Every odds API claims to be affordable. This page does the arithmetic instead: how credits are actually billed, what the free tiers really buy, competitor prices from their own pages (with read dates), and the cases where a competitor - or a scraper you write yourself - is genuinely the cheaper choice. No current ParlayAPI paid prices appear here on purpose: those live at /pricing, where they can't go stale.
A "cheap" plan with an expensive billing formula isn't cheap. The good news: for game lines, ParlayAPI bills exactly the way the-odds-api documents, so the two are directly comparable.
cost of an /odds call = markets × regions # NFL board: moneyline + spreads + totals, US region GET /v1/sports/americanfootball_nfl/odds?markets=h2h,spreads,totals®ions=us # = 3 markets x 1 region = 3 credits - on either API
That parity is deliberate: a migration estimate from the-odds-api carries over
one-to-one. Where the math diverges is flat-cost endpoints - things that would
take many calls (or your own code) elsewhere are one fixed price here. Every
cost is published, live and without a login, at
GET /v1/meta/credit-costs.
| Endpoint | Flat cost | Why it's cheap |
|---|---|---|
/v1/sports/{sport}/props | 3 credits | All player props for a sport, all books, one call - no per-event loop. |
/v1/sports/{sport}/consensus | 3 credits | Consensus / no-vig fair line, computed server-side. |
/v1/sports/{sport}/ev | 10 credits | A full +EV screen you'd otherwise build and run yourself. |
/v1/sports/{sport}/arbitrage | 10 credits | Cross-book arb finder across the whole slate. |
/v1/historical/closing-lines.csv | 1 credit | A daily closing-line CSV from the 1.7M+ row archive. |
/v1/status, /v1/meta/* | 0 credits | Status, coverage, SLA and changelog endpoints never touch your budget. |
Costs from the live /v1/meta/credit-costs endpoint, read 2026-08-25. If this table and the endpoint ever disagree, the endpoint wins.
Free tiers are the cheapest plan on any API, so start the comparison there. Competitor numbers are from their own pages, read 2026-08-25.
| Free tier | Monthly allowance | The fine print that matters |
|---|---|---|
| ParlayAPI | 1,000 credits | No card, no expiry, same live endpoints and books as paid. 1,000 credits ≈ 333 three-market board pulls - about 11 a day. Fine for a nightly model refresh or a prototype; not for a live dashboard. Zero-credit status/coverage endpoints don't count against it. Full details → |
| the-odds-api | 500 credits | Same billing formula, half the allowance - but the same "real API, no card" spirit. A solid free tier from the incumbent (the-odds-api.com, read 2026-08-25). |
| TheRundown | 200,000 data points | By far the biggest raw number, and genuinely generous if the limits fit: 3 sportsbooks only (BetMGM, DraftKings, FanDuel), 5-minute data delay, no player props, no live in-game odds, no historical (therundown.io/pricing, read 2026-08-25). Note the unit: a data point is one returned price row, so one board snapshot can bill hundreds of points - compare by workload, not unit name. |
the-odds-api publishes its plans on its homepage; here they are verbatim (read 2026-08-25), because you should see the competition's numbers on our page, not just ours on theirs.
| the-odds-api plan | Price | Credits / month | $ per 100k credits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | Free | 500 | - |
| 20K | $30/mo | 20,000 | $150.00 |
| 100K | $59/mo | 100,000 | $59.00 |
| 5M | $119/mo | 5,000,000 | $2.38 |
| 15M | $249/mo | 15,000,000 | $1.66 |
Source: the-odds-api.com homepage plan cards, read 2026-08-25. They note higher-volume plans exist behind an account.
Read that table honestly and two things jump out. Their entry paid tiers are pricey per credit - $30 for 20k. But at volume, $119 for five million credits is genuinely hard to beat if plain game-line polling is all you need. We're not going to pretend otherwise.
Where does ParlayAPI sit? Our paid tiers change as the product grows, so we keep the numbers in one place instead of freezing them into marketing pages: current prices are at /pricing, and the /cost calculator reads live tier data, takes your actual polling cadence, and tells you the monthly credit burn plus the cheapest tier that covers it - with headroom math included. The short version of our positioning: a much bigger free tier, cheaper entry into paid, flat-cost props/EV/arb endpoints that replace many calls with one, and 45+ books & sources with prop depth the incumbent doesn't match. At raw megavolume for game lines only, check both.
