Football api for analytic dashboard
Hi everyone,
I'm working on a small football analytics/dashboard project and I'm trying to choose the right data provider before building the database structure.
What I need is mainly:
- Fixtures, teams, players, squads
- Lineups, formations and substitutions
- Match events: goals, cards, substitutions, shots, penalties, VAR events if available
- Detailed team and player match statistics, not just goals and assists
- Player stats such as shots, shots on target, passes, key passes, crosses, tackles, interceptions, clearances, aerial duels, ground duels, fouls, dribbles, possession lost/won, goalkeeper saves, etc.
- Historical data for the main European leagues
- Ideally player heatmaps or some kind of positional/event-level data
- Stable IDs for teams, players and matches
- Decent documentation and predictable pricing
So far I'm looking at SportMonks as the main provider, and possibly using other sources only to fill gaps, especially for things like heatmaps, event-level data or more detailed player stats.
I've also seen SofaScore APIs on RapidAPI/APIDojo, API-Football, StatsBomb open data, football-data.org, Understat/FBref scraping, etc., but I'm not sure which ones are reliable enough in practice.
For those who have actually used these sources:
- Which provider would you trust as the main data source for a football analytics project?
- Is SportMonks reliable enough for a structured database/dashboard?
- Are RapidAPI football APIs stable enough, or should they only be used for prototyping/enrichment?
- Where would you get player heatmaps, detailed player stats or event-level data without paying enterprise-level prices?
- Any hidden issues with coverage, rate limits, missing fields, unstable IDs or inconsistent historical data?
I'm not looking for a perfect enterprise solution, just something solid enough to build a serious prototype without having to rebuild everything later.
Any real-world experience would be super helpful. Thanks!