Best Football APIs in 2026

Football API demand has skyrocketed in 2026. The FIFA World Cup just started in the United States, Mexico and Canada. It is the first 48-team tournament in World Cup history, with 104 matches spread over 39 days. The 2022 final drew an estimated 1.5 billion viewers worldwide, and 2026 is expected to surpass that number by a wide margin.

Outside the World Cup, the five major European leagues continue to grow. Premier League broadcast rights were last renewed at over £6.7 billion. La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, and Ligue 1 are all running concurrent seasons alongside the Champions League and Europa League. The global football betting market is now valued at over $80 billion, driving high demand for odds and prediction data.

Since there are more platforms and users, that means that there is more demand for live scores, player stats, odds, highlights, and match events through reliable APIs. Choosing the right provider matters, because they differ in league coverage, pricing, and data depth.

Highlightly

Highlightly bundles football data and video highlights into a single API. You get live scores, match statistics, player data, lineups, standings, predictions, and odds from 100+ bookmakers across 950+ leagues in 170+ countries. Coverage includes the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, Champions League, Europa League, MLS, Brazilian Serie A, Saudi Pro League, and hundreds of lower divisions worldwide.

The standout feature is video content. Game recaps, post-match interviews, goal clips, and press conferences are all available through the same API with metadata and embed links. A geo-restriction checker lets you verify whether a clip can be shown in a given country before serving it. No other football API reviewed here includes video content.

Player endpoints include detailed profiles, season statistics, career totals, transfer history, and injury data. Match data covers live events, lineups, head-to-head records, and scorecards. Odds are available from 100+ bookmakers with pre-match and live markets.

Pricing starts with a free tier at 100 requests per day. The free plan includes core data like scores, matches, standings, player stats, and lineups. Paid plans begin at $9.49 per month and unlock the full API including video highlights and odds. The top tier is $45.99 per month for 65,000 daily requests. Annual discounts of up to 40% are available through the Highlightly platform. Custom plans are also offered. There are no SDKs, so everything runs through the standard REST API.

Highlightly is a newer entrant compared to football-first providers like Sportmonks or API-Football. The developer ecosystem is smaller, with fewer community wrappers and third-party integrations. However, it is the only provider in this list that combines structured match data with video highlights in a single subscription. With the 2026 World Cup underway, Highlightly covers the full tournament including all 104 matches, group stages, and knockout rounds.

API-Football

API-Football is part of the API-Sports family and focuses purely on football data. It launched in 2018 and has become one of the most popular football APIs, partly through its distribution on RapidAPI. The platform covers 1,200+ leagues and cups with live score updates every 15 seconds during matches. Endpoints cover fixtures, standings, players, statistics, live scores, odds, transfers, and more. The platform also provides free widgets for embedding livescores, fixtures, and standings without writing custom frontend code.

One thing worth noting is that paid plans do not gate features. Everything is available once you subscribe. Pricing starts with a free tier at 100 requests per day. All endpoints are accessible, but historical seasons are limited. The Pro plan is $19 per month for 7,500 daily requests. Ultra is $29 per month for 75,000 requests. Mega is $39 per month for 150,000 requests. There are no overage charges. Once you hit your daily limit, requests simply stop. All plans are prepaid with no auto-renewal.

The trade-off is that 100 requests per day on the free tier is very restrictive for anything beyond basic prototyping. Data quality can also vary outside the top European leagues. There is no video or highlights content. Each sport under the API-Sports umbrella requires a separate subscription, so accessing football and basketball together means two bills. API-Football works well for developers who want broad league access with straightforward pricing.

Sportmonks

Sportmonks is a football-first platform and one of the deepest football data providers available. The API claims coverage of 2,500+ leagues with live scores, lineups, odds, head-to-head data, referee stats, and coach stats. It uses an "includes" system that lets developers request only specific data fields per call. This keeps response payloads small and helps manage rate limits during live matches.

Documentation is solid. There are integration guides for popular frameworks, and the developer community has built wrapper packages for common languages. The platform also covers cricket and Formula 1, although football is where it puts most of its effort.

The free tier is limited to two leagues. Those are the Danish Superliga and the Scottish Premiership. That is too narrow for most real development work. Paid plans start at €29 per month for the Starter tier with 5 leagues, then €99 per month for Growth with 30 leagues, and €249 per month for Pro with 120 leagues. All paid plans include the same data features. The difference between tiers is league count and API call capacity, not which endpoints you can access. There is no video or media content included.

Sportmonks is best suited for mid-sized platforms and iGaming companies that need deep football-specific data and are willing to invest in a paid plan. The includes system and endpoint flexibility make it a good fit for teams that want fine-grained control over their data requests. For developers who just need basic scores and stats, the pricing and free tier limitations may push them toward other options.

football-data.org

football-data.org has been running since 2013 and is the longest-running free football API. The creator, Daniel Freitag, has publicly committed to keeping the free competitions free forever. The API design is clean REST JSON with straightforward documentation and no authentication complexity beyond a free API key.

The free tier includes 12 competitions. Those are the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, Champions League, Eredivisie, Primeira Liga, Championship, Brazilian Serie A, World Cup, and European Championship. The rate limit is 10 requests per minute. Data includes match results, standings, fixtures, and top scorers for all 12 competitions.

