You're building a cricket app and you need live data. Not tomorrow. Not after a sales call. Right now, from a cricket api that actually holds up during an IPL final when your users pile in at once.
In this guide, we cover the 7 best cricket APIs available in 2026:
- CricBuzz Cricket API
- CricketData.org
- Sportmonks Cricket API
- Roanuz Cricket API
- EntitySport Cricket API
- Goalserve Cricket API
- Sportradar Cricket API
For each one, you get verified pricing, key features, and real use cases so you can pick the right cricket score api and start building fast.
Why Do You Need a Cricket API?
Cricket is not like other sports. It moves ball by ball, over by over, for hours at a stretch. Scorecards change every few seconds during a live match. You cannot display this by refreshing a webpage.
A cricket api gives you structured, machine-readable data through HTTP endpoints. You send a request, you get back JSON. Your app renders it. The whole pipeline runs automatically, from live match data to your users' screens.
The three most common things developers build with a cricket api:
- Live score apps and websites: Ball-by-ball updates, scorecards, and match summaries in real time
- Fantasy cricket platforms: Player stats, form data, and live points for team selection and scoring
- Analytics and media dashboards: Tournament standings, head-to-head records, and player performance trends
And then there are the use cases you might not think about right away. Sports betting feeds. News aggregators that need match context. Chatbots that answer cricket questions.
Media companies that auto-generate match reports. A good cricket api handles all of them.
What to Look for in a Cricket API
Before you commit, here are four things that actually matter. Skip any of them and you'll end up switching providers mid-project.
- Coverage: Does it cover IPL, ICC events, domestic leagues like BBL, PSL, CPL, and Test cricket? Or only international formats? If you're building for an Indian audience, IPL coverage is non-negotiable. Make sure you check before you buy.
- Update speed: Ball-by-ball data requires updates every few seconds. Some APIs deliver genuine real-time feeds through WebSocket or push. Others rely on polling, which works for most apps but can lag. Know which model you're getting.
- Pricing model: You'll find three main models out there: per API call, per match, or monthly unit limits. Know your expected usage before you commit. The cheapest entry price doesn't mean cheapest at scale.
- Developer experience: Good docs and ready-to-use code samples can save you days of integration work. A free trial with no credit card is a strong signal the provider trusts their own product. Sound familiar?
7 Best Cricket APIs in 2026
1. CricBuzz Cricket API
If you want a cricket live score api you can test in minutes without a credit card, start here. The CricBuzz Cricket API on API.market delivers real-time data sourced from CricBuzz, one of the most trusted names in cricket.
You get clean REST endpoints, structured JSON responses, and a free trial that opens the full data set. No sales call. No form to fill out. You get a key and start calling.
I think the breadth of endpoints at this price point is hard to match elsewhere. This is the only cricket api currently available on API.market, and it covers everything from live match scores to ICC rankings to photo galleries.
Key Features:
- Live scores, ball-by-ball commentary, and over details with real-time updates
- Full match scorecards with complete batting and bowling tables
- Series listings, archives, points tables, and squad data
- Player profiles with career stats, batting averages, bowling figures, and recent form
- Venue data, news articles, photo galleries, and trending players
- ICC rankings and records with filter support
- Utility endpoints including API health check and image fetch
Pricing: The free trial gives you 50 API units for 7 days with no credit card required. After the trial, the Pro plan is $19.99/month and includes 30,000 API units. The Mega plan is $59.99/month and includes 120,000 API units. Unused units reset at the end of each billing cycle.
Real Use Cases:
Say you run a cricket news website and want live scores inline with your articles. You call the /matches/live endpoint every 30 seconds during match hours. Your readers see ball-by-ball updates without leaving your site. On the Pro plan, you have enough units to cover multiple concurrent matches through an entire IPL season.
You're building a fantasy cricket app and need player data before match day. You pull player profiles, recent innings stats, and squad data from the players and series endpoints. Your team selection screen shows each player's last five innings, updated automatically before every fixture.
A sports analytics startup is building a performance dashboard for coaches. They combine batting stats, venue data, and series data from a single API key to generate match-by-match breakdowns. No juggling multiple subscriptions.
