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Free / open data

openfootball

Community-maintained public-domain football database holding league and cup fixtures, results and goals in plain-text Football.TXT files and JSON on GitHub.

Facts verified against the provider's site on

Commercial use: AllowedBetting use: not disclosedNeutral
Visit official siteOpen API docsCompare
Featured in:🏢 APIs you can use commercially⚽ Best football APIs
53

SportDex Score

#40 of 233 sports APIs

See the full ranking →
Popularity
36

Brand demand, developer discussions, GitHub repos and videos

Community & reliability
52

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

Transparency
90

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

Developer experience
48

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

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
Not public
Free access
Free tier
Sports
1 (Football (soccer))
Live data
No
Delivery
Not disclosed
Discussions
13 threads
GitHub adoption
17 repos

Best for

Football projects that want public-domain fixtures and results as plain-text or JSON files with no key and no usage limits.

Historical results datasetsTournament fixture appsTeaching and open-data projects

Not ideal for

Apps needing live scores, detailed player stats or a hosted API; data is fetched from GitHub repositories and is not live.

Limitations to check

  • − No hosted API; files come from GitHub
  • − No live or in-play data
  • − Community-maintained, coverage varies by competition

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

Last checked 2026-11-03

openfootball at a glance

What is openfootball best for?
Football projects that want public-domain fixtures and results as plain-text or JSON files with no key and no usage limits. Not ideal for: Apps needing live scores, detailed player stats or a hosted API; data is fetched from GitHub repositories and is not live.
How much does openfootball cost?
openfootball does not publish prices on the pages we checked.
Does openfootball have a free tier?
Yes. openfootball lists a free plan called "Free (public domain)".
What does openfootball cover?
openfootball is a free / open data. Its sports: Football (soccer); data: Fixtures, Historical data, Results, Standings.
Can I use openfootball data commercially or for betting?
According to the public terms of openfootball — commercial use: allowed; redistribution: allowed; storing data: allowed.
What do developers say about openfootball?
Free public-domain (CC0) football fixtures and results published as plain text and JSON files on GitHub, with no key needed. Developers use it for World Cup apps, prediction models and tutorials. Limits: static files rather than a live API, and Hacker News commenters debated whether its plain-text format is easy to parse.
What are the alternatives to openfootball?
Close alternatives in the SportDex catalog: Football Charts, Jolpica-F1, CollegeBasketballData.com, snooker.org API, FootyStats.

Commercial decision

Pricing & plan limits

PlanPriceRequestsWhat's included
Free (public domain)Free—Public domain datasets, no keysource

No hosted API; files are fetched from GitHub repositories. protocols left empty because none of the vocabulary fits plain file access.

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
Football (soccer)
Data types
FixturesHistorical dataResultsStandings
Key competitions
English Premier League, Bundesliga, Serie A, La Liga, Ligue 1, Champions League, Europa League, World Cup, Copa Libertadores, Copa Americasource
Competitions
Not disclosed
Live / in-play
No
Women's competitions
Not disclosed
Betting markets
Not disclosed
Bookmaker regions
Not disclosed
Bookmakers
Not disclosed
History depth
Multiple past seasons and tournaments
Update frequency
Not disclosed
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
Allowedsource
Betting products
Not disclosed
Redistribution
Allowed
Storing data
Allowed
Attribution
Not disclosed
Logos & photos
Not disclosed
Who can buy
Not disclosed
Verification (KYC)
Not disclosed
Not available in
Not disclosed
Only available in
Not disclosed

Developer-ready evaluation

Integration & documentation

Protocols
Formats
TXT, JSON
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: openfootball

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

## Known facts (from SportDex, verify before relying on them)
- Website: https://openfootball.github.io
- Docs: https://openfootball.github.io/docs/
- Sports: Football (soccer)
- Data: Fixtures, Historical data, Results, Standings
- Protocols: UNKNOWN — check the docs; formats: txt, json
- Auth: none
- Free plan: Free (public domain)
- Note: No hosted API; files are fetched from GitHub repositories. protocols left empty because none of the vocabulary fits plain file access.

## Verify before writing code
- live update frequency
- 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
community
Certifications
Not disclosed
Payment methods
Not disclosed
Minimum contract
Not disclosed
Country
Not disclosed
Founded
Not disclosed

Reddit · Hacker News · Stack Overflow · GitHub · YouTube

What developers say

Neutralfree tiercoveragelegaldocs

Free public-domain (CC0) football fixtures and results published as plain text and JSON files on GitHub, with no key needed. Developers use it for World Cup apps, prediction models and tutorials. Limits: static files rather than a live API, and Hacker News commenters debated whether its plain-text format is easy to parse.

Praised for

  • Public domain, no API key
  • Handy for World Cup and league fixtures
  • Used in several open-source projects

Complaints

  • Static files, no live data
  • Custom plain-text format questioned

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

Discussions

Shortlist next steps

Alternatives worth comparing

  • Football Charts logo
    Football ChartsFree / open data49

    Daily-updated football results, tables, goal timing, model probabilities and season projections for 98 leagues via JSON REST and an MCP server; open CC BY dataset and paid history tiers.

    Free tierFootball (soccer)
    from €9/mo1 discussions · 14 repos
  • Jolpica-F1Free / open data50

    Volunteer-run open source Formula 1 API with endpoints backward compatible with the retiring Ergast service, free to use and funded by donations.

    Free tierFormula 1Motorsport
    Free tier2 discussions · 1.6k repos
  • CollegeBasketballData.com logo
    CollegeBasketballData.comFree / open data51

    College basketball data service with a free personal API key, CSV exporter, analytics tools and a paid historical starter pack; sister project of the CFBD football API.

    Free tierBasketballCollege sports
    from $1/mo1 discussions · 42 repos
  • snooker.org APIFree / open data41

    Free API behind snooker.org giving results, schedules, live scores, rankings and player data for professional snooker; heavy users should contact the site.

    Free tierLiveSnooker
    Free tier1 discussions · 31 repos
  • FootyStats logo
    FootyStatsSports data API53

    JSON soccer statistics API covering 1,500+ leagues with team, player and match data such as BTTS, corners, cards and over/under figures, sold in league-count packages.

    Free tierFootball (soccer)
    Free tier6 discussions · 95 repos
openfootball vs Football Chartsopenfootball vs Jolpica-F1openfootball vs CollegeBasketballData.comopenfootball vs snooker.org APIFootyStats vs openfootball

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