Detailed player statistics are not available on the free tier. Goals per player come through the scorers endpoint, but line-ups, bookings, and squad data require the Deep Data plan at €29 per month. Match statistics like possession, shots, and corners are a separate add-on at €15 per month, and odds are another €15 per month. To get deep data, statistics, and odds together on the 12 free competitions, the total comes to €59 per month. Moving to 30 competitions with the Standard plan plus both add-ons brings the cost to €79 per month, which is worth comparing against flat-rate alternatives before committing.

football-data.org is the best starting point for anyone learning football API development. The 12 free competitions cover Europe's top five leagues and the Champions League, which is enough to build something real.

TheSportsDB

TheSportsDB is a community-driven sports database, similar in approach to Wikipedia. Data is contributed and maintained by users. The platform covers hundreds of soccer leagues and also includes team logos, stadium images, and player badges.

The free tier uses a test API key and is rate limited to 30 requests per minute. Most queries return limited data on this tier. The Single Developer plan at $9 per month unlocks the full premium API including 2-minute livescores, YouTube highlight links, and higher data limits at 100 requests per minute. A Small Business plan at $20 per month adds unlimited data, a private API key, and dedicated email support.

The main limitation is data accuracy. Crowd-sourced data works for hobby projects but introduces reliability concerns for production use. There are no odds, no expected goals metrics, and no advanced analytics. Real-time live scores are not available on the free tier. TheSportsDB works well for hobby dashboards, student projects, and non-commercial applications where free access matters more than data depth or accuracy.

SportsDataIO

SportsDataIO is an enterprise-grade sports data provider covering 20+ top global soccer leagues alongside NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, college football, college basketball, tennis, golf, NASCAR, MMA, F1, and more. The platform includes fantasy projections, depth charts, news feeds, and editorial content. A predictive engine called BAKER is available for forecasting across games, seasons, and careers.

A self-serve "Discovery Lab" tier is available at $99 to $149 per month with daily call caps and next-day delayed data, aimed at personal projects and hobby apps. A free trial provides access to last season's data. For the soccer API specifically, the free trial is restricted to the UEFA Champions League. Full commercial access with real-time data, SLA, and dedicated support requires a sales conversation. Industry estimates place production starting costs at $500 to $1,000 or more per month.

SportsDataIO is aimed at enterprise companies with dedicated data budgets, though the Discovery Lab now offers a lower entry point for smaller teams. If you are building a large-scale betting platform, media product, or fantasy sports engine, SportsDataIO is worth evaluating either through the Discovery Lab or their sales team.

Sportradar

Sportradar is one of the largest sports data companies in the world. It holds official partnerships with major leagues including the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL, as well as a long-term integrity partnership with FIFA that was extended in 2026. Football coverage is comprehensive, with real-time push feeds alongside standard REST endpoints. Data depth includes play-by-play commentary, advanced analytics, and computer vision generated insights.

Pricing operates on a B2B contract model and is not publicly listed. A 30-day developer trial is available with real production data at reduced rate limits. Industry estimates place starting costs at $500 to $1,000 or more per month for a single sport. Multi-sport packages scale from there.

The accuracy and depth of data reflect official league partnerships, but the cost and onboarding process are built for larger organizations. Sportradar is the right fit for broadcasters, major betting operators, and enterprise platforms that need the highest possible data fidelity and can commit to a B2B relationship.

TheStatsAPI

TheStatsAPI is a football-focused data provider with transparent pricing. The Starter plan at $50 per month includes 150 competitions, 84,000+ players, 10 years of historical data, odds, and expected goals metrics. Up to 1,196 competitions are available on request. The Starter plan allows 100,000 monthly requests at 120 requests per minute. Growth at $129 per month and Scale at $379 per month increase request volume and rate limits. All plans include the same data and endpoints. A 7-day free trial is available. There is no permanent free tier.

TheStatsAPI is a good fit for analytics-focused projects that need expected goals and odds data at a predictable monthly cost. The transparent pricing avoids the tier-stacking that some providers require. The main limitations are smaller league coverage compared to API-Football or Sportmonks, no video or highlights content, and a relatively new ecosystem with fewer community integrations.

Choosing the right Football API

The right choice mostly comes down to what you are building. If you need video highlights alongside stats, Highlightly is the only option here that offers both in a single API. If you want the broadest league coverage with no feature gating, API-Football is straightforward to work with.

Sportmonks goes deepest on football-specific data, but the free tier is too narrow for most use cases and costs scale as you add leagues. For learning and hobby projects, football-data.org is hard to beat. Twelve free competitions including Europe's top five leagues and the Champions League is more than enough to build something real.

For enterprise use cases, SportsDataIO and Sportradar are the established names. Both require sales conversations and budgets that start in the hundreds per month. TheStatsAPI sits in the middle with flat pricing and an analytics focus, though it lacks video content and has narrower league coverage.

For prototyping and early development, the free tiers from Highlightly and API-Football are the most practical starting points. Both offer 100 requests per day with no credit card required. With the 2026 FIFA World Cup running through June and July, most of these providers offer tournament coverage. Check each provider's documentation for specific World Cup endpoints before committing.

Conclusion

All of these APIs can handle basic football data like scores, standings, and fixtures. The real differences come down to league depth, pricing models, and whether features like odds, video highlights, or advanced player statistics are included or sold separately.

If you are just getting started, free tiers from providers like Highlightly and API-Football are usually enough to test an idea before committing to a paid plan. For more information on Highlightly's football coverage, see the official API documentation.