You can get started with the CricBuzz Cricket API on API.market with no credit card and no commitment for the first 7 days.
2. CricketData.org (formerly CricAPI)
CricketData.org has been around since 2015, originally as CricAPI. It built its name by being the first cricket api free for anyone to use, and that positioning still holds today. The free tier has no expiry. You sign up, get a key, and start calling.
Data covers live scores, ball-by-ball updates, match results, player stats, team data, and series listings. Code samples come in PHP, Python, JavaScript, and C#.
Key Features:
- Lifetime free tier with 100 API hits per day, no expiry
- Live scores and real-time match updates
- Ball-by-ball and over-by-over data
- Player profiles and team information
- Series-wise data access with current and historical matches
- Free embeddable score widgets for websites
- Fantasy API available on paid plans
Pricing: The Lifetime Free plan gives you 100 hits per day at no cost, forever. Paid plans start at $5.99/month for 2,000 hits per day, $12.99/month for 10,000 hits per day, $29.99/month for 100,000 hits per day, and $64.99/month for unlimited hits.
Real Use Cases:
CricketData.org works well for hobby developers, student projects, and small websites that want cricket live score api free access without any recurring cost. You know how most "free tiers" quietly expire after 30 days? This one doesn't. If you're building a personal score tracker or embedding a live widget on a cricket blog, the free tier covers you indefinitely.
For a small-to-mid-size sports portal, the $12.99/month plan gives you 10,000 hits per day. That covers several active matches updating every few seconds through a full day of play.
3. Sportmonks Cricket API
Sportmonks made its name in football data and brought the same depth to cricket. Their API now covers 140+ leagues across more than 30 countries, which gives it one of the widest footprints on this list.
The data includes real-time live scores, ball-by-ball commentary, player stats, tournament fixtures, and standings. Sportmonks also has prebuilt SDK wrappers the developer community built, so your setup time might be shorter than you think.
Key Features:
- Live scores with fast, reliable real-time updates
- Ball-by-ball commentary with detailed over summaries
- 140+ cricket leagues across 30+ countries
- Player and team statistics across all formats
- Flexible JSON responses with include parameters for customizing data depth
- Filtering and sorting support for cleaner responses
- Documentation with customer support within 24 hours on working days
Pricing: Sportmonks offers a 14-day free trial on all plans. The Major plan starts at €29/month and covers 26 major cricket leagues. The World plan is €75/month and covers 60 leagues worldwide. The Enterprise plan is €129/month and gives access to all 169 available cricket leagues.
Real Use Cases:
If you're building an international cricket app for users across the UK, Australia, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, you need more than just ICC coverage. Sportmonks gives you Big Bash League, Pakistan Super League, Lanka Premier League, and dozens more in one subscription.
Analytics platforms that compare player performance across different leagues find Sportmonks reliable. The consistent data structure across all leagues makes building cross-competition dashboards much easier.
4. Roanuz Cricket API (CricketAPI.com)
Roanuz takes a more technical approach. The API supports REST, GraphQL, WebSocket, Firebase, and push notifications through AWS EventBridge and SQS. If you need genuine real-time push data rather than polling, Roanuz gives you that natively. Not many cricket apis do.
They focus on the Indian market but cover international tournaments too, including IPL, ICC events, Big Bash League, and Ranji Trophy. Their fantasy API is well-built, with pre-calculated player credit values and push-based fantasy points updates.
Key Features:
- REST and GraphQL endpoints for flexible data querying
- Ball-by-ball data via WebSocket and Firebase push
- Fantasy Match Points API with pre-calculated credit values
- Match insights, news aggregator, and historical data exports
- Match visualization data: Worm, Manhattan, Run Rate, and Wagon Zone charts
- Cricket MCP (Model Context Protocol) for AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity
- Dataset exports in CSV and Parquet format
Pricing: Roanuz prices their plans in INR. The Essential plan is ₹17,669/month (billed monthly), covering 100 matches and 400,000 API requests per month. The Business plan is ₹34,999/month for 200 matches and 800,000 requests.
The Business+ plan is ₹59,999/month with unlimited match access and 1,600,000 requests. Enterprise plans are available on request.
