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Free / open data · France

OpenF1 logo

OpenF1

Open-source API for Formula 1 session data: lap times, car telemetry, positions, pit stops, weather, team radio and race control. Historical data from 2023 is free without auth; live access is a paid sponsorship.

Facts verified against the provider's site on

Commercial use: not disclosedBetting use: not disclosedMostly positive
Visit official siteOpen API docsCompare
Featured in:🆓 Best free sports APIs❤️ Developer favourites⚡ Streaming sports APIs (WebSocket)📂 Open sports data🏎️ Best Formula 1 APIs🏁 Best Motorsport APIs
66

SportDex Score

#7 of 233 sports APIs

See the full ranking →
Popularity
54

Brand demand, developer discussions, GitHub repos and videos

Community & reliability
72

Tone of public discussions, liked vs criticised points, reliability complaints; based on 8–24 public discussions.

Transparency
85

Public prices, docs, terms and coverage you can check before calling sales

Developer experience
62

Free access, docs, SDKs, OpenAPI, sandbox, realtime delivery, ecosystem

Reliability reports from developers: Occasional outages.

Computed from public data only; uptime and latency are not measured yet. Enterprise feeds that sell by contract score lower on transparency by design. How the score works

Starting price
€9.90/mo
Free access
Free tier
Sports
2 (Formula 1, Motorsport)
Live data
Yes
Delivery
Streaming (WebSocket)
Discussions
10 threads
GitHub adoption
675 repos

Best for

Hobby projects, dashboards and analysis of Formula 1 sessions that need free historical lap, telemetry and position data over a keyless REST API.

F1 telemetry dashboardsRace analysis notebooksPersonal live-timing apps

Not ideal for

Commercial products needing official F1 data or guaranteed uptime; it is an unofficial project and live data needs a paid sponsorship for personal use.

Limitations to check

  • − Historical data starts in 2023
  • − Live access costs 9.90 per month and is for personal use
  • − Live tier limited to 6 requests per second and 60 per minute
  • − Not affiliated with Formula 1

Written from the provider's own pages (source).

Last checked 2026-11-03

OpenF1 at a glance

What is OpenF1 best for?
Hobby projects, dashboards and analysis of Formula 1 sessions that need free historical lap, telemetry and position data over a keyless REST API. Not ideal for: Commercial products needing official F1 data or guaranteed uptime; it is an unofficial project and live data needs a paid sponsorship for personal use.
How much does OpenF1 cost?
The cheapest public paid plan of OpenF1 is €9.90/mo.
Does OpenF1 have a free tier?
Yes. OpenF1 lists a free plan called "Free (historical)".
What does OpenF1 cover?
OpenF1 is a free / open data. Its sports: Formula 1, Motorsport; data: Historical data, Results, Live scores, Standings, Team stats, Tracking data. Live / in-play data is offered.
Does OpenF1 have a WebSocket or streaming API?
Yes. OpenF1 pushes data continuously: WebSocket.
What do developers say about OpenF1?
Free open-source F1 API (lap times, telemetry, positions, weather, race control) used heavily in fan dashboards, replay tools, videos and analysis posts; historical data from 2023 needs no key, live access is paid. Users note it is unofficial, lacks pre-2023 data, has had outages that forced self-hosting, and deprecates fields. FastF1 and Jolpica are common alternatives.
What are the alternatives to OpenF1?
Close alternatives in the SportDex catalog: Jolpica-F1, FastF1, StatPal, Data Sports Group, NASCAR Content Feed (unofficial).

Commercial decision

Pricing & plan limits

PlanPriceRequestsWhat's included
Free (historical)Free—Historical data from 2023, no authsource
Sponsor€9.90/mo—Live data via REST, MQTT, WebSocket; 6 req/s, 60 req/min; personal usesource

Real-time tier also offers MQTT (not in protocol vocabulary, omitted). Auth for the paid real-time tier is not detailed on the page. Unofficial; not affiliated with Formula 1.

Before choosing a paid plan, confirm

• What counts as one request (per call, per market, per region?)

