Free sportsbook software comes in three kinds: open source projects you host yourself, sportsbook scripts and clones you buy or download, and hosted services with a free plan. The code is rarely the expensive part. Odds, results, settlement and someone to keep it all running are, which is why most "free" options still cost money or engineering time before a single bet is placed. If you want a free sportsbook for your website that works today, a hosted play-for-fun sportsbook like The Sportsbook's Free plan (one sport, 3 leagues, pre-match, free tokens and never real money) is the shortest route; if you want to own the code, open source is the honest starting point.
Key takeaways
- "Free" can mean a free license, a free trial or a free tier. Only the last one runs without extra work.
- Open source sportsbook projects exist, but you supply odds, results, hosting and maintenance.
- Scripts and clones save UI work, not data or settlement work.
- Odds and results are the recurring cost; industry guides we read put odds feeds in the thousands a month, and live coverage well above that.
- The Sportsbook's Free plan: 1 sport, up to 3 leagues, pre-match, up to 250 monthly active players, a "Powered by" badge, no time limit today.
What "free" usually means
Before comparing options, separate three meanings of free:
| Meaning | What you get free | What you still pay for |
|---|---|---|
| Free license (open source) | The source code