Comparison
OddsRelay vs The Odds API
The Odds API earned its place as the developer default for raw odds: self-serve pricing with a free tier, public docs, broad multi-sport coverage, and a historical archive for backtesting. What it delivers is raw per-bookmaker prices, and everything after that is your pipeline. OddsRelay's odds data API delivers UK prices already matched against exchange lay odds and rated.
Matched · rated
Arsenal v Chelsea · Match Odds
Football · Arsenal
- Back · Bet365
- 2.10
- Lay · Exchange
- 2.05
- Rating
- 102.4%
Paired and liquidity-gated, with the lay price and liquidity carried. The rating here is one line of client-side maths at your own commission rate (at 0: 100 × back ÷ lay). You render the row.
What The Odds API does well
- Fully public, well-organised API documentation with no login wall.
- Broad coverage: its homepage states 70+ sports and 40+ bookmakers across US, UK, EU and Australian regions.
- Long-running (since 2017) and the most widely referenced developer odds API in the category.
Side by side
| Dimension | The Odds API | OddsRelay |
|---|---|---|
| Core output | Raw odds per bookmaker, market and outcome; pairing, rating and any matching are your build. | Back prices arrive already paired to a live exchange lay price, rated. In a word, oddsmatcher-ready. |
| Bet365 | Does not list Bet365 in its UK region; Bet365 appears only in the Australia region, on paid subscriptions, with coverage limited to h2h, spreads and totals for AFL and NRL. | Covered across all six feed types, already matched. |
| UK bookmaker depth | Lists around 20 UK-region bookmakers and exchanges (mainstream names such as William Hill, Sky Bet and Paddy Power, plus exchanges). | 140+ bookmakers across a 20-country network (UK and Irish books plus the African, Australasian and North American domestic names big aggregators skip), normalised into one schema and live on the coverage dashboard. |
| Exchange lay prices | Available as raw market data via its h2h_lay and outrights_lay market keys; you pair them to back prices yourself. | Every outcome nests explicit back {bookmaker, price} and lay {exchange, price, available} offers with numeric odds, pre-paired rather than left as a raw market key to join yourself. |
| Regions | Region keys us, us2, us_dfs, us_ex, uk, eu, fr, se and au; does not list a South Africa or Nigeria region. | A 20-country coverage network (the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, DR Congo, Mozambique, Malawi, Australia, Canada, the US, Rwanda and New Zealand), region-filtered from one endpoint. |
| Sports & events discovery | Documents GET /v4/sports for in-season sports and GET /v4/sports/{sport}/events for a sport's events. A clean discovery layer. | GET /v2/sports and GET /v2/events, the latter carrying a has_coverage flag so a build sees which feed types each event supports. |
| Historical data | Archive back to June 2020, available on paid usage plans. | Not a product focus; the feed is built for current, pre-match prices. If backtesting is the job, their archive is the better tool. |
| Pricing posture | Published self-serve tiers with a free tier, metered by a request quota. | Scoped per client: a free trial key first, then a plain conversation. No request-quota arithmetic. |
Where The Odds API is the right pick
For a lot of products, The Odds API is the correct choice. Prototyping, a US-facing tool, comparing many sports, backtesting against its archive: its free tier and public docs get you moving the same afternoon.
The comparison gets interesting when your product is a UK matched-betting or arbitrage tool. Then the question stops being "how many books?" and becomes "who does the matching?", and the rows above answer it: both halves arrive raw and unpaired from them, as one rated row from the matched feed.
Pick The Odds API if
- You want many sports and regions cheaply, and raw prices are enough.
- You are US-focused, or need its DFS and US-exchange coverage.
- You need historical odds for backtesting.
- You are prototyping and the free tier is the point.
Pick OddsRelay if
- Your product is a UK oddsmatcher, arb scanner or matched-betting tool.
- Bet365 in the UK is a requirement.
- You want UK depth beyond the mainstream names, verified on a live dashboard.
- You would rather have a scoped licence and a human than meter requests against a quota.
Questions
Is OddsRelay cheaper than The Odds API?
Usually not, and price is not the axis to compare on. The Odds API has a free tier and published self-serve plans. OddsRelay is a scoped B2B licence with a free trial. If raw prices at the lowest cost are the goal, they win. If the matched processing layer is the goal, licensing it typically costs less than building and maintaining it.
Keep comparing
The odds API pillar
The full product: coverage, feed types, processing and delivery.
The matched feed
What the processing layer replaces in your build.
The comparison hub
Every provider comparison, sourced and dated.
vs OddsPapi
Breadth-first raw aggregation vs matched output.
The raw feed
Build on normalised prices, or let the matched feed do the pairing.
Compare for yourself
A free trial key delivers the matched UK feed into your own product. The live dashboard shows coverage and update times first.