API-Football alternatives: 5 football data APIs compared

Football data vendors price the same product four different ways. Comparing headline prices misleads you. A 29 euro plan from one vendor covers 5 leagues. A 29 dollar plan from another covers 1,019.

Here are the four pricing models, the figures from each vendor's own pricing page, and the request math for a live score app.

The four pricing models

Per request volume. You buy a daily or monthly request quota. Every endpoint stays open on every plan. GOAL API and API-Football work this way.

Per league. You buy access to a fixed number of competitions. Adding leagues costs more even when your traffic stays flat. Sportmonks works this way.

Per rate limit plus competition count. You buy requests per minute and a competition tier bundled together. football-data.org works this way.

Per rate limit alone. You buy requests per minute and coverage stays the same across tiers. TheSportsDB works this way.

Your build decides which model wins. A tracker following 3 leagues with heavy traffic wants per-league pricing. A global fixtures app wants per-request pricing.

The numbers

Figures below come from each vendor's public pricing page in July 2026. Prices change, so check the source links before you commit.

GOAL API

Plan	Price	Requests/day	Leagues	Webhooks
Free	0 dollars	1,000	1,019	none
Pro	19 dollars/mo	10,000	1,019	3
Ultra	29 dollars/mo	100,000	1,019	5
Mega	45 dollars/mo	1,000,000	1,019	10

Every plan covers all 1,019 leagues. Odds and predictions start at Pro. Yearly billing drops Pro to 180 dollars, Ultra to 243 dollars, Mega to 468 dollars.

football-data.org

Plan	Price	Requests/min	Competitions
Free	0 euro	10	12
Free with Livescores	12 euro/mo	20	12
Standard	49 euro/mo	60	30
Advanced	99 euro/mo	100	50
Pro	199 euro/mo	120	100

Odds cost 15 euro/mo as an add-on. Statistics cost another 15 euro/mo. A base plan is required before you buy either.

Sportmonks

Plan	Price	Leagues	Rate limit
Free	0 euro	2	not stated
Starter	29 euro/mo	5	2,000 calls per entity per hour
Growth	99 euro/mo	30	2,500 per entity per hour
Pro	249 euro/mo	120	3,000 per entity per hour
Enterprise	custom	2,500+	5,000 per entity per hour

The free plan covers the Danish Superliga and the Scottish Premiership. Odds, xG and news are paid add-ons. Every paid plan includes a 14 day trial.

TheSportsDB

Plan	Price	Requests/min	Livescore
Free	0 dollars	30	none
Single Developer	9 dollars/mo	100	2 minute
Small Business	20 dollars/mo	120	2 minute

TheSportsDB covers multiple sports, so football sits alongside NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL.

API-Football

API-Football prices by request volume and keeps every endpoint open on every plan, including the free tier. Their site blocks automated access, so we do not quote their figures here. Read their pricing page directly for current numbers.

The request math

Take a Saturday. You track 20 matches across a 9 hour window and poll each one every 15 seconds.

20 matches x 4 polls/min x 60 min x 9 hours = 43,200 requests

One number rules out most tiers.

• football-data.org Free at 10 requests per minute delivers 600 per hour. Reaching 43,200 takes 72 hours. Polling 20 live matches is impossible on the free tier.
• 43,200 requests across 9 hours averages 80 per minute sustained. Standard at 60 per minute falls short. You need Advanced at 99 euro or Pro at 199 euro.
• TheSportsDB Small Business at 120 per minute covers the rate for 20 dollars, with livescore data refreshed every 2 minutes.
• GOAL API Pro gives 10,000 requests per day. Polling at 15 second intervals exhausts the quota about 2 hours in.

Read the last line again. Per-request pricing punishes polling, ours included.

Stop polling and the math changes

Webhooks remove the poll entirely. You register an endpoint once and receive match events as they land.

Twenty matches produce roughly 50 events each across goals, cards, substitutions and state changes. Call the total 1,000 deliveries for the day. Against a 10,000 request daily quota, you use 10 percent of your plan and receive events faster than a 15 second poll delivers them.

WebSockets do the same work over one connection. Open a socket, subscribe to your 20 matches, and receive updates with no request accounting at all.

Compare the three approaches:

• Polling costs 43,200 requests and lags reality by up to 15 seconds.
• WebSockets cost 1 connection and push updates as they happen.
• Webhooks cost roughly 1,000 inbound deliveries and survive your app restarting.

We wrote a full breakdown in webhooks, WebSockets or polling.

Which one fits your build

Pick per-league pricing when you follow a small set of competitions and serve heavy traffic. Sportmonks Starter at 29 euro covers 5 leagues with a generous hourly ceiling.

Pick per-minute pricing when your traffic arrives in a steady trickle and you tolerate 2 minute livescore granularity. TheSportsDB Single Developer at 9 dollars is the cheapest entry point in this comparison.

Pick per-request pricing when your league coverage matters more than your request count, and pair the plan with webhooks so live matches stop draining your quota. GOAL API Pro at 19 dollars covers 1,019 leagues, odds, predictions and 3 webhook endpoints.

Pick an enterprise agreement when you need historical archives spanning decades or every league on earth. Sportmonks Enterprise and API-Football's top tiers target this work.

Check before you buy

Three questions decide the bill:

• How many competitions do you serve, today and in 12 months?
• Do you need odds, and does the vendor charge extra for them?
• Does the vendor push live data, or do you pay per poll?

Answer those, then compare. Headline prices alone tell you almost nothing.

Sources: GOAL API pricing, football-data.org pricing, Sportmonks pricing, TheSportsDB pricing, API-Football pricing.