DraftKings API in Python and cURL

No SDK needed

The API is plain HTTPS with JSON responses. cURL and Python's standard-library urllib both work, and the examples here install nothing. Each reads DRAFTKINGS_API_KEY from your environment and contains no credential.

curl --fail-with-body "https://draftkingsapi.com/api/v1/pick6/projections?sport=NBA&limit=10" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DRAFTKINGS_API_KEY"

--fail-with-body makes cURL exit non-zero on an HTTP error while still printing the JSON error. Scripts then stop rather than parse an error as data.

A small Python client

This client sets a timeout, retries transient failures with backoff, reads the error envelope and stops at a page budget. Python 3.9 or later is enough.

import json
import os
import time
import urllib.error
import urllib.parse
import urllib.request

BASE = os.environ.get("DRAFTKINGS_API_BASE", "https://draftkingsapi.com")
KEY = os.environ["DRAFTKINGS_API_KEY"]


def get(path, params=None, attempts=3):
    query = urllib.parse.urlencode({k: v for k, v in (params or {}).items() if v is not None})
    url = f"{BASE}{path}?{query}" if query else f"{BASE}{path}"
    request = urllib.request.Request(url, headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {KEY}"})
    for attempt in range(1, attempts + 1):
        try:
            with urllib.request.urlopen(request, timeout=20) as response:
                return json.load(response)
        except urllib.error.HTTPError as error:
            body = json.loads(error.read() or b"{}")
            message = body.get("error", {}).get("message", "unknown error")
            # 429 means wait for a UTC boundary, so a short retry only spends time.
            if error.code != 503 or attempt == attempts:
                raise RuntimeError(f"{error.code}: {message}") from error
        except urllib.error.URLError:
            if attempt == attempts:
                raise
        time.sleep(2**attempt)


def pages(path, params, max_pages=3, limit=100):
    offset = 0
    for _ in range(max_pages):
        page = get(path, {**params, "limit": limit, "offset": offset})
        yield from page["data"]
        if not page["pagination"]["has_more"]:
            return
        offset += limit


for row in pages("/api/v1/pick6/projections", {"sport": "NBA"}, max_pages=2):
    if not row["stale"] and not row["is_paused"]:
        print(row["stat"], row["target_value"], row["observed_at"])

Retry only what can recover

Retrying everything wastes quota, because authenticated calls count even when they return nothing useful. Choose by status.

Paginate deliberately

On Pick6, DFS, sportsbook and context lists, limit defaults to 25 and accepts 1 to 100, and offset defaults to 0 and accepts 0 to 10,000. Continue while pagination.has_more is true, adding limit to offset. Captures can change across calls, so pagination is not a frozen snapshot.

Statistics endpoints use a cursor instead, and Pick6 history uses after. The pagination guide has one working loop for each style.

Budget your calls

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. Limits are shared across keys. Existing legacy accounts retain their original daily terms, and the dashboard shows the active allowance.

Valid authenticated calls count even for empty results or unavailable datasets, and invalid queries authenticated before validation count too. Keep a page cap in every script, as max_pages does above, so a bug cannot spend a month of quota overnight.

Cache responses in your own process or database for at least the collector interval. The API sends Cache-Control: no-store, and polling faster than the worker target returns no newer data.

Filter to what you can use

Filter on the server where a parameter exists, then apply capture checks on the client. sport and stat reduce pages and quota on Pick6. sport, event_id and market do the same on odds. Freshness has no server filter, so check stale per row.

curl --fail-with-body "https://draftkingsapi.com/api/v1/odds?sport=NBA&market=total&limit=25" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DRAFTKINGS_API_KEY"

Unsupported parameters return 400 rather than being ignored, so a typo fails loudly. Read the valid filters in the docs or the machine-readable OpenAPI document.

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