Real Use Cases:
Fantasy sports companies that want a ready-made points engine benefit most from Roanuz. Rather than building your own points calculation logic, you pull the Fantasy Match Points endpoint and get player points updated in near-real-time as the match runs. That alone saves weeks of backend work.
If you're building a cricket AI assistant, Roanuz's Cricket MCP lets you connect live cricket data directly to LLM platforms. Your AI can answer "Who is batting right now?" with actual live data behind the response. Ah, make sense?
5. EntitySport Cricket API
EntitySport focuses on speed and accuracy, and their client list backs that up. MPL, Sportskeeda, Sports Tak, and Vision11 all run on their data. Those are high-traffic fantasy and media platforms that cannot afford a shaky data feed during an India-Pakistan T20. You know what's at stake there.
The API covers international cricket plus domestic leagues including IPL, BBL, PSL, BPL, and CPL. EntitySport also offers a Cricket Exchange API for odds data and a Cricket Prediction API as separate products.
Key Features:
- Live scores with real-time event updates every few seconds
- Fantasy Points API with player credit values and match roles
- Ball-by-ball commentary and full scorecards
- Advanced player stats: strike rate, average, batting style, and dismissal patterns
- Player vs. player matchup data for batting and bowling comparisons
- Sandbox environment for testing with live match simulations
- 24/7 email and phone support
Pricing: EntitySport provides a free development token for testing before you buy. The Starter plan is $150/month for 500,000 API calls covering international matches only. The Pro plan is $250/month for 1,000,000 calls and adds domestic T20 and T10 leagues.
The Elite plan is $450/month for 2,000,000 calls and covers all formats including First Class and List A cricket. Enterprise pricing requires direct contact.
Real Use Cases:
Fantasy platforms covering 40 to 50 matches daily across formats find EntitySport cost-effective because the Fantasy Points API comes pre-calculated. Your backend does less computation during live matches. You know how that adds up when you're running 10+ concurrent fixtures during peak IPL days?
Sports publishers that need to auto-populate match reports and player performance summaries rely on EntitySport's data verification team, which actively checks for squad changes and player injuries in real time.
6. Goalserve Cricket API
Goalserve has been in the sports data market since 2005. That's over 20 years of running live feeds, which matters when you're evaluating reliability for something like a cricket betting api. They power 200+ clients worldwide across football, cricket, basketball, tennis, and more.
Their cricket api covers fixtures, live scores, results, scorecards, player profiles, and ball-by-ball feeds in both XML and JSON formats. If your system still runs on XML, Goalserve is one of the few modern providers that still supports it fully.
Key Features:
- Ball-by-ball updates delivered within 1 second of action on the pitch
- Live scorecards, lineups, standings, and tour schedules
- Data available in both XML and JSON formats
- Coverage: IPL, ICC World Cup, Big Bash, international Test, ODI, and T20
- Women's cricket and U19 series included
- 99% uptime guarantee with 24/7 customer support
- Free trial available on request
Pricing: Goalserve charges per subscription period rather than monthly rolling plans. A 1-month subscription is $125. A 6-month subscription is $550 and a 12-month subscription is $1,000.
The annual plan works out to less than $84 per month, which makes it one of the more affordable options for teams that commit to a full year.
Real Use Cases:
A sports media company that's run an XML-based data pipeline for years doesn't want to rewrite their entire system just to add cricket data. Goalserve plugs in without forcing a migration to JSON-only feeds.
Betting platforms that need cricket live scores as part of a broader multi-sport package can combine Goalserve's cricket feed with their Full Package subscription, which covers cricket, football, basketball, tennis, and more under a single contract.
7. Sportradar Cricket API
Sportradar operates at a different level from every other provider on this list. They supply data to broadcasters, regulated sportsbooks, and major media rights holders. If you're a startup, Sportradar is probably not where you start. If you're building infrastructure for a national broadcaster or a Tier-1 betting operator, it's worth knowing they exist.
Their cricket api covers international and domestic competition with ball-by-ball delivery tracking, AI-generated commentary, and venue-level precision. The data quality is broadcast-grade.
