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How to Compare Betting Odds Across 250+ Bookmakers with One API
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How to Compare Betting Odds Across 250+ Bookmakers with One API

James Whitfield

James Whitfield

•5 min read

If you're building anything that touches sports betting data, you've probably hit the same wall we did: getting odds from multiple bookmakers in a single, normalized format is surprisingly painful. Every sportsbook structures their data differently. Half of them don't have public APIs. The ones that do change their schemas without warning.

We built Odds-API.io to solve this. One REST API, 250+ bookmakers, 10+ sports, and a response format that stays consistent regardless of which sportsbook the data comes from.

This article walks through how to use our API to pull and compare real-time Premier League odds from bookmakers like Bet365 and SingBet. The same approach works for any sport or bookmaker we cover.

What the API actually does

At its core, Odds-API gives you two things:

  • Events: a list of upcoming and live matches for a given sport and league
  • Odds: the current prices from your selected bookmakers for a specific event

You can filter by sport, league, bookmaker, and market type. The API returns JSON with sub-150ms average response times and 99.9% uptime SLA. We process over 10 million API calls per day across our customer base.

Here's what's covered:

  • Pre-match and live (in-play) odds
  • 100+ market types: moneyline, Asian handicap, over/under, player props, specials
  • Direct bet links that deep-link to the bookmaker's bet slip for the specific selection
  • Calculated value bets with expected value flagged automatically
  • Historical odds data for backtesting

Step 1: Fetch Premier League events

First, get a list of upcoming matches. This returns event IDs you'll use to request odds.

curl -X GET "https://api.odds-api.io/v1/events?sport=Football&league=England - Premier League&apiKey=YOUR_API_KEY"

Response:

[
  {
    "id": 1605015884,
    "home": "Manchester United",
    "homeId": 4501,
    "away": "Liverpool",
    "awayId": 4502,
    "date": "2025-03-10T17:30:00Z",
    "sport": {
      "name": "Football",
      "slug": "football"
    },
    "league": {
      "name": "Premier League",
      "slug": "premier-league"
    },
    "status": "pending"
  }
]

Each event has a numeric id. You'll pass this to the odds endpoint.

Step 2: Get odds for a specific match

With the event ID, request odds from the bookmakers you care about:

curl -X GET "https://api.odds-api.io/v1/odds/?eventId=1605015884&bookmakers=Bet365,SingBet&apiKey=YOUR_API_KEY"

Response:

{
  "id": 1605015884,
  "home": "Manchester United",
  "away": "Liverpool",
  "date": "2025-03-10T17:30:00Z",
  "league": {
    "name": "Premier League",
    "slug": "premier-league"
  },
  "sport": {
    "name": "Football",
    "slug": "football"
  },
  "status": "pending",
  "bookmakers": {
    "Bet365": {
      "home": 2.1,
      "draw": 3.5,
      "away": 3.75
    },
    "SingBet": {
      "home": 2.05,
      "draw": 3.55,
      "away": 3.8
    }
  }
}

In this example, SingBet offers slightly better odds on the draw (3.55 vs 3.50) and on Liverpool to win (3.80 vs 3.75), while Bet365 has the better price on a Manchester United win (2.10 vs 2.05). These differences look small, but they compound significantly over hundreds of bets. A 2.4% edge on the away price adds up.

What you can build with this

We see our API used in a few common patterns:

  • Odds comparison sites: pull odds from all bookmakers for a match, display them in a table, highlight the best price per outcome. The urls field in the response gives you deep links to the bookmaker's bet slip.
  • Arbitrage scanners: compare prices across books to find guaranteed-profit opportunities. With 250+ bookmakers, the surface area for arb detection is large.
  • Betting models and EV calculators: feed live odds into your pricing model. Our historical data endpoint lets you backtest strategies against real market data.
  • Trading bots: poll the API on a schedule, trigger alerts or automated actions when odds move past your thresholds.
  • Sports apps: embed live odds into match pages, dashboards, or notification systems.

Pricing and rate limits

All plans include 5,000 requests per hour. The difference between tiers is how many bookmakers you can access:

  • Starter (£99/mo): 5 bookmakers
  • Growth (£179/mo): 10 bookmakers
  • Pro (£229/mo): 15 bookmakers

If you need more throughput, add-on packages go up to 30,000 requests per hour. Enterprise plans with unlimited requests and dedicated infrastructure are available for high-volume use cases.

There's no credit card required to start. Sign up, get an API key, and make your first request in under a minute.

SDKs

We maintain official SDKs for the two most common languages in our user base:

  • Python with type hints and async support
  • Node.js/TypeScript with full type definitions

There's also an MCP server if you're integrating with AI assistants like Claude Desktop.

Getting started

  1. Create a free account and grab your API key
  2. Hit the events endpoint to browse available matches
  3. Pass an event ID to the odds endpoint with your preferred bookmakers
  4. Read the full API docs for market types, filtering options, and historical data

If you run into anything, email us at support@odds-api.io. We typically respond within 24 hours.