Getting Started with the Betstamp Pro API

This guide walks you through the minimum steps to authenticate, respect rate limits, and make your first request to the Markets API. From there, you can layer in players, teams, fixtures, and real-time streaming.

Obtain Your API Key

Every request to the PredictionData API must be authenticated with an API key. Your PredictionData representative will provision this key as part of your onboarding.

The key is sent in the X-API-KEY HTTP header on every request.

curl -G "https://api.pro.betstamp.com/api/markets" \
  -H "X-API-KEY: YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"

Understand Rate Limits

By default, clients can send up to 4 requests per second. In addition, each plan has a monthly quota on total API requests. If you exceed either limit, the API returns a JSON error indicating whether you've hit the per-second throttle or the monthly cap.

Recommended Practices

Centralize API calls through a small client or service layer
Add retry and backoff logic on throttling errors
Monitor usage against your monthly quota

Make Your First Markets Request

The /markets endpoint is the core of the API. It returns a list of markets filtered by league, book IDs, bet types, periods, and optional time windows.

At minimum, you'll specify:

league - e.g. NFL, NHL, NBA
periods - e.g. FT, 1Q, 1H
book_ids - e.g. comma-separated IDs
bet_types - e.g. moneyline, spread, total, etc.

curl -G "https://api.pro.betstamp.com/api/markets" \
  -d "league=NHL" \
  -d "bet_types=player_prop" \
  -d "book_ids=100,400,117" \
  -d "periods=FT" \
  -d "is_live=false" \
  -H "X-API-KEY: YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"

Pull Reference Data

To interpret markets correctly, you'll typically fetch reference data and join by ID:

/players

Player details (IDs, names, positions, teams, status)

/teams

Team information (IDs, abbreviations, full names, and leagues

/fixtures

Games with start times, status, and scores

/seasons

Seasons and tournaments for a given league

Decide If You Need the Markets Stream (SSE)

If you need to react to price changes in real time use the Markets Stream instead of frequent polling. The stream uses Server-Sent Events (SSE). Each message contains JSON data describing a single market update.

curl "https://stream.betstamp.com/v1/markets" \
  -H "Accept: text/event-stream" \
  -H "X-API-KEY: YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"

Next Steps

Persist markets and fixtures in your databases
Join markets with players and teams for custom analytics
Subscribe to the Markets Stream for real-time monitoring
Coordinate with PredictionData team for coverage customizations

Best Practices

Connection Management

Reconnect with backoff
Handle network drops
Use SSE keepalive

Data Handling

Process messages asynchronously
Validate payloads
Cache initial data

Security

Never export API keys
Rotate keys regularly
Use secure storage

Performance

Subscribe only to needed markets
Buffer high-frequency updates
Reuse connections