A budget guide that always concludes "buy ours" isn't a guide. Three honest cases:
If your workload is game lines only - no props depth, no streaming, no built-in EV/arb math - and you're burning millions of credits a month, their published $119/5M and $249/15M plans are aggressive, and the product has been operating since 2017 with a huge base of tutorials and community wrappers. Migration back and forth is a base-URL change either way, so you're never locked in. Our full comparison: /compare/the-odds-api.
A dashboard that only needs BetMGM, DraftKings, and FanDuel, and can live with a 5-minute delay, fits inside TheRundown's 200k-data-point free plan without paying anyone anything (therundown.io/pricing, read 2026-08-25). Their paid plans also bundle scores, player stats, and +EV tooling. The catch to watch: props, live odds, and history all require paid plans, and the per-row billing unit makes wide snapshots add up fast.
One book, a few markets, low frequency, and your time is free because you're learning? A weekend scraper is legitimately the cheapest option, and you'll understand odds data better for having built it. It stops being cheap when you add books (each with its own markup and anti-bot defenses), need it to not break on a Saturday night, or start valuing your hours at anything above zero. It may also violate the books' terms of service - your risk to weigh, not ours to wave away.
1) Request only the markets and regions you use - the formula multiplies. 2) Poll status/coverage on the zero-credit endpoints, not with billed calls. 3) Cache: a 60-second cache in front of a shared dashboard divides your burn by the number of viewers. 4) Prefer flat-cost endpoints (one 3-credit props call beats a per-event loop). 5) At the point where you're polling every few seconds, push beats pull - streaming exists so heavy pollers stop paying per look.
Cheap odds data that's stale, thin, or silently broken is expensive - you'll pay the difference in bad bets, bad models, or debugging time. Whatever provider you pick, verify freshness and coverage before you commit. Ours are public without an account: the live board, the coverage explorer, and status all read from the same pipeline you'd be buying - sub-5-second freshness on major books, measured, not promised.
It depends on your volume, honestly. At zero dollars, ParlayAPI's free tier (1,000 credits/month, no card) and the-odds-api's free tier (500 credits/month, per the-odds-api.com read 2026-08-25) both serve real live odds; TheRundown's free tier is generous on volume but limited to 3 sportsbooks on a 5-minute delay. At very high pure game-line polling volume, the-odds-api's published $119/month for 5M credits is genuinely hard to beat on raw price per credit. In between - and whenever you need props depth, streaming, or built-in EV/arbitrage math - compare current ParlayAPI tiers at /pricing and run your own cadence through the calculator.
Yes. ParlayAPI's free tier is 1,000 credits every month with no credit card and no expiry, hitting the same live endpoints as paid plans - details at /free-sports-odds-api. Elsewhere: the-odds-api's free plan is 500 credits/month, and TheRundown's free plan is 200,000 data points/month but covers only 3 sportsbooks (BetMGM, DraftKings, FanDuel) on a 5-minute delay with no props, live, or historical data (both read from their sites, 2026-08-25).
ParlayAPI bills /odds calls at markets × regions - the
same formula the-odds-api documents - so a call for h2h,spreads,totals in one
region costs 3 credits on either API, and migration cost estimates carry over
one-to-one. ParlayAPI also has flat-cost endpoints (all player props for a
sport: 3 credits; EV screen: 10; arbitrage screen: 10) and zero-credit meta
endpoints for status, coverage, and SLA data. Every cost is published live at
GET /v1/meta/credit-costs - no login needed. TheRundown uses a
different unit entirely (data points, billed per returned price row), so
compare it by workload, not by unit name.
Sometimes, genuinely. If you need one book, a handful of markets, at low frequency - for learning or a personal project - a small scraper can cost you nothing but a weekend. It stops being cheap when you multiply books (each with its own markup, anti-bot defenses, and breakage schedule), need reliability, or value your hours: a feed that silently breaks on a Saturday costs more than a year of most API subscriptions. Scraping may also violate sportsbooks' terms of service, which is your risk to weigh, not ours to wave away.
The free tier is 1,000 credits/month, no card, no expiry. Paid tiers change as the product grows, so we don't freeze numbers into this page - current pricing is always at /pricing, and the calculator at /cost reads live tier data and turns your polling cadence into a monthly credit estimate and a recommended tier. WebSocket/SSE streaming is included on Business tier and up - see the streaming page.
Sign up free - 1,000 credits a month, no card - or point the cost calculator at your actual polling cadence and see what a month really costs before you spend a dollar anywhere. NFL kickoff is September 9; college football starts August 29.