\n| Time to first data<\/td>\n | A weekend<\/td>\n | Five minutes<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/figure>\nStep 1: List the Sports<\/h2>\nThe call you already made returns every sport OddsPapi covers, each with a numeric sportId<\/code> you will use everywhere else. There are 69 of them.<\/p>\nsports = response.json()\nprint(len(sports), \"sports\")\n\n# Find the one you want by slug\nsoccer = next(s for s in sports if s[\"slug\"] == \"soccer\")\nprint(soccer)\n# {'sportId': 10, 'slug': 'soccer', 'sportName': 'Soccer'}\n<\/code><\/pre>\nSoccer is sportId<\/code> 10. Basketball is 11, tennis 12, baseball 13, American football 14. Hold onto that number, the next call needs it.<\/p>\nStep 2: Fetch Today’s Fixtures<\/h2>\nA “fixture” is a single match (OddsPapi uses fixture for game, participant for team, tournament for league). Ask for fixtures in a date range, up to 10 days wide. Each one tells you whether it has odds yet via the hasOdds<\/code> flag.<\/p>\nfrom datetime import date, timedelta\n\ntoday = date.today().isoformat()\nin_three = (date.today() + timedelta(days=3)).isoformat()\n\nparams = {\n \"apiKey\": API_KEY,\n \"sportId\": 10, # soccer\n \"from\": today,\n \"to\": in_three,\n}\nfixtures = requests.get(f\"{BASE}\/fixtures\", params=params).json()\n\n# Keep only matches that already have prices\nlive = [f for f in fixtures if f[\"hasOdds\"]]\nprint(len(live), \"soccer fixtures with odds\")\n\nsample = live[0]\nprint(sample[\"fixtureId\"], sample[\"participant1Name\"], \"vs\", sample[\"participant2Name\"])\n<\/code><\/pre>\nEach fixture carries the two team names, the tournament, the kickoff time, and the all-important fixtureId<\/code>. That ID is the key to the odds.<\/p>\nStep 3: Read a Live Price<\/h2>\nNow the payoff. Pass a fixtureId<\/code> to \/odds<\/code> and you get every bookmaker’s prices for that match. We ran this on Valur Reykjavik vs Keflavik IF (Icelandic Besta deild) and got back 12 bookmakers<\/strong>, including the sharp books Pinnacle and SBOBet.<\/p>\nThe response is nested. The path to a single price reads: bookmaker, then market, then outcome, then the current price under players[\"0\"]<\/code>. Market 101 is the Full Time Result (1X2); outcomes are 101 (Home), 102 (Draw), 103 (Away).<\/p>\nparams = {\n \"apiKey\": API_KEY,\n \"fixtureId\": \"id1000018868194688\",\n \"bookmakers\": \"pinnacle,bet365\",\n}\nodds = requests.get(f\"{BASE}\/odds\", params=params).json()\n\npinnacle = odds[\"bookmakerOdds\"][\"pinnacle\"][\"markets\"][\"101\"][\"outcomes\"]\nfor outcome_id, label in [(\"101\", \"Home\"), (\"102\", \"Draw\"), (\"103\", \"Away\")]:\n price = pinnacle[outcome_id][\"players\"][\"0\"][\"price\"]\n print(label, price)\n<\/code><\/pre>\nHome 2.05\nDraw 4.48\nAway 2.93\n<\/code><\/pre>\nThat is a live, sharp-bookmaker price in your terminal. The same payload also gives you American (priceAmerican<\/code>) and fractional (priceFractional<\/code>) formats, pre-converted, so you never write a converter yourself.<\/p>\nStep 4: Find the Best Price Across All 12 Books<\/h2>\nOne book is fine. The reason to use an aggregator is to compare them. Here is the smallest useful loop in sports betting: scan every bookmaker on the fixture and find who pays the most on the home win.<\/p>\n # Drop the bookmakers filter to get ALL books on the fixture\nodds = requests.get(f\"{BASE}\/odds\",\n params={\"apiKey\": API_KEY,\n \"fixtureId\": \"id1000018868194688\"}).json()\n\nbest_book, best_price = None, 0.0\nfor slug, book in odds[\"bookmakerOdds\"].items():\n try:\n outcome = book[\"markets\"][\"101\"][\"outcomes\"][\"101\"][\"players\"][\"0\"]\n except KeyError:\n continue # this book did not price 1X2\n if outcome[\"active\"] and outcome[\"price\"] > best_price:\n best_book, best_price = slug, outcome[\"price\"]\n\nprint(f\"Best home price: {best_price} at {best_book}\")\n# Best home price: 2.16 at sbobet\n<\/code><\/pre>\nSBOBet pays 2.16 on the home win where Pinnacle pays 2.05. On a 100 unit stake that is 11 units of extra profit for the exact same bet, found in five lines of code. Always check active<\/code> before trusting a price; suspended outcomes can carry stale numbers.<\/p>\nWhat’s Next<\/h2>\nYou now have the four moves that underpin every odds script: authenticate, discover, fetch, parse. From here the same four calls power real tools:<\/p>\n \n- 350+ bookmakers<\/strong> in one response means line shopping and arbitrage are just bigger versions of Step 4. See line shopping in Python<\/a>.<\/li>\n
- Free historical odds<\/strong> on the free tier let you backtest a model on real closing prices.<\/li>\n
- Want a UI? Pipe the same data into a pandas DataFrame<\/a> or build a full betting app<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\nHow do I authenticate with the OddsPapi API in Python?<\/h3>\nPass your key as the apiKey<\/code> query parameter, not as a header. With the requests library, use requests.get(url, params={\"apiKey\": \"YOUR_KEY\"})<\/code>. A 200 status confirms it worked; a 401 usually means the key was placed in a header by mistake.<\/p>\nDo I need a credit card to get a free odds API key?<\/h3>\nNo. The OddsPapi free tier requires only a sign-up, no card. It includes 350+ bookmakers and free historical odds, so you can build and backtest without paying.<\/p>\n What is the difference between a fixture, a tournament, and a participant?<\/h3>\nOddsPapi uses fixture for a single match (US “game”), tournament for a league or competition, and participant for a team or player. A fixtureId<\/code> is what you pass to the \/odds<\/code> endpoint to get prices.<\/p>\nWhy is the odds response so deeply nested?<\/h3>\nBecause one fixture holds many bookmakers, each with many markets, each with multiple outcomes. The path to a current price is bookmaker, market, outcome, then players[\"0\"][\"price\"]<\/code>. Never assume flat JSON.<\/p>\nCan I get odds from more than one bookmaker in a single call?<\/h3>\nYes. Pass a comma-separated list to the bookmakers<\/code> parameter, or omit it entirely to receive every book that priced the fixture (12 in the example above, up to 350+ on major matches).<\/p>\nMake the Call<\/h2>\nFour calls, five minutes, zero scraping. Get your free OddsPapi API key<\/a> and run the snippets above. The hardest part is already behind you.<\/p>\n
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