Home Get started with Sportmonks: the best free sports api for developers

Get started with Sportmonks: the best free sports api for developers

Access to comprehensive sports data without effort—that would be a dream come true, right? What if I told you that Sportmonks not only effortlessly provides data but is also free? The Scottish Premiership and Danish Superliga are included in Sportmonks’ free plan. Data from Midtjylland, Brøndby, FC Copenhagen, Rangers FC and Celtic are all there for the taking. Integrate real-time sports data into your application to enhance user experience. The best part is that you can do it quickly and for free. What else could you possibly want? Leverage the latest technologies for superior sports analytics, and do it all easily and for free.

Football

Time to read1 min

Published 27 September 2024

Last updated 27 September 2024

Get started with Sportmonks: the best free sports api for developers

“For free? Then, the data must be bad”

That is an understandable thought. But you know what? The data isn’t bad at all. We have RedBull Racing and McLaren as customers for the Formula 1 data, CityGroup, RedBull Leipzig and the KNVB (Dutch Football Association) as customers for our Football API. Would they use our data if it were only half decent? Of course, they became paying customers and expanded their coverage with more leagues than included in the free plan. After trying out the free plan, you can always decide to scale up or stay with the free plan and create your app/website for free. We dare to claim we are the best free sports API for developers around. By the way, it is not the case that premium sports data is way more expensive. The free plan has standard data features. Sportmonks divided all data features into basic, standard and advanced packages. With standard, you already have many great features. The data in the free plan is enough for any sports application.

“APIs are way too complex”

Fair enough, APIs can be complex. But I mentioned above that it is really easy to get the data easily, and I mean it. I have no developer knowledge whatsoever (I am writing blogs), and I can pull every data point from the APIs. How is that possible? Sportmonks focussed on having an easy-to-use API. We wanted to be as developer-friendly as possible, which is why we have created a couple of features for you to customise the API response exactly to your liking. Furthermore, we have focussed on building clear documentation for everyone to understand. No advanced programming skills are required.

To make it even better, you can use it in your preferred programming language. Yes, it is compatible with all programming languages!

Getting Started with Sportmonks’ Sports API in three steps!

So, you want to get started with the best free Sports Data API around? Great choice! Let’s quickly discuss how easy it is to get started and get free Premiership and SuperLiga data.

*It’s Important to note that you need your API token. Also, remember to keep the documentation pages nearby, as they are full of helpful tips, tricks, and guidance.

1. Go to My.Sportmonks and register

2. Get your API token

3. Make your first request*

Try for free

Helpful resources

As mentioned above, detailed documentation is a very useful tool. It can help you get started, fix bugs, check out new API endpoints, and much more. The documentation pages show all endpoints and the list includes some of the best/most important filter options. It entails a section on best practices, authentication, and changelog.

With the API tester in MySportmonks, you can find out how specific API endpoints work. You can choose the endpoint and the belonging includes, and the request will be created for you automatically. This way, you can see exactly how the response will look. Remember that this is useful for getting started (testing purposes). You won’t be able to integrate the API tester within your application or website. What you can do is save specific API requests and use the created code later on.

The ID Finder will make your life easier. For many requests, you will need IDs. These can be for leagues, seasons, fixtures, teams, players, etc. With the ID Finder, you can find some Common, League, Team, and Player IDs without searching within the API. There are Common IDs for upcoming fixtures as well. Remember, if you are on the free plan, only the free leagues, fixtures, players and so on are useful to you.

The League Priority feature is available in MySportmonks, so you can set up a list of ten leagues that will be at the top of all API responses. For example, you think the Scottish Premiership is more important to your users than the Danish Superliga (or vice versa). In this case, you can set the Premiership as the highest priority. By adding priority to the leagues in MySportmonks, the API will sort the leagues when requesting leagues on the following endpoints: Live Leagues, Leagues By Fixture Date and all livescore endpoints.

We understand these resources might not be enough to help you with your questions or problems. So, we have one more helpful tool: the Customer Support Department. They are available seven days a week. So, did you find a roadblock during the weekend? Don’t worry, just email [email protected] and you will have a response in no time.

So, how do you set up the initial integration?

Understandably, you want to start immediately with the best free Sports Data API.

The most important is to authenticate yourself with your API token. After that, you can make API requests to get all the data within your plan (in this case, the free plan). However, even though this is the free plan we are discussing, you can access multiple leagues. These leagues have multiple seasons (Sportmonks covers data from the 2004/2005 season. This means multiple teams have been relegated or promoted to the highest or lowest division in all these seasons. All these teams have multiple players transferring to and from their teams. All players have their statistics and other match and non-match data. Do you see where we are going? A lot of data is included in the Free plan, and it is expanding with every match, transfer, kick, goal, etc. So, doing an initial data load when you start might be beneficial.

