Buyer guide
Near-real-time vs delayed odds
'Real-time' is the most abused word in odds data. This guide replaces it with something useful: what freshness actually means, how to measure it honestly, and how much you really need for your use case.
7 min read
Ask any odds-data provider if its feed is real-time and the answer is yes. The word means almost nothing on its own — a feed updated every second and one updated every five minutes will both happily call themselves 'real-time'.
This guide gives you the questions that actually pin freshness down, and a realistic sense of how much you need, so you neither overpay for latency you cannot use nor get caught out by a feed slower than it sounds.
Cadence vs latency
Two different numbers hide under 'freshness'. Refresh cadence is how often the feed updates; latency is how long after a price changes at the bookmaker it appears in the feed. A feed can refresh every second but still be minutes behind if its collection lags.
What you actually want to know is: how current is a given price, right now? That is why the single most useful thing a feed can give you is a timestamp on every payload — a processed-at time you can check, rather than a cadence you have to trust.
Why a timestamp beats a promise
A timestamp turns freshness from a marketing claim into something you can design around. With a processed-at time on every response, you can window your logic, weight recent data, and detect when the feed is lagging — none of which a bare 'real-time' lets you do.
A provider that timestamps payloads and publishes freshness live is showing you the number; one that only offers the word is asking you to take it on faith.
How much freshness each use case needs
Freshness needs vary widely, and matching them to your use case saves money and avoids nasty surprises.
Odds comparison and content tolerate a tight-but-not-instant cycle — users want the current price, not microsecond precision. Matched betting needs opportunities fresh enough to place before they move, but works on a tight cycle with gating. Live arbitrage is the demanding end: the fresher and lower-latency, the more you can act on — and delivery efficiency matters as much as raw speed because you are polling constantly.
- Comparison/content: a tight, timestamped cycle is plenty.
- Matched betting: fresh enough to place, with gating to drop stale rows.
- Live arbitrage: the demanding end — freshness and efficient polling both matter.
The honest limits
No feed is instant, and any provider claiming a hard guarantee that an odds movement appears with zero delay is overselling. Collection takes time; processing takes time. The honest framing is a tight cadence, a timestamp you can verify, and a published freshness surface.
Equally, freshness you cannot poll for efficiently is a trap: if every refresh re-downloads an unchanged board, you will throttle your own polling to control cost and end up less fresh in practice. ETag/304 and gzip are part of the freshness story, not separate from it.
At a glance
| Criterion | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Cadence | A stated refresh cadence'Real-time' with no number tells you nothing. |
| Latency | An honest sense of collection-to-feed delayA fast cadence can still hide a slow pipeline. |
| Timestamp | A processed-at time on every payloadTurns freshness into something you can design around. |
| Visible proof | A live freshness surface you can checkA number you can verify beats a word you must trust. |
| Efficient polling | ETag/304 + gzipFreshness you cannot poll for cheaply, you will not poll for. |
Key takeaways
- 'Real-time' is meaningless alone; ask for cadence, latency and a timestamp.
- A processed-at timestamp on every payload is the most useful freshness signal.
- Match freshness to your use case — comparison, matched betting and arbitrage differ.
- No feed is instant; a tight cadence plus verifiable freshness is the honest standard.
- Efficient polling (ETag/304, gzip) is part of staying fresh in practice.
Where OddsRelay fits
OddsRelay describes freshness the honest way: a tight refresh cycle, a processed-at timestamp on every payload, and live freshness published on the coverage dashboard — not an unverifiable 'real-time'. Cache-friendly delivery (ETag/304, gzip) lets you poll on the cycle without re-downloading an unchanged board, so you stay as current in practice as the cadence allows. Match the feed to your use case; we will tell you honestly what it does.
Questions
Is OddsRelay 'real-time'?
We avoid the word because it is unverifiable. The feed refreshes on a tight cycle and stamps every payload with a processed-at time, and we publish freshness live on the coverage dashboard, so you can see how current the data is rather than take a claim on faith.
How fresh do I need my odds to be?
It depends on the use case. Comparison and content do fine on a tight, timestamped cycle; matched betting needs rows fresh enough to place, with gating; live arbitrage is the demanding end where both freshness and efficient polling matter most.
Does efficient delivery really affect freshness?
Yes — indirectly but decisively. If every poll re-downloads an unchanged board, cost forces you to poll less often, so you end up less fresh. ETag/304 and gzip let you poll frequently and cheaply, keeping you current in practice.
Keep reading
Live-arbitrage feed
A wide, current market picture for fast cross-book detection — delivered efficiently.
Trading data
Market and exchange reference data for pricing, value detection and trading models.
Odds comparison
60+ UK books in one normalised feed — bet365 included, coverage maintained.
Coverage, freshness & reliability
How to verify the three claims every odds feed makes — and the proof to demand for each.
Choosing a provider
The eight criteria that actually separate odds feeds — coverage, freshness, schema, support and more.
Arbitrage & trading tools
Cross-book and back/lay data current enough to act on — one feed, bet365 and exchange context included.
Developers
A predictable REST feed you integrate in an afternoon — no SDK, no collection to run, no matching engine.
For live arbitrage
When latency is everything: what a live-arb feed needs, and where OddsRelay honestly fits.
For arbitrage
What an arbitrage feed needs — breadth, freshness, exchange context — and where OddsRelay fits.
Put the criteria to the test.
Start a free trial of the full UK feed, bet365 included, and judge it against everything in this guide.