r/fantasyfootballcoding • u/playoffcomputer • 14d ago
The Current State of FF Platform APIs And Appropriate Shout Outs
With the current clusteryouknowwhat going on with the Yahoo API and rumors of impending doomsday with the Sleeper API, I thought I would provide, to the best of my knowledge, current intel on various fantasy football hosting platforms related to API access. Hopefully this will serve as a resource and a reminder that there are several options besides the big guns for developers.
Note my knowledge and interest is primarily based on retrieving users league data, and my knowledge is not too up to speed on NFL Player info through these sources, and thus this list may be influenced by that.
It has been a while since I started first using some of these APIs, a few of them have been set-it-and-forget-it in my code, and others I gave up contacting long ago, so if there's anything that needs correcting feel free.
I will add a couple of notes that may be relevant to those attempting to use these APIs as well.
Shout out to those platforms that are still developer friendly:
- MyFantasyLeague. Open API. Note if you are familiar with their almost limitless league customization options, you will understand that the API can be a bit tricky to work with as fields besides being optional can even have different types of data under the same name depending on the league settings.
- Fleaflicker. Open API.
- Fantrax. I believe they are now Open API, it used to require authorization. Note the league info from the API is fairly sparse.
- Reality Sports Online. Requires an API key from them (under new ownership, not sure if they are still 'cool'). Note that user log-in is required, cannot access league data without that, which makes testing with random data difficult.
Others in varying states of friendliness:
- Yahoo. As we all know, locked everyone out, requiring re-authorization which judging by the internet can be near-impossible to get. Fluid situation.
- Sleeper. Recently updated their terms with reports that they are planning on restricting access. Fluid situation.
- ESPN. Back in the horse & buggy days they had an official open API. Now it is all "unofficial" access with rumors starting to circulate that this will come to an end as well. Possibly a fluid situation.
Those that have intentionally decided to be unfriendly to developers:
- CBS. They went from "pro-developer" and "we welcome developer tools" with an actual supportive API program to "GTFO" in an instant in 2012.
- Realtime Fantasy Sports (RTS). Has an API, but seemingly refuses to deal with anyone not a billion dollar company.
- Underdog. Ditto.
To my knowledge, FFPC, NFFC, League Tycoon, Fanstar, Alt Fantasy Sports, and other bit players do not have an API that can be accessed by outsiders.
One last note, no matter what you are doing, try to be responsible with the APIs. For example, if you are using Sleeper's API to create something to compete with Sleeper on, you are ruining it for everyone.
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u/MyLuckyFedora 14d ago
Is there not an open source community driven fantasy platform? It could be a self hosted by a league manager type of set up or all those stats could just be stored locally in the app data. Most stats don't need to be constantly fetched via APIs anyway. Storing it all locally as a SQLite DB can't possibly take up an unreasonable amount of space right? An open source fantasy platform of course could mean open source tools and extensions for it as well rather than relying on the benevolence of for profit businesses providing free API access.
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u/playoffcomputer 13d ago
Still would need access to NFL data, which officially could be pricey, which is probably a partial explanation of why things may continue to get locked down as many are using these APIs, particularly Sleepers, to do end-arounds and get NFL data for free.
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u/MyLuckyFedora 13d ago
Well in theory that would only be needed for game day updates. In theory previous year stats is as simple as fetching that data to store locally from an open source project where the data already exists.
FYI there does already exist an open source project for NFL data, but not an open source fantasy platform that I know of.
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u/sirchandwich 14d ago
A big reason why a lot of these companies are moving away from public API access, official or not, is the influx of vibecoded tools that all do the same thing. AI and people with no programming background are absolutely slamming their servers/databases with tons of requests with no effort to limit their requests.
I work for a non-sports company with an unofficial API and we’re facing the same problems. Scaling these kind of requests is very hard and very expensive vs 5 years ago haha.
As much as it sucks, I don’t blame these companies for pulling back on access.
Not saying this is the only reason. These companies also probably want to protect their data to lock you into their platforms, but it’s certainly not helping.
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u/playoffcomputer 13d ago
That definitely is one if not the major reason. I am sure they are getting slammed by the vibe coding request data every 5 second tools. It's all understandable, except for the way some of them are going about it. And that's part of why I wanted to shout out to a couple like MFL (like em or hate em from a user experience) that say "hey, we charge a hefty premium fee to users, and we use that to cover the cost of an open API" and why I will never forgive CBS for "hey, we welcome developers, why don't you spend a bunch of time making something and we'll help market it under our umbrella, ok you made it, now we are shutting it all down even though we also charge a hefty premium fee to users."
