How to line shop programmatically
Automating best-price selection across sportsbooks with best-line and compare endpoints instead of scraping books one by one.
Request the same market across every covered book from one endpoint and take the best price per side. GET /v1/sports/{sport_key}/best-line returns the top price per outcome with its source label, and GET /v1/sports/{sport_key}/compare returns the full cross-book grid, so your code can log book, price, and timestamp for every bet.
More detail
Line shopping is the most reliable edge in sports betting because it requires no prediction: the same outcome routinely trades at meaningfully different prices across books, and taking the best available price compounds over volume. The hard part is engineering, not math, since shopping by hand across a dozen apps does not scale.
The best-line endpoint does the reduction server side across 30+ sportsbooks, returning the top price per outcome with the book that published it. The compare endpoint keeps the whole grid when you want spread of prices, not just the maximum, which is also the input for hold computation and outlier detection.
Log what you took and when. Pairing each logged entry price with the closing line via the CLV endpoints turns a line-shopping bot into a measurable system rather than a habit.
Endpoint
GET /v1/sports/{sport_key}/best-line
curl 'https://parlay-api.com/v1/sports/basketball_nba/best-line?markets=h2h' -H 'X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY'
Why developers use it
- Server-side best price per outcome across 30+ sportsbooks
- Full cross-book grid via the compare endpoint
- CLV endpoints close the loop on measured results
FAQ
Which endpoint should I poll for a line-shopping alert bot?
Poll /v1/sports/{sport_key}/best-line for the sports you track and alert when the best price for a target outcome crosses your threshold. Each result names the book, so the alert is actionable.
Does best-line ever mix or average prices?
No. Every returned price is a real published price from a named book. If no book prices an outcome, the outcome is absent rather than estimated.
Can I line shop player props too?
Yes. The props endpoint carries the same per-book structure, so the identical reduce-to-best logic works for props, including DFS app lines with their own source labels.
Related
/glossary/line-shopping/answers/sportsbook-odds-api/answers/book-coverage-api/best-line