# transfermarkt-api

> MIT-licensed FastAPI service that wraps Transfermarkt's internal endpoints to return club, player and competition data as JSON. Run it yourself; the public demo is rate limited and for testing only.

Canonical page: https://sportdex.net/providers/transfermarkt-api/  
Last checked: 2026-11-03  
SportDex Score: 45/100 (rank 93; popularity 21, community n/a, transparency 65, developer experience 66)

## Facts
- Type: Free / open data
- Website: https://github.com/felipeall/transfermarkt-api
- Documentation: https://github.com/felipeall/transfermarkt-api
- Pricing page: unknown
- Sports: Football (soccer)
- Data types: Fixtures, Player stats, Team stats
- Protocols: REST
- Delivery: Polling only (REST)
- Live / in-play: not disclosed
- Free tier: yes
- Cheapest public paid plan: not public
- Authentication: none
- SDKs: python

## Plans
| Plan | Price | Requests | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open source | Free | — | MIT code; demo limited to 2 requests per 3 seconds per IP |

## Who it is for

Best for: Developers comfortable self-hosting a Python service who want Transfermarkt club, player and competition data as JSON for personal or research projects.

Not ideal for: Commercial or production products that need guaranteed data rights or uptime; the MIT licence covers the code only and the data is Transfermarkt's.

Use cases: Self-hosted football data service; Player and club lookups; Research scripts in Python

Limitations:
- Data is scraped from Transfermarkt and requests may be blocked
- MIT licence covers code, not the data
- Public demo is rate limited to 2 requests per 3 seconds per IP and for testing only
- Unofficial project with no support or SLA

## Quick answers

**What is transfermarkt-api best for?** Developers comfortable self-hosting a Python service who want Transfermarkt club, player and competition data as JSON for personal or research projects. Not ideal for: Commercial or production products that need guaranteed data rights or uptime; the MIT licence covers the code only and the data is Transfermarkt's.

**How much does transfermarkt-api cost?** transfermarkt-api does not publish prices on the pages we checked.

**Does transfermarkt-api have a free tier?** Yes. transfermarkt-api lists a free plan called "Open source".

**What does transfermarkt-api cover?** transfermarkt-api is a free / open data. Its sports: Football (soccer); data: Fixtures, Player stats, Team stats.

**Does transfermarkt-api have a WebSocket or streaming API?** No streaming is listed. transfermarkt-api delivers data by REST, so you poll for updates.

**What do developers say about transfermarkt-api?** Self-hosted open-source wrapper around Transfermarkt's unofficial endpoints, plus many similar clients, MCP servers and guides on GitHub. Adoption is visible through ~28 repos and a dataset pipeline, but there is no real user discussion about reliability, limits or legality, so the community picture is thin.

**What are the alternatives to transfermarkt-api?** Close alternatives in the SportDex catalog: Fantasy Premier League API, CollegeFootballData.com, NHL Web API (unofficial docs), CollegeBasketballData.com, nflverse.

## What developers say

Self-hosted open-source wrapper around Transfermarkt's unofficial endpoints, plus many similar clients, MCP servers and guides on GitHub. Adoption is visible through ~28 repos and a dataset pipeline, but there is no real user discussion about reliability, limits or legality, so the community picture is thin.

Praised for: Many open-source wrappers and guides exist

## Method
Facts were read from the provider's own pages on 2026-11-03. Empty fields mean the provider does not say, not that a feature is missing. Method: https://sportdex.net/methodology/