When to choose us vs OpticOdds and broad odds APIs

Who this is for

Developers and buyers who have a real workload and want a straight answer on whether to use this API, OpticOdds or another broad odds aggregator. This site is operated by DD Inc., is not affiliated with or endorsed by DraftKings, and sells one of the options, so every claim about another company links to a dated source.

Not for

This tree is a first filter, not a benchmark.

• A latency or accuracy ranking. No provider here has been measured under identical conditions, so nobody gets a score.
• Readers who have not chosen a DraftKings product. Start with which DraftKings you mean.
• Rights decisions. Read each provider's terms for your use.

The decision tree

Answer in order and stop at your first yes. Statements about other companies are paraphrased from their public pages as they read on 2026-11-03, and may have changed. They are the vendors' claims. We have not measured them. This site is not affiliated with any company named here.

1. Do you need more than one sportsbook, or a consensus or market-wide price? Choose a broad provider. They win. This API covers DraftKings only and cannot produce a cross-book view. OpticOdds states 100+ sportsbooks and 25+ sports source, and The Odds API lists bookmakers across several regions source.
2. Do you need DraftKings sportsbook player props, alternates or futures beyond New York NHL Shots on Goal? Choose a broad provider. OpticOdds claims main lines, alternates, props and futures for DraftKings source. See what we supply.
3. Do you need in-play odds, or do seconds matter? Choose a broad provider and measure it. OpticOdds describes SSE events within milliseconds source. We make no latency claim, and our worker targets are minutes.
4. Do you need history older than our recording, or grading? Choose a broad provider. OpticOdds retains pre-match historical odds on a rolling 2-month basis source and documents a grader source. The Odds API advertises snapshots back to 2020 source. Recording began around 2026-11-03. Retained history is short, and it is not a complete opening-to-close archive. It does not contain seasons of past lines, and there is no public graded-results endpoint.
5. Do you need a contract, sales support or an SLA? Not us. We answer email at support@draftkingsapi.com and have no SLA or contract. OpticOdds runs through a contact form and sales reps source source. ParlayAPI says an SLA requires a separate agreement source.
6. Do you need Pick6 rows with explicit selections, standings multipliers kept apart from odds, and recorded changes? Evaluate us first, on the Pick6 page, then test the same market against the other Pick6 listings below. Coverage here is selected categories, not a full board.
7. Do you need DFS slates and roster-slot salaries, ideally next to Pick6 behind one key? Evaluate us, on the DFS page. It covers selected slates in a permission-gated beta.
8. Do you want to start today, with published prices and no sales step, and is your job DraftKings only? Evaluate us alongside The Odds API. If none of the above applied, a free key costs you a few minutes.

Fair admissions

These are the places a careful buyer should hold against us.

• Breadth: OpticOdds and The Odds API solve many more jobs, and a broad feed hedges against requirements you have not found yet source.
• Pick6 is not exclusive to us. OpticOdds lists DraftKings Pick 6 and Pick 6 Multipliers as sportsbook IDs source, The Odds API lists a pick6 key source and ParlayAPI documents pick6 too source. We have not compared their Pick6 coverage with ours.
• Allowance: The Odds API lists 20,000 credits at $30 and 100,000 at $59 a month source. Free includes 500 requests/month at 20/minute; Developer is $49/month with 10,000 requests/month at 60/minute; Production is $149/month with 50,000 requests/month at 120/minute. Credits and requests are different units, but on raw allowance they are likely larger.
• Delivery: OpticOdds publishes rate limits of 2,500 requests per 15 seconds on standard endpoints source. Ours are 60 and 120 a minute on paid plans. Each of our Pick6 stream connections also costs a request, which is expensive if held open: see pricing.
• Provenance: most of our sportsbook rows are observed through ESPN, not read directly from DraftKings.

Where this API may fit

A narrow service can still be the right one. These are specific, and they should be tested rather than taken on our word.

• One DraftKings job at a self-serve price, with a free plan and a keyless sample.
• Row-level capture clocks and provenance. Unknown venue clocks stay null rather than borrowing a capture time.
• Signed webhooks for Pick6 changes on Production. OpticOdds' FAQ says it does not offer webhooks or WebSockets, and offers SSE instead source.
• DFS roster-slot salaries in the same API as Pick6. We did not find DraftKings salary data stated on the OpticOdds pages we fetched.

Who wins each job

A summary of the tree. Where we say it depends, the first candidate to test is named.

A 15 minute test

Run the same bounded test against each candidate. It costs a few requests and shows more than a feature grid. Choose one league, one market and one player or game you can check by eye.

1. Minutes 0 to 3: create a key without talking to anyone, if the provider allows it. Note what needed a sales call.
2. Minutes 3 to 6: read coverage for your sport and fetch five rows. Check that the market you need is present, not only listed.
3. Minutes 6 to 9: find the clocks. Is there a capture time and a source update time? Which one is null, and what does the provider say that means?
4. Minutes 9 to 12: page twice and trigger an error on purpose. Read the error body, the limit behaviour and what the bad request cost.
5. Minutes 12 to 15: read the terms on redistribution and public display. Confirm whether your product is covered at your price.

curl --fail-with-body "https://draftkingsapi.com/api/v1/coverage" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DRAFTKINGS_API_KEY"

curl --fail-with-body "https://draftkingsapi.com/api/v1/pick6/projections?sport=NFL&stat=Receiving%20Yards&limit=5" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DRAFTKINGS_API_KEY"

Questions a feature list does not answer

Most mistakes in a provider choice come from assuming a listed market means complete, current and licensed data. Ask about each of these directly and keep the answer in writing.

• Is the data first-party, or relayed through another source? On this API, sportsbook rows name ESPN in provenance.
• What happens when the source blocks collection? Do you get an explicit gap or quietly stale rows?
• Is a one-sided market kept as observed, or filled in?
• How far back does history really go for your sport, and is it continuous?
• Who holds redistribution rights? Technical access rarely settles this.
• What does a failed or empty call cost against your quota?

Deeper comparisons

Each comparison cites dated public pages and says where the other provider is stronger. Facts about other companies can change, so check their current pages before you commit.

• OpticOdds: a sales-led multi-book feed.
• ParlayAPI: credit-priced multi-book access, including a Pick6 key.
• DFS pick'em provider evaluation: who claims Pick6 coverage and how to test it.
• Underdog provider research and Sleeper provider research: research only, because we do not supply those feeds.
• Scraper to API migration: moving an existing scraper to a stored feed.

Check the recorded data

• Measured coverage report
• Sources and status
• Reliability Measured uptime and lag, where recorded.

Sources

1. OpticOdds docs: Odds API getting started guide checked 2026-11-03
2. OpticOdds: DraftKings API page checked 2026-11-03
3. OpticOdds docs: sportsbooks checked 2026-11-03
4. OpticOdds docs: API FAQ checked 2026-11-03
5. OpticOdds: pricing checked 2026-11-03
6. OpticOdds docs: historical odds checked 2026-11-03
7. OpticOdds docs: SSE streaming checked 2026-11-03
8. The Odds API: home and plans checked 2026-11-03
9. The Odds API: bookmaker list checked 2026-11-03
10. ParlayAPI: documentation checked 2026-11-03
11. ParlayAPI: pricing checked 2026-11-03

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