We have written a “the best way to load your initial data blog“.

Comprehensive Data Coverage

So, a lot is going on in our Sports Data API. The free plan includes access to the free variant of all our sports (Football and Cricket). Below, you can find all the data features available for the different sports. We created a nice visual overview to make all features in our Sports Data API as clear as possible. Keep in mind that add-ons are not included in these overviews.

Depth of data features

Alright, there are many features, but what do these features entail? How deep can we go? What statistics are available?

Fair questions: Why don’t I show you exactly what is included? We have some lists and lots of client examples to showcase exactly what is in there. Keep in mind that these client examples decide how to integrate the API themselves. So, the speed and depth of the data depend on our customers’ goals in these cases.

Our wide range of statistics is used in all kinds of sports apps. Think about fantasy football games, livescore apps, betting portals, etc. You can make a wide range of applications, for example, with our player statistics. A fantasy game can’t exist without these stats for the major leagues. We created a full list of statistics so you can check out if the depth of these statistics is enough. If you can’t find a specific statistic feel free to contact support ([email protected]). Remember that add-ons such as xG are not included in this list of statistics. But on the ….. page of your screen, you can find the full list of xG metrics we offer.

Below are all the data features available for the different sports. You can also find all the types offered in Sportmonks Football API in our types list.

Real-Time Data and Updates

Sportmonks has scouts in the stadiums collecting data, so we know what is happening during the game. However, that is not the only process we use to collect our data. We have multiple data partners who monitor the data by comparing and confirming multiple data sources and the data imported by our scouts.

That seems like a major process, right? Yes, it is, but the API data is faster than live television broadcasting (tested). So, we are not only doing all kinds of things to keep our data as reliable as possible, but we are also incredibly fast. However, our support is always available if you ever encounter any data issues! Also, for free plan users? Yes! Our mission is to grant everybody access to premium data for an affordable price (with the free plan, it should be pretty affordable ;).

You can use our status page to learn about the possible downfall of the API. Every day, it shows you the exact number of minutes and the percentage of downtime. We are proud of the uptime and willing to share this with you so you know if you can trust our API.

Still not sure if our Sports Data API is reliable enough for your app? You can test it for free or use the free plan. Find out how the API works and get the free data without a catch.

Developer-Friendly Features

Our developers are football fans. They know what fans like to see and how developers think. That is why we provide the business’s most developer-friendly Sports Data APIs.

What makes it so developer-friendly?

Great questions. I will sum up the things that make the API so friendly and then go into more detail:

Customisation options
Great documentation
Support

What customisation options does the API offer?

Multiple customisation options have been added to the API to make it as developer-friendly as possible. This way, all users can decide how they want the API response to look. For example, you can filter on specific types, sort & order on IDs, and use includes to get more data. Our customisation features are unique to Sports Data APIs. Important to note is that these features are available for the free plan as well. For more information about the customisation options, please visit our documentation on how to use the customisation features.

Great documentation

Feel like we are giving ourselves a pat on the back now. But it is actually something our customers have told us over and over again. Below, you can see some quotes:

Jason Baylyst
The Sportsmonks soccer API was the best we could find in terms of coverage that we needed and, more importantly, a well-made API. Excellent documentation and the free plans give ample opportunity to test the API with a product in development.

Tim Potter
When we compared features, documentation, support and value for money, Sportmonks came out on top. Fast and reliable Football API with tons of leagues and tournaments. We’re very happy with Sportmonks and highly recommend them. Radivoje Dundjerovic
I am happy I chose you guys as the API service I will use for my application. Your documentation is great. Customer support is fast and reliable. They try to understand some hard technical questions and give proper answers. The Black Friday discount lottery was eye-pleasing to see as your customer. Keep up the good work!

Tim – Director of Little Thunder
Many other API providers make assumptions that you’re an experienced developer, and their documentation includes fewer examples and is written at a higher entry level.
Sportmonks, make no assumptions and provide plenty of examples to help you use the API. Where to find this “great documentation”?

This tells you almost all you need to know except for where you can find it. Below you can find the links to our documentation pages:

We understand you are looking for proof. Is the Free Sports Data API really that good? The only downside is that major leagues like the Premier League and Champions League are covered only by paid plans. But, the data in the Free version is actually really good to. Let's find out what other people have to say about the API.

Success Stories and Testimonials

Owner of Shiftonezero

“Sportmonks emerged as one of our options, and despite being one of the most affordable, it appeared technically superior to its competitors from the first glance. From its comprehensive documentation to its testing tools, everything projected professionalism. Once you start utilising it, you realise that its excellence isn’t just superficial, the quality of the data itself stands out.”

