free tier | Same freshness path as paid tiers; the metering is credits, not staleness | 10 minutes on Amateur, 3 minutes on Rookie, sub-minute on Pro |
| Coverage | 30+ sportsbooks and sources across 90+ sport keys at every tier, live at GET /v1/sports and GET /v1/bookmakers |
Over 85 bookmakers, over 67 leagues and over 28 sports advertised sitewide; the per-tier rows are lower |
| Streaming | WebSocket and SSE on Business tier and up - see /pricing | WebSocket streams listed on All-Star, which is contact-sales |
| Historical odds | Game closing lines from 2005 and a player-prop closing-line archive, available without a top-tier plan | Historical access from Pro upward, described as previous seasons with availability varying by league and tier |
| Prediction markets | Kalshi and Polymarket in the same schema as sportsbooks | ✓ They sell this too, and wider: their Prediction Markets API page advertises Polymarket, Kalshi, DraftKings Predictions and FanDuel Predicts through one API, at sportsgameodds.com/prediction-market-api, read 2026-09-01 |
| AI-agent tooling | MCP server: parlayapi-mcp on PyPI plus a hosted endpoint, documented at /mcp |
They ship this too, and they are ahead of us here: an official MCP server, npx -y sports-odds-api-mcp, named on their site for Claude Code, Cursor and Copilot, alongside SDKs for JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Ruby, Go and Java, read 2026-09-01 |
| Independent reachability record | Published at /watch, ourselves included, probed every 5 minutes | ✓ Also on that board, probed on the same schedule and scored by the same rule |
We do not reprint our own paid prices anywhere on this page. They live at /pricing, which is the only surface that can be right about them, and /tools/cost-calculator will estimate what your own call pattern costs before you sign up for anything.
SGO tiers the catalogue; we tier the volume. That is the whole difference, and which one is better depends entirely on whether your leagues sit inside the plan you can afford. Here is how to find out without signing up for either.
# keyless demo endpoint, 60 requests/hour per IP curl "https://parlay-api.com/v1/try/americanfootball_nfl/odds" # keyless public feeds, same data path as the paid API curl "https://parlay-api.com/moves.json" curl "https://parlay-api.com/divergence.json"
curl "https://parlay-api.com/v1/sports/americanfootball_nfl/odds?regions=us&markets=h2h&apiKey=YOUR_KEY"
There is an MCP server too, if your client is an AI agent rather than a script:
parlayapi-mcp on PyPI, plus a hosted endpoint documented at
/mcp. Full endpoint reference at /docs.
One more thing you can check on us rather than take on faith: /watch probes odds-API endpoints every 5 minutes from our production server and publishes the result, ParlayAPI included and measured by exactly the same rule as everyone else. SportsGameOdds is one of the endpoints on that board, so you can see our two edges measured side by side, by the same probe, on the same schedule.
Every SportsGameOdds statement on this page came from one of these pages on the date shown. Prices and coverage move; if you are making a buying decision, open them yourself rather than trusting a page published by a competitor, including this one.
| What we read | Source URL | Read date |
|---|---|---|
| Positioning, coverage, player props, self-serve key | sportsgameodds.com/ | read 2026-09-01 |
| Tier names, monthly prices, objects, rate limits, update frequency, per-tier league and bookmaker counts, annual toggle | sportsgameodds.com/pricing | read 2026-09-01 |
| Their own roundup, which ranks SportsGameOdds first, and which states the month-to-month prices | sportsgameodds.com/blog/top-5-odds-apis-for-sports-betting-data | read 2026-09-01 |
| Prediction Markets API: Polymarket, Kalshi, DraftKings Predictions, FanDuel Predicts | sportsgameodds.com/prediction-market-api | read 2026-09-01 |
ParlayAPI's own numbers are checkable without asking us: GET /v1/sports and
GET /v1/bookmakers return the live catalogue,
/watch publishes our reachability next to other providers', and
/pricing carries current prices.
ParlayAPI does, and we compete with SportsGameOdds. Every SGO claim here is linked to an SGO page, read 2026-09-01, and the section above the comparison table is entirely about what they do better, and several table rows go to them.
Their pricing page is more legible than almost anyone's: objects per month, requests per minute, update frequency, league count and bookmaker count are all stated per tier. Their Pro tier lists unlimited objects at a published monthly price, which credit metering does not match for high steady volume. And they target integration speed explicitly, promising setup in five minutes and migration in an hour.
Read both numbers, because their pricing page shows the cheaper one first. On sportsgameodds.com/pricing, read 2026-09-01, the annual/monthly toggle lands on Annual, and the prices it then shows are Amateur free, Rookie $99/month, Pro $299/month and All-Star as contact-sales. Those are billed-annually rates. Flip the toggle to Monthly and the month-to-month rates apply: their own roundup at sportsgameodds.com/blog/top-5-odds-apis-for-sports-betting-data, read 2026-09-01, states them as $149 monthly for Rookie and $499 monthly for Pro. Open the page yourself before budgeting.
SGO's free tier sees 8 leagues and 9 bookmakers; their Rookie tier sees 17 and 77. ParlayAPI's free tier sees the same 30+ sportsbooks and sources and the same 90+ sport keys the paid tiers see, and what you run out of is credits. If your project needs a niche league or a specific book, catalogue tiering decides your plan for you; if your project needs enormous volume on a handful of majors, volume tiering is the more expensive model. Neither is a trick.
Call the keyless demo endpoint at /v1/try/americanfootball_nfl/odds, which allows 60 requests per hour per IP, or read the keyless public feeds /moves.json, /divergence.json and /watch.json. GET /v1/sports and GET /v1/bookmakers return the live catalogue behind the coverage claims on this page.
1,000 credits a month, no credit card, no sales call. If SportsGameOdds turns out to be the better fit for what you are building, you have lost nothing but an afternoon.