• What happens when you exceed the quota: blocked or billed

• Whether live and historical data are on your plan

• Whether your use (public app, betting, resale) is licensed

The critical question

Data coverage

Sports
Formula 1Motorsport
Data types
Historical dataResultsLive scoresStandingsTeam statsTracking data
Key competitions
Formula 1source
Competitions
Not disclosed
Live / in-play
Yes
Women's competitions
Not disclosed
Betting markets
Not disclosed
Bookmaker regions
Not disclosed
Bookmakers
Not disclosed
History depth
Since 2023
Update frequency
Car data ~3.7 Hz; positions/intervals every ~4 s
Name languages
Not disclosed
ID mapping
Not disclosed

Coverage often depends on the plan; confirm the exact league and season on your plan.

Before you build

Usage rights & access

Commercial use
Not disclosed
Betting products
Not disclosed
Redistribution
Not disclosed
Storing data
Not disclosed
Attribution
Not disclosed
Logos & photos
Not disclosed
Who can buy
Not disclosed
Verification (KYC)
Not required
Not available in
Not disclosed
Only available in
Not disclosed

Historical data from 2023 is free without authentication; real-time data needs a paid subscription.

Developer-ready evaluation

Integration & documentation

Protocols
RESTWebSocket
Formats
JSON, CSV
Authentication
none
SDKs
Not disclosed
OpenAPI spec
Not disclosed
Claimed latency
Not disclosed
Status page
Not disclosed
Sandbox / test keys
Not disclosed
Support
Not disclosed
SLA uptime
Not disclosed
Preview brief
# Integration brief: OpenF1

Goal: build a feature on OpenF1 data. Use only the official documentation below as the source of truth.

## Known facts (from SportDex, verify before relying on them)
- Website: https://openf1.org/
- Docs: https://openf1.org/docs/
- Sports: Formula 1, Motorsport
- Data: Historical data, Results, Live scores, Standings, Team stats, Tracking data
- Protocols: REST, WebSocket; formats: json, csv
- Auth: none
- Free plan: Free (historical)
- Cheapest paid plan: €9.90/mo
- Note: Real-time tier also offers MQTT (not in protocol vocabulary, omitted). Auth for the paid real-time tier is not detailed on the page. Unofficial; not affiliated with Formula 1.

## Verify before writing code
- whether commercial use is allowed on the plan you pick
- exact endpoint paths, parameters and response fields (read the official docs, do not guess)

## Implementation rules
- Keep the API key on the server (environment variable, backend route or edge function); never ship it to the browser.
- Cache responses and respect rate limits; count how many requests each screen triggers.
- Handle errors explicitly: invalid key, quota exceeded (429), missing fields, empty fixtures, timeouts.
- Start with one demo request and log the raw response before building UI on assumed field names.

Data quality signals

Data source & company

Official partners
Not disclosed
How data is collected
Not disclosed
Certifications
Not disclosed
Payment methods
Not disclosed
Minimum contract
Not disclosed
Country
France
Founded
Not disclosed

Reddit · Hacker News · Stack Overflow · GitHub · YouTube

What developers say

Mostly positivefree tiercoveragereliabilityalternatives

Free open-source F1 API (lap times, telemetry, positions, weather, race control) used heavily in fan dashboards, replay tools, videos and analysis posts; historical data from 2023 needs no key, live access is paid. Users note it is unofficial, lacks pre-2023 data, has had outages that forced self-hosting, and deprecates fields. FastF1 and Jolpica are common alternatives.

Praised for

  • Free historical data without auth
  • Rich telemetry and race control data
  • Widely adopted in dashboards and videos
  • Open-source and easy REST access

Complaints

  • No data before 2023
  • Live access requires paid sponsorship
  • Occasional outages
  • Not truly real-time for some users

Our summary of public discussions, not a rating. Vendor posts are not counted as user opinion.

Discussions

Shortlist next steps

Alternatives worth comparing

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OpenF1 vs Jolpica-F1OpenF1 vs FastF1OpenF1 vs StatPalOpenF1 vs Data Sports GroupOpenF1 vs NASCAR Content Feed (unofficial)OpenF1 vs RaceHooks

Evidence & transparency

Official sources

Facts were extracted from the provider's own pages on 2026-11-03. Empty fields mean the provider does not say, not that the feature is missing. How we know