Is there a free sports betting API?
What free means for sports betting APIs: real free tiers for odds data, keyless feeds you can read with no account, and what stays paid.
Yes, for betting odds data, in the form of free tiers: ParlayAPI includes 1,000 credits per month with no credit card, the-odds-api includes 500 (the-odds-api.com, read 2026-08-28), and TheRundown offers 20,000 data points per day free (therundown.io/api, read 2026-08-28). Major sportsbooks publish no public bet-placement API, so free or paid, a sports betting API in practice means odds and line data. ParlayAPI also publishes keyless surfaces, such as the /moves line-movement feed, that need no account at all.
More detail
What a free tier actually covers: on ParlayAPI, live odds and player props from the same collector paid tiers read, a 48 hour historical window, and free discovery endpoints such as /v1/sports and /v1/meta/credit-costs. What stays paid everywhere: deep historical archives, high-volume polling, and push streaming, which on ParlayAPI is WebSocket and SSE on Business tier and above.
Some surfaces are free without even a key. The /moves feed publishes notable line movement as HTML, JSON, and RSS with its updated timestamp printed on the page, and the calculators under /tools, such as the arbitrage and no-vig calculators, run entirely in the browser. Those exist so you can judge data quality before creating an account.
On bet placement: major sportsbooks publish no public API for placing bets, and their terms generally prohibit automated betting. Anything marketed as a free betting-automation API deserves skepticism. The developer surface of this market is data: odds, props, movement, and history.
Endpoint
GET /v1/sports/{sport_key}/odds
curl 'https://parlay-api.com/v1/sports/americanfootball_nfl/odds?regions=us&markets=h2h' -H 'X-API-Key: YOUR_FREE_KEY'
Why developers use it
- 1,000 free credits per month with no credit card
- Keyless /moves feed to sample live data before signup
- Free browser calculators and free discovery endpoints
FAQ
Can an API place bets for me?
No major sportsbook offers a public bet-placement API, and most terms of service prohibit automated bet placement. Developer APIs in this market, ParlayAPI included, deliver odds and market data that you act on separately.
What can I build on a free tier?
Development and light production: one single-region single-market board pull costs one credit and a props call is a flat three, so 1,000 monthly credits cover a small line shopper, a model prototype, or an agent experiment polling a few times a day.
Is historical betting data free?
ParlayAPI's free tier carries a 48 hour historical window. The deep archive, with game lines continuous back to 2005, is a paid-tier feature; current tiers are listed at /pricing.
Related
/signup/moves/answers/odds-api-no-credit-card/answers/best-free-sports-data-api/pricing