The NBA API for developers ballers.
Live scores, player props with historical hit rates, box scores, and a matchup endpoint that returns the whole game preview in one call. Sub-100ms REST.
1,000 req/day free (2,000 with GitHub). No credit card.
NBA · 2025/26 · regular season + playoffs + Finals · historical 1946–2026
Stats included
Every basketball stat field the API returns today — 76 in total, grouped by how they are produced. Each group carries its own freshness, because a sport is rarely uniformly current.
Per-game player stats
Post-gameWritten after the game ends — not a live in-game feed. Last ingested 2026-08-30.
- Endpoint
- /v1/players/:id/stats
- Last updated
- 2026-08-30
Fields (14)
Assists, Blocks, Defensive Rebounds, Field Goals Made/Attempted, Personal Fouls, Free Throws Made/Attempted, Minutes Played, Offensive Rebounds, Plus/Minus, Points, Rebounds, Steals, Three Point Field Goals Made/Attem, Turnovers
Season player stats
HistoricalHeld and queryable, but not currently being ingested. Last ingested 2026-06-03.
- Endpoint
- /v1/nba/players/:id/splits
- Last updated
- 2026-06-03
Fields (46)
Ast %, Ast Ratio, Ast to, Defensive Rating, Dreb %, E Defensive Rating, E Net Rating, E Offensive Rating, E Pace, E Tov %, E Usg %, Efg %, Games Played, Losses, Minutes, Net Rating, Offensive Rating, Oreb %, Pace, Pace Per40, Pie, Poss, Rebounds %, Tm Tov %, Ts %, Usg %, W %, Wins, Ast, Blk, Dreb, Fg3 %, Fg3a, Fg3m, FG %, Fga, Fgm, Ft %, Fta, Ftm, Oreb, Pf, Points, Rebounds, Stl, Turnover
Team stats (per game)
Post-gameWritten after the game ends — not a live in-game feed. Last ingested 2026-08-30.
- Endpoint
- /v1/matches/:id/statistics
- Last updated
- 2026-08-30
Fields (26)
Assists, Blocks, Defensive Rebounds, Fast Break Points, Field Goal %, Field Goals Made/Attempted, Flagrant Fouls, Personal Fouls, Free Throw %, Free Throws Made/Attempted, Largest Lead, Lead Changes, Time Leading %, Offensive Rebounds, Points in the Paint, Score, Steals, Team Turnovers, Technical Fouls, Three-Point %, Three Point Field Goals Made/Attem, Total Rebounds, Total Technical Fouls, Total Turnovers, Turnover Points, Turnovers
Not included
- Not shown here — player_per_game_box (new granularity, not yet mapped for display).
- Not shown here — player_season_general: 176 raw upstream season keys with no route serving them.
- Not shown here — play_by_play: play-by-play events, not a stat line — mostly identifiers once classified.
- Not shown here — lineups: lineup composition, not a measured stat.
- Not shown here — props: betting lines and prices, not stats — they belong on the odds surface.
- player_season is not currently ingesting (last 2026-06-02).
- player_season_advanced is not currently ingesting (last 2026-06-03).
Missing a stat?
We build what people actually ask for. If a field you need is not on this page, tell us — requests are how we decide what to add next.
What you can build
Player props tracker
Surface prop hit rates over the last N games and find the edge before tip-off.
Live score widget
Embed real-time NBA scores and quarter-by-quarter linescores on any site.
Fantasy / DFS optimizer
Season averages, matchup stats, and injury status in one feed.
Matchup preview page
The full matchup — season stats, last-5, rest days, roster, H2H — in one call.
Historical analytics
13.6M plays and 65k games back to 1946 for backtesting and ML training sets.
Betting research tool
Odds, against-the-spread records, and player-prop ladders in one place.
See which endpoints are free: Free Sports API: 94 Free Endpoints.
Walk through it end to end: How to build a fantasy basketball app.
Endpoints
On the gateway at api.bigballsdata.com. Authenticate with the bearer token from /dashboard/keys. Click any endpoint to see every field it returns.
9 endpoints · 135 documented fields. Click any row to see every field it returns.
