Sportmonks is a solid, well-documented football API, and people usually start looking elsewhere for one specific reason: the per-league model. Starter is €29 a month for five leagues, and the price climbs steeply as that number grows — €99 for thirty, €249 for a hundred and twenty. If your coverage needs are broad or hard to predict, a flat plan is cheaper. Here is the shortlist with real numbers.
| API | Free tier | Entry paid | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| KickoffAPI | 100 req/day, real-time, never expires | $9 — 7,500 req/day | 1,245 leagues in 171 countries on every plan |
| Sportmonks | 14-day trial, no card | €29 — 5 leagues | 5 → 30 → 120; 2,200+ on Enterprise |
| football-data.org | €0 — 12 comps, 10 req/min | €12 — 12 comps | 12 → 100 comps by tier |
| TheSportsDB | $0 — 30 req/min, limited queries | $9 — 100 req/min | Many sports, shallower football |
| SoccersAPI | 7-day trial | Not published | Check their pricing page |
Every figure above is from that provider's own public pricing page, read on 25 September 2026. Where a provider does not publish a number we have left it blank rather than guessed. Product names are trademarks of their respective owners. Spotted something stale? Tell us and we will fix it.
Stay on Sportmonks if you genuinely follow only a few competitions and will not need more. €29 for five leagues is less than any flat plan here, and paying only for what you use is a perfectly good reason to stay.
The per-league model becomes the problem when you cannot predict coverage — a user asks for a league you did not buy, and the fix is a billing change rather than a query change. That is the single most common reason people move.
football-data.org for the low end, TheSportsDB if you need more than one sport.
KickoffAPI — us — includes all 1,245 leagues in 171 countries on every plan including the free one, so coverage is never a billing question. $9 gets 7,500 requests a day, and every row names the store it came from.
It depends what you mean by best. football-data.org's free plan costs nothing permanently but covers 12 competitions at 10 requests a minute. TheSportsDB's free plan is 30 requests a minute across many sports with most queries limited. KickoffAPI gives 100 requests a day with real-time scores across the full season range. Sportmonks offers a 14-day trial rather than a free tier.
TheSportsDB at $9 a month, if several sports and a two-minute live-score delay suit you. Among football-specialist APIs, football-data.org starts at €12 for 12 competitions; KickoffAPI starts at $9 for 7,500 requests a day.
With Sportmonks, yes — the plan determines how many leagues you may select, from 5 up to 120, with everything on Enterprise. football-data.org works similarly by competition count. KickoffAPI includes its whole catalogue on every plan, with no selection step.
Write the two or three requests your product genuinely depends on, then run them against each free tier before paying anything. Coverage claims and request counts are easy to compare on paper and tell you very little about whether the response contains the field you need for the competition you care about.
100 requests a day, real-time, no card. The fastest way to settle a comparison is to run both.