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Free / open data · United States

Retrosheet logo

Retrosheet

Volunteer-run archive of major league baseball history offering downloadable CSV play-by-play, game logs, schedules and biographical files back to the 19th century.

Facts verified against the provider's site on

Commercial use: not disclosedBetting use: not disclosedMostly positive
Visit official siteOpen API docsCompare
Featured in:❤️ Developer favourites📂 Open sports data⚾ Best Baseball APIs
55

SportDex Score

#30 of 233 sports APIs

See the full ranking →
Popularity
36

Brand demand, developer discussions, GitHub repos and videos

Community & reliability
69

Tone of public discussions, liked vs criticised points, reliability complaints; based on only a few discussions, pulled towards neutral.

Transparency
75

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

Developer experience
51

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 (Baseball)
Live data
No
Delivery
CSV download
Discussions
6 threads
GitHub adoption
347 repos

Best for

Baseball researchers and hobbyists who want free bulk MLB play-by-play, game logs and schedules as downloadable CSV files.

Historical baseball researchSabermetric models from play-by-playGame log analysis

Not ideal for

Apps that need a live API or current-day data; Retrosheet offers bulk file downloads only, with a copyright notice on the data.

Limitations to check

  • − No API, files only
  • − Not live; historical archive
  • − Copyright notice applies; check terms before reuse
  • − Volunteer-run and donation-funded

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

Last checked 2026-11-03

Retrosheet at a glance

What is Retrosheet best for?
Baseball researchers and hobbyists who want free bulk MLB play-by-play, game logs and schedules as downloadable CSV files. Not ideal for: Apps that need a live API or current-day data; Retrosheet offers bulk file downloads only, with a copyright notice on the data.
How much does Retrosheet cost?
Retrosheet does not publish prices on the pages we checked.
Does Retrosheet have a free tier?
Yes. Retrosheet lists a free plan called "Free download".
What does Retrosheet cover?
Retrosheet is a free / open data. Its sports: Baseball; data: Fixtures, Historical data, Play-by-play, Results, Team stats.
Does Retrosheet have a WebSocket or streaming API?
No streaming is listed. Retrosheet delivers data by CSV download, so you poll for updates.
What do developers say about Retrosheet?
Volunteer-run archive of MLB play-by-play, game logs and schedules as downloadable files, not a hosted API. Recommended on HN and betting forums for model building and ETL practice, and widely used by tools such as Chadwick and boxball Docker images. Free and deep history back to 1914; you must parse and host it yourself.
What are the alternatives to Retrosheet?
Close alternatives in the SportDex catalog: CollegeFootballData.com, nflverse, Sportradar, PandaScore, Football Charts.

Commercial decision

Pricing & plan limits

PlanPriceRequestsWhat's included
Free downloadFree—Free data downloads; copyright retained, attribution notice on sitesource

No API, bulk files only. Copyright notice on the site; see its usage terms before reuse. 1898 start from batch hint, not verified on crawled home page.

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
Baseball
Data types
FixturesHistorical dataPlay-by-playResultsTeam stats
Key competitions
MLBsource
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
MLB history (play-by-play back to 1898 per batch hint)
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
Not disclosed
Betting products
Not disclosed
Redistribution
Not disclosed
Storing data
Not disclosed
Attribution
Not disclosed
Logos & photos
Not disclosed
Who can buy
Individualssource
Verification (KYC)
Not disclosed
Not available in
Not disclosed
Only available in
Not disclosed

Developer-ready evaluation

Integration & documentation

Protocols
CSV download
Formats
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: Retrosheet

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

## Known facts (from SportDex, verify before relying on them)
- Website: https://www.retrosheet.org
- Docs: https://www.retrosheet.org
- Sports: Baseball
- Data: Fixtures, Historical data, Play-by-play, Results, Team stats
- Protocols: CSV download; formats: csv
- Auth: none
- Free plan: Free download
- Note: No API, bulk files only. Copyright notice on the site; see its usage terms before reuse. 1898 start from batch hint, not verified on crawled home page.

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

Reddit · Hacker News · Stack Overflow · GitHub · YouTube

What developers say

Mostly positivecoveragefree tierdata quality

Volunteer-run archive of MLB play-by-play, game logs and schedules as downloadable files, not a hosted API. Recommended on HN and betting forums for model building and ETL practice, and widely used by tools such as Chadwick and boxball Docker images. Free and deep history back to 1914; you must parse and host it yourself.

Praised for

  • Free play-by-play back to the early 1900s
  • Strong ecosystem of parsers and database images

Complaints

  • Files only, no live API; needs parsing

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

Discussions

Shortlist next steps

Alternatives worth comparing

  • CollegeFootballData.com logo
    CollegeFootballData.comFree / open data57

    College football API with games, team and player stats, recruiting, betting lines and advanced metrics; free key with monthly cap, higher tiers via Patreon, plus basketball API.

    Free tierCollege sportsAmerican footballBasketball
    Free tier2 discussions · 1.1k repos
  • nflverseFree / open data67

    Community open-source NFL data project: play-by-play since 1999, rosters, schedules and player stats distributed as downloadable files with R and Python loader packages. Data mostly CC-BY 4.0.

    Free tierAmerican football
    Free tier4 discussions · 3.4k repos
  • Sportradar logo
    SportradarB2B data feed51

    Global supplier of live data, odds feeds, streaming and trading services to sportsbooks, media and leagues; developer portal offers sport-specific APIs with trial keys, commercial pricing by request volume via sales.

    ⚡ StreamingMulti-sport (40+)
    Price not public33 discussions · 237 repos
  • PandaScore logo
    PandaScoreEsports data65

    Esports statistics and odds provider covering 13 titles such as LoL, CS, Dota 2 and Valorant, with REST API for fixtures and history plus WebSocket live feeds.

    Free tier⚡ StreamingEsports
    from €400/mo8 discussions · 195 repos
  • 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
nflverse vs RetrosheetCricsheet vs RetrosheetCollegeFootballData.com vs RetrosheetRetrosheet vs SportradarPandaScore vs RetrosheetRetrosheet vs Football Charts

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