Read full story

Xavier - CTO ScorePlay

“We chose Sportmonks because of the accuracy of its API, its’ ease of use and its’ outstanding customer service. Starting with Sportmonks was incredibly easy and intuitive. The onboarding process was virtually non-existent. Just plug and play!”

Read full story

Khachin - Owner of SoFIFA

“We like Sportmonks, which has a low price and ample data coverage at the same time and has a high update frequency. You have covered over 2000 football leagues and added or updated teams/players daily, and the data has a clear structure and relations.

We appreciate that when the game adds young players who rarely appear in public view, we can find their statistics from Sportmonks API in a few days.”

Read full story

Nice compliments

There are a few things that keep on coming back: the documentation, the support, the quality, and the pricing. These are all really important for us as the data provider and for you as a developer/developing company. This is where we want to excel, this is where we want to stand out to our competitors, as we want to help everyone get access to quality data for an affordable price. A good starting point is our free sports data APIs.

In the above examples, we added links to our case studies. We also have an overall case study page on which you can find all the case studies. It is nice to see that there are many different customers in our community: Fantasy Sports applications, Sports Leagues, professional football clubs, odds providers and more.

Troubleshooting and Support

So, let’s have a look at some troubleshooting while we are here.

API Rate limits while handling data volume

API Rate limits while handling data volume—believe it or not, they are there for a reason. But they might be unpleasant when you do the initial data load. We have a great tip for handling the initial data load and getting as much data as possible with fewer requests. Below, I will cite the documentation pages.

“Most of our endpoints support pagination, meaning you need to make multiple requests to retrieve all data. To make this process more efficient, we have added several options for fetching data and keeping it up to date.

You can use the filters=populate query parameter on any endpoint to enable or disable certain features. When enabled, it disables all possible includes to avoid large responses and allows pagination with a page size of 1000 records. This significantly reduces the number of requests required to retrieve all data.

After you have retrieved all data, you can use the idAfter filter (ex. filters=idAfter:50000) to keep your database in sync. This filter allows you to specify an ID, and it will only fetch records with IDs greater than the specified ID on the requested entity. You can quickly load and maintain your database using the idAfter filter combined with the populate filter.”

That’s a pretty great trick, right? Our documentation pages have more ‘best practices‘, so make sure to check them out.

Timezone handling

Sportmonks is a Dutch company. So, will you get your data in the Dutch timezone? Or will you receive a different timezone for the English Premier League or Brazilian Serie A? Don’t worry; you can set the timezone settings yourself. All of our dates and times are displayed in UTC by default. However, most applications indicate the times in their relevant time zones, such as CEST and PST.

https://api.sportmonks.com/v3/football/livescores/inplay?api_token=YOUR_TOKEN&timezone=Asia/Singapore

*There are 355 time zones on the Wikipedia page. Please make sure you use the correct time zone.

Complex Endpoints?

APIs can be very complex. However, Sportmonks focuses on being as developer-friendly as possible. As mentioned earlier, our developers are football fans. They look at the APIs and Applications from both sides (the developers’ and fans’ sides).

Besides that, we have created the previous customisation options that work for paid and free users of our Sports Data APIs. For example, if you only want to filter on the current season, you simply use the season filter to receive the current season of the Premier League.

If the endpoints are too complex, you can always use our documentation or contact Customer Support. We can help you out!

Receiving an error you don’t know? Visit our Error Codes page on the documentation to find out what is wrong. Afraid the API is down? Check our status page to find out if you are right.

Get started today

Long story short, we are proud of our Sports data APIs. We try to be affordable for everybody, so the free versions of our API are there to be tested. Furthermore, we focus on being as developer-friendly as possible. So, besides being affordable, your developers shouldn’t waste too much time trying to build the application/website you want to create (which saves money and time).

If you want to know more about the Sports data APIs or Sportmonks feel free to surf through our website. Some interesting pages are:

Written by Jordy Post

Jordy Post is a seasoned football data and marketing expert with over 3 years of industry experience. With an in-depth understanding of Football Data, he stands out as a leading authority in delivering comprehensive insights. Jordy specializes in uncovering new stats, tracking market trends, and identifying emerging patterns, consistently providing innovative analyses that offer invaluable insights to Sports Data lovers.

It’s up to you

We believe we are one of the best Sports data providers in the business. That is why you can try the API for free via our Free Sports data API or you can get one of the paid plans with a 14-day free trial. So, why not start right away and take your first step towards building your dream application with real-time updates, detailed statistics, and much more?

Try for free