Skip to content
sportdex.

Sports data API

TheSportsDB logo

TheSportsDB

Crowd-sourced sports database with artwork, teams, players, events and league tables. Free API with tight limits; paid keys add livescores, highlight links and higher rate limits.

Facts verified against the provider's site on

Commercial use: Paid plans onlyBetting use: not disclosedMixed
Visit official siteOpen API docsCompare
Featured in:🆓 Best free sports APIs💸 Cheapest paid sports APIs🐙 Most used on GitHub🏢 APIs you can use commercially🎾 Best Tennis APIs🏏 Best Cricket APIs⛳ Best Golf APIs🏇 Best Horse racing APIs🏎️ Best Formula 1 APIs🥊 Best MMA APIs🏁 Best Motorsport APIs🎓 Best College sports APIs
65

SportDex Score

#8 of 233 sports APIs

See the full ranking →
Popularity
70

Brand demand, developer discussions, GitHub repos and videos

Community & reliability
54

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

Transparency
85

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

Developer experience
52

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
$9/mo
Free access
Free tier
Sports
1 (Multi-sport (40+))
Live data
Not disclosed
Delivery
Polling only (REST)
Discussions
5 threads
GitHub adoption
919 repos

Best for

Hobby and early-stage apps that need team, player and event metadata plus artwork across many sports, at a low monthly price.

Team and player lookup pagesLeague tables and fixturesArtwork and badge galleriesHighlight link apps

Not ideal for

Projects that need live scores on the free tier, licensed logos or photos, or a published app without a paid key.

Limitations to check

  • − Free key allows 30 requests per minute and is for development lookups only
  • − Livescores and the v2 API need a paid key
  • − Artwork is mostly user-made; third-party logos and photos are not cleared
  • − Data is crowd-sourced

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

Last checked 2026-11-03

TheSportsDB at a glance

What is TheSportsDB best for?
Hobby and early-stage apps that need team, player and event metadata plus artwork across many sports, at a low monthly price. Not ideal for: Projects that need live scores on the free tier, licensed logos or photos, or a published app without a paid key.
How much does TheSportsDB cost?
The cheapest public paid plan of TheSportsDB is $9/mo. Listed plans: Single Developer (Premium) $9/mo; Small Business $20/mo.
Does TheSportsDB have a free tier?
Yes. TheSportsDB lists a free plan called "Free" (30 requests per minute).
What does TheSportsDB cover?
TheSportsDB is a sports data api. Its sports: Multi-sport (40+); data: Fixtures, Historical data, Images, Results, Live scores, Standings, Team stats, Video.
Does TheSportsDB have a WebSocket or streaming API?
No streaming is listed. TheSportsDB delivers data by REST, so you poll for updates.
Can I use TheSportsDB data commercially or for betting?
According to the public terms of TheSportsDB — commercial use: paid plans only; storing data: allowed.
What do developers say about TheSportsDB?
Crowd-sourced sports database popular for hobby apps, tutorials, student projects and Plex metadata agents, with many wrappers in several languages. Praised as free and good for artwork. The free tier is tight, paid keys are needed for more, and developers report image and RapidAPI access problems and gaps in per-season artwork.
What are the alternatives to TheSportsDB?
Close alternatives in the SportDex catalog: Sportradar, Goalserve, iSports API, Cito API, StatPal.

Commercial decision

Pricing & plan limits

PlanPriceRequestsWhat's included
FreeFree30 / minuteCore search/lookup, most queries limitedsource
Single Developer (Premium)$9/mo100 / minutePremium JSON data, 2-min livescore, YouTube highlight links, higher limitssource
Small Business$20/mo120 / minuteNo limit on returned data, private API key, email supportsource

Annual and lifetime billing toggles exist on pricing page but amounts not captured. Docs mention Swagger/OpenAPI and Postman collection (URLs not captured). V2 API and livescores need premium.