Key Features:
- Ball-by-ball delivery data with pitch tracking and speed metrics
- AI-generated match commentary and event summaries
- Coverage of ICC events, international tours, and major domestic competitions
- Data delivered in JSON and XML via RESTful feeds
- Open API specs for easier integration
- Dedicated account management and SLA-backed delivery
- Full compliance and rights management for regulated markets
Pricing: Sportradar does not publish pricing publicly. They sell through custom contracts and pricing depends on coverage scope, call volume, and commercial use case. Contact their sales team directly for a quote.
Real Use Cases:
A national broadcaster integrating cricket data into their live TV graphics overlay needs broadcast-grade latency, full commercial rights, and guaranteed uptime SLAs. Sportradar delivers all three, which is why broadcasters choose them over cheaper alternatives.
Regulated sports betting operators in licensed markets need data that meets compliance standards. Sportradar's rights agreements with cricket boards give operators the legal clearance to use data in wagering products, something most other cricket apis cannot offer.
Cricket API Pricing Overview
Here's a quick look at what each provider offers at entry level:
- CricBuzz Cricket API (API.market): 7-day free trial, 50 units, no credit card. Pro plan $19.99/month for 30,000 units.
- CricketData.org: Lifetime free tier with 100 hits/day. Paid plans from $5.99/month.
- Sportmonks: 14-day free trial. Plans from €29/month for 26 major leagues.
- Roanuz Cricket API: No free tier. Plans from ₹17,669/month (approx $210/month).
- EntitySport: Free development token. Paid plans from $150/month.
- Goalserve: Free trial on request. Cricket Live Score feed from $125/month.
- Sportradar: No public pricing. Enterprise contracts only, contact sales.
Which Cricket API Should You Use?
Your choice depends on what you're building and who you're building it for.
If you need to start fast with zero friction, the CricBuzz Cricket API on API.market is the clearest entry point. No credit card, no sales call, no form. You get an API key, a 7-day free trial with real data, and pricing that scales from $19.99/month. The endpoints cover live scores, player data, series, stats, news, and ICC rankings through a single key.
If you need the longest free trial, Sportmonks gives you 14 days and the widest global league coverage at 140+ leagues. If you want push-based real-time data with a strong fantasy API for Indian platforms, Roanuz is the most technically capable.
If you serve millions of users during IPL and need battle-tested infrastructure, EntitySport has the client base to prove it. If you need long-term cost efficiency with XML support, Goalserve's annual plan is worth the commitment. If you work at broadcast or regulated sportsbook level, Sportradar is the conversation you need to have.
For developers just starting out, CricketData.org still offers a genuine cricket api free tier with no expiry, useful for low-traffic sites and personal projects.
For most teams reading this, we recommend starting with the CricBuzz Cricket API on API.market. It's the most accessible cricket live score api you can try right now, with real data, real endpoints, and no payment required to start.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. Is there a free cricket API?
Yes. CricketData.org offers a lifetime free tier with 100 API hits per day at no cost, with no expiry date. CricBuzz on API.market provides a 7-day free trial with 50 API units and no credit card required.
Sportmonks offers a 14-day free trial across all cricket plans. Goalserve offers a free trial period on request. If you want to test before committing, several providers let you start without spending anything.
Q2. What is the best cricket API for fantasy apps?
EntitySport and Roanuz both offer dedicated fantasy points APIs with pre-calculated player credit values. Roanuz supports push-based fantasy points delivery through WebSocket and Firebase. CricBuzz on API.market provides player stats, batting and bowling performance data, and series squad information you can use to build your own fantasy scoring logic.
Q3. How do I get live cricket score data in my app?
You sign up with a cricket api provider, get an API key, and call the live matches endpoint. Most providers return structured JSON your frontend renders directly. With CricBuzz on API.market, you call GET /matches/live and get back all active matches with real-time scores and ball-by-ball commentary. You poll that endpoint every 30 seconds, or combine it with a WebSocket provider for push-based updates.
Q4. Which cricket API is best for betting platforms?
Goalserve and Sportradar are the two strongest options for cricket betting api use cases. Goalserve offers ball-by-ball updates within 1 second and covers IPL, ICC events, and major domestic leagues starting at $125/month. Sportradar operates at enterprise level with full rights management and compliance coverage for regulated sportsbook operators, though pricing requires direct contact.
