Buyer guide
What 'oddsmatcher-ready' means
'Oddsmatcher-ready' gets used loosely. This guide pins it down: what a feed has to do to a price before it is genuinely ready to render in an oddsmatcher, and how to tell whether a provider does that work or leaves it to you.
7 min read
An oddsmatcher is the tool a matched bettor lives in: a table of bookmaker offers paired against the exchange, sorted by how good each pair is. Behind every row is a surprising amount of processing.
'Oddsmatcher-ready' should mean the feed has done that processing for you — that each row arrives matched, rated and gated, ready to render. In practice, providers use the phrase for very different levels of finish. Here is the full pipeline, so you can see exactly how far a given feed takes you.
Step 1 — Fixture and selection matching
Two bookmakers describe the same event and the same outcome in different words. Before anything can be compared, those have to be matched to one canonical fixture and selection — across every book and every market.
This is the unglamorous foundation. Get it wrong and you pair the wrong back against the wrong lay, which produces confident, wrong numbers. A feed that is genuinely oddsmatcher-ready has solved this so you never see it.
Step 2 — Back-vs-lay pairing
A matched bet is a bookmaker back price set against an exchange lay price. Pairing them means lining up the right exchange market and lay price for each bookmaker offer.
Raw feeds stop short of this — they hand you the prices and let you pair them. An oddsmatcher-ready feed returns the pair as one row.
Step 3 — Rating and qualifying figures
Not all pairs are equal. Each one needs a rating — how close the back and lay prices are, i.e. how little you lose (or how much you gain) to place the qualifying bet — and the qualifying loss and profit computed.
This is the number a matched bettor sorts on. If the feed does not compute it, you are building the maths yourself.
- A rating per pair (closeness of back and lay).
- Qualifying loss / profit computed per opportunity.
- Consistent across every matcher type you offer.
Step 4 — Liquidity and freshness gating
A beautiful pair is useless if the exchange has no money on it or the price is stale. Gating removes opportunities that are not actually actionable — too little lay liquidity, or a price that has aged out.
Gating is what separates a feed you can render directly from one that needs a layer of your own filtering on top.
Step 5 — The matcher types
'Matched betting' is not one calculation. Standard, each-way, extra-place, BOG, dutching and 2Up each have their own logic, and a complete feed handles all of them, selectable per request (price-boost is a further type that ships as it builds volume).
Ask which types a provider supports as finished output. A feed that only does 'standard' is doing a fraction of the work.
At a glance
| Criterion | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Fixtures matched | Selections mapped to one canonical fixture across booksMismatched fixtures produce confident, wrong pairs. |
| Pairs returned | Each row is a back/exchange-lay pair, not two separate pricesOtherwise you build the pairing engine yourself. |
| Rated | A rating and qualifying loss/profit per opportunityIt is the value users sort the oddsmatcher on. |
| Gated | Liquidity- and freshness-gated rowsUngated rows are not actually actionable. |
| All types | Standard, each-way, extra-place, BOG, dutching, 2UpA single-type feed does a fraction of the job. |
Key takeaways
- 'Oddsmatcher-ready' should mean matched, rated and gated — not just normalised prices.
- The pipeline is fixtures → pairing → rating → gating → all matcher types.
- Raw feeds typically stop at normalised prices; you build the rest.
- Ask which matcher types arrive as finished output, and whether rows are gated.
Where OddsRelay fits
OddsRelay's matched feed is oddsmatcher-ready in the full sense: fixtures and selections matched, each row returned as a back/exchange-lay pair, rated with qualifying loss and profit computed, gated on liquidity and freshness, across every live matcher type with bet365 included. You render the rows; the pipeline above runs before they reach you.
Questions
Is 'oddsmatcher-ready' the same as a raw odds feed?
No. A raw feed gives you normalised prices and leaves matching, rating and gating to you. Oddsmatcher-ready means those steps are done on our side and each row arrives ready to render.
What is a 'rating' on a matched row?
A rating expresses how close the bookmaker back price and the exchange lay price are — effectively how little you lose, or how much you gain, to place the qualifying bet. It is the value users sort the oddsmatcher on.
Why does liquidity gating matter?
An opportunity with too little money on the exchange lay cannot actually be placed at the shown price. Gating removes those so the rows you render are ones a user can act on.
Keep reading
Matched-betting data
Oddsmatcher-ready rows — back/lay paired, rated, gated, bet365 included.
Matched-betting feed checklist
A practical checklist for the feed under an oddsmatcher — matched output, bet365, gating, types and more.
Lay & exchange coverage
Why the exchange side matters as much as the bookmaker side — and what 'lay coverage' really means.
Choosing a provider
The eight criteria that actually separate odds feeds — coverage, freshness, schema, support and more.
Matched-betting platforms
The matched feed your oddsmatcher renders — back/lay paired, rated, bet365 included.
Developers
A predictable REST feed you integrate in an afternoon — no SDK, no collection to run, no matching engine.
For matched betting
What separates a matched-betting feed worth building on — and where OddsRelay fits.
Odds & betting glossary
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.