API-FOOTBALL API vs Football-Data API

Two free Sports & Fitness APIs compared on access, reliability and developer ratings, using data from our daily health checks.

The verdict

Choose API-FOOTBALL API if you want to call it from browser JavaScript, faster responses.
Choose Football-Data API for its data: Football data with matches info, players, teams, and competitions.

	API-FOOTBALL API	Football-Data API
What it does	Get information about Football Leagues & Cups.	Football data with matches info, players, teams, and competitions.
Provider	api-football.com	football-data.org
API key	Required	X-Mashape-Key
HTTPS	Yes	Yes
CORS (browser calls)	Yes	Unknown
Status today	Online · 435 ms	Online · 1051 ms
Uptime (30 days)	Up	Up
Developer rating	Not rated yet	Not rated yet
Price	Free / free tier	Free / free tier

Get information about Football Leagues & Cups.

Strengths

Football data with matches info, players, teams, and competitions.

A restful API for football data

Strengths

Prototyping or a tutorial? Pick the one that needs no API key (neither does, so compare their free tiers).
Calling from a web page? You need CORS. Otherwise route requests through your own server or a serverless function.
Going to production? Favour HTTPS, a strong uptime record and a provider with clear rate limits and terms. Check each API's docs before you commit.
Still unsure? Both are free to try: send one request to each and compare the data you get back.

Both require authentication (apiKey and X-Mashape-Key).

API-FOOTBALL API supports CORS, so front-end JavaScript can call it directly. Call the other from a server.