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
Multi-sport (40+)
Data types
FixturesHistorical dataImagesResultsLive scoresStandingsTeam statsVideo
Key competitions
Not disclosed
Competitions
Not disclosed
Live / in-play
Not disclosed
Women's competitions
Not disclosed
Betting markets
Not disclosed
Bookmaker regions
Not disclosed
Bookmakers
Not disclosed
History depth
Not disclosed
Update frequency
Premium livescore every 2 minutes (Soccer, NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL)
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
Paid plans onlysource
Betting products
Not disclosed
Redistribution
Not disclosed
Storing data
Allowed
Attribution
Required
Logos & photos
Included
Who can buy
Individuals, Companiessource
Verification (KYC)
Not required
Not available in
Not disclosed
Only available in
Not disclosed
Read the terms

Developer-ready evaluation

Integration & documentation

Protocols
REST
Formats
JSON
Authentication
api key
SDKs
Not disclosed
OpenAPI spec
Not disclosed
Claimed latency
Not disclosed
Status page
Not disclosed
Sandbox / test keys
Not disclosed
Support
email, forum, discord
SLA uptime
Not disclosed
Preview brief
# Integration brief: TheSportsDB

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

## Known facts (from SportDex, verify before relying on them)
- Website: https://www.thesportsdb.com
- Docs: https://www.thesportsdb.com/documentation
- Sports: Multi-sport (40+)
- Data: Fixtures, Historical data, Images, Results, Live scores, Standings, Team stats, Video
- Protocols: REST; formats: json
- Auth: api_key
- Free plan: Free, 30 requests per minute
- Cheapest paid plan: $9/mo
- Note: Annual and lifetime billing toggles exist on pricing page but amounts not captured. Docs mention Swagger/OpenAPI and Postman collection (URLs not captured). V2 API and livescores need premium.

## Verify before writing code
- 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
paypal
Minimum contract
Not disclosed
Country
Not disclosed
Founded
Not disclosed

Reddit · Hacker News · Stack Overflow · GitHub · YouTube

What developers say

Mixedfree tiercoveragedocs

Crowd-sourced sports database popular for hobby apps, tutorials, student projects and Plex metadata agents, with many wrappers in several languages. Praised as free and good for artwork. The free tier is tight, paid keys are needed for more, and developers report image and RapidAPI access problems and gaps in per-season artwork.

Praised for

  • Free tier for hobby use
  • Strong artwork and metadata
  • Many community client libraries

Complaints

  • Tight free limits
  • Artwork gaps and access errors reported

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

Discussions

Shortlist next steps

Alternatives worth comparing

  • 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
  • Goalserve logo
    GoalserveSports data API45

    XML/JSON sports data feeds: live scores, fixtures, results, stats, injuries, historical data and odds for soccer, US sports and many others, sold as per-feed subscriptions.

    ⚡ StreamingMulti-sport (40+)Football (soccer)American football+1
    from $150/mo5 discussions · 7 repos
  • iSports API logo
    iSports APISports data API45

    Asian-based sports data API covering football and basketball: livescore, fixtures, lineups, stats, standings, pre-match and in-play odds, historical data and animation, with a free trial and widgets.

    LiveFootball (soccer)Basketball
    from $49/mo4 discussions · 7 repos
  • Cito API logo
    Cito APISports data API45

    Unified sports and esports API with UFC cards, fighters, round stats, rankings and live fight state, plus CS2, League of Legends, Dota 2, tennis and more. Free key plus paid plans.

    Free tier⚡ StreamingMMAEsportsTennis
    Free tier0 discussions · 11 repos
  • StatPal logo
    StatPalSports data API43

    Sports data API for live scores, odds, news and match storylines across 12+ sports and 1,000+ soccer leagues. Two flat monthly plans with a 14-day trial and an OpenAPI schema.

    14-day trialLiveFootball (soccer)American footballBasketball+5
    from $29/mo1 discussions · 0 repos
TheSportsDB vs SportradarTheSportsDB vs GoalserveTheSportsDB vs iSports APITheSportsDB vs Cito APITheSportsDB vs StatPal

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