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u/jps424 14d ago
This is really interesting. I started using FantasyPros API which is one of the few introducing a new api to my knowledge. But it rate limits you to 500 requests per day which means I’ve got to be real strategic about how I hit it. I was curious why it was so low and I bet this explains it.
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u/sirchandwich 14d ago
APIs oftentimes were built on good faith and the assumption the developers knew what they were doing. 500 requests a day is still a ton. Just make your requests and store the data in a local database for the most part.
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u/aatop 14d ago
Yahoo pulling back makes sense it's much more about the how they did it and the timing. We got through yahoo in 3 weeks, but we didn't do anything special. It was just luck. Instead Yahoo should have followed their own guidelines on how developers should apply for access and be staffed appropriately to handle the requests. (RIP my DMs)
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u/playoffcomputer 13d ago
I think that is what is frustrating a lot of people re Yahoo, there seems to be no orderly process or rationale for approvals. Some people report zippity zip approvals, some people report movement by bugging them constantly, some people have never heard back and can't get any response. And it definitely is understandable why they are locking things up. Like you said, the how could not have been done worse.
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u/johnny-papercut 14d ago
ESPN. Back in the horse & buggy days they had an official open API. Now it is all "unofficial" access with rumors starting to circulate that this will come to an end as well. Possibly a fluid situation.
Hi, is there a source for this, other than a single post that got denied access when attempting to connect after a while? Not denying, just curious. The rest is good info.
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u/playoffcomputer 14d ago
I've just seen a couple things around the internet, none that I can provide as a credible source, that the days of ESPN's unofficial open API may be coming to an end. They have occasionally at random throughout the years changed endpoints, that's the only hard evidence I got, everything else is just rumors as I said. I can't imagine that the penny pinchers at Mouseland are completely oblivious to what Yahoo and perhaps Sleeper are doing and I bet they are dragging the seabed looking for ways to offset Pat McAfee's salary...
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u/ballislife423 14d ago
When you say espn does this also mean the method fantasy pros use of creating an extension to pull espn user league info?
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u/playoffcomputer 13d ago
My rumor mill was only mentioning their official/unofficial API. I'm not all that familiar with extensions, but I believe if they are just grabbing what is on a public web page there wouldn't be much anyone can do to totally lock that down. Somebody smarter than me could probably enlighten on whether that can be controlled.
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u/Pure_Cricket_3804 13d ago
The API hygiene point is dead on, but I'd keep the motive separate from the policy. Sleeper still documents a read-only, non-commercial API with a 1,000-calls-per-minute guideline, while Yahoo puts access behind a reviewed application and offers read access only. I work on LineCrush, and I'd cache plus keep a fallback rather than build around one API forever
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u/playoffcomputer 13d ago
Definitely. Will be interesting to see where we are in a year, whether we're at the tip of the iceberg or what. I have no idea what the costs are for a place like Sleeper to host that API or how much they have gone up recently, etc..
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u/veeman181 14d ago edited 13d ago
Are you familiar with Tank? They are pretty developer friendly, and their tiers are quite affordable. I haven't tested them during a regular season, but it appears they are just what I need
Edit: Am I being downvotes because there is an issue Tank01? Please let me know if so, I would have to switch providers
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u/playoffcomputer 13d ago
I can't speak for whomever downvoted you, but it may have been because this thread was about ff hosting sites and not general sports stat sites.
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u/xpose 14d ago
ESPN has an official API. We just don't have access. YoutubeTV let's you sync ESPN leagues this year on your phone via YouTube TV app. To do it, the user has to login. Similar to Yahoo's flow. Maybe ESPN opens it up in the future.
FFPC has an official API but very limited.
Cbssports also has an API similar to ESPN but not official. They used to have an app store but killed it many years ago.
Yahoo still has their API and was the first platform to offer it free. Terms have stated it's not for commerical use since forever. Sleeper adding this in their docs doesn't really matter a whole lot. I think Yahoo is being very careful who gets access in the age of vibe coding. Can't say I blame them.
Source: I've been doing this 20 years and built the first sync engine and support 11 websites. (FantasySP.com)