Glossary / API integration / Market key
A ParlayAPI glossary entry

Market key

A market key is the canonical identifier for a betting market type in an odds API - h2h for moneylines, spreads, totals, and finer-grained keys like player_points for props. Keys make markets addressable in requests and stable across books that name the same market differently.

In practice

# The core keys every integration touches
        h2h              # moneyline / match winner
        spreads          # point spread / handicap
        totals           # over-under
        player_points    # one of thousands of prop keys

Key naming follows the-odds-api conventions, so integrations migrating to a compatible API keep their market vocabulary. The prop keyspace is huge and sport-specific - discovering what exists per sport programmatically beats hardcoding.

Where it shows up in ParlayAPI

The live catalog at /v1/meta/markets enumerates every active key - ParlayAPI serves 4,000+ distinct prop market keys in a typical 24 hours across its sports. Requests filter by key, and every outcome in a response states its key, point value, and price.

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