Start on the free tier
100 requests per minute and 1,000 per day, free — the highest per-minute burst of any free sports API we checked. Burst is what matters when something asks several questions in a row and waits on each answer.
- Every sport and league we cover — the paid tiers add history depth and premium fields, not more leagues.
- Calls are counted one for one — no credit weighting, no markets-times-regions arithmetic.
- Link GitHub and the daily cap goes to 2,000.
- No credit card.
Or ask your AI tool directly
Connect your account to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Perplexity or any other MCP-compatible tool and ask for basketball data in conversation — scores, standings, player stats and Elo ratings, with no API key to paste and no code to write. Your plan and limits carry over exactly as they do here.
Connect your AI tool →Integrate in a few lines
import { BigBallSportsClient } from '@bigballsdata/sdk';
const client = new BigBallSportsClient(process.env.BBS_API_KEY!);
// The SDK has no `nba` namespace — this surface is REST-only today.
const headers = { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.BBS_API_KEY}` };
const API = 'https://api.bigballsdata.com';
const games = await fetch(`${API}/v1/nba/games?limit=1`, { headers }).then((r) => r.json());
// /v1/nba/games returns BOTH ids. Use match_id (a Big Balls UUID) — the
// matchup route rejects game_id (the NBA stats id) with a 400.
const { match_id } = games.data[0];
const matchup = await fetch(`${API}/v1/nba/games/${match_id}/matchup`, { headers })
.then((r) => r.json());
for (const p of matchup.data.home_team.players) {
console.log(p.name, p.season_averages?.pts?.toFixed(1) ?? '-', 'ppg');
}Free covers a real app. Scale when you need to.
1,000 req/day free (2,000 with GitHub). Production starts at $49/mo. Live WebSocket push on Pro+.
Frequently asked
- Is there a free NBA API?
- Yes. The free tier covers scores, box scores, play-by-play, standings, player profiles, and injury reports at 1,000 requests/day (2,000 if you sign up with GitHub), no credit card. No data type is paywalled at the league level.
- Does the NBA API include player props?
- Yes. /v1/nba/players/:player_id/props returns the latest prop line we hold plus a rolling hit rate over the last N games, computed from box scores. Every response carries a `freshness` block derived from the line’s own timestamp (`data_as_of`, age in days, and a status of live/recent/stale), so you always know whether a returned line is a current price. The NBA is between seasons right now, so the newest lines are from June and report as stale; live pricing resumes with the season. Most competitors do not offer prop hit rates at all.
- How far back does NBA historical data go?
- To the 1946–47 season. The archive holds 65,642 games, 58k linescores, and 13.6M plays, queryable via /v1/nba/games and /v1/nba/games/:game_id/plays. Useful for backtesting and ML training sets.
- Can I get live NBA scores and play-by-play?
- Yes. The REST scores endpoint refreshes on a 15-second cache during live games (~200ms typical round trip). WebSocket push for score updates is on the Pro plan.
- Is there an NBA play-by-play API?
- Yes. /v1/nba/games/:game_id/plays returns event-level play-by-play, 13.6M plays across the 1946-2023 archive, with period, game clock, the players involved, running score, and a scoring-play flag on every event. Filterable by period and player. Free tier.
- Does the NBA API have betting odds?
- Yes, in two forms. The archive: opening and closing snapshots for 6,922 of 8,729 finished NBA games (79%) on /v1/odds/historical — enough depth to backtest against real closing lines. Live pricing: /v1/matches/:id/odds returns pre-match and in-play odds (moneyline, spread, totals) across 16+ sportsbooks while games are on the board — but the NBA is between seasons right now, so it is empty until the 2026-27 tip-off. Odds require the Edge plan ($149/mo) or higher; everything else on this page (scores, standings, lineups, stats, events) stays on the free tier.
- Can I get NBA shot coordinates?
- Yes. /v1/players/:id/shots returns per-shot court coordinates (coordinate_x, coordinate_y) with shot type, distance, and make/miss for the 2025-26 season. See the dedicated NBA Shot Chart API page (/nba-shot-chart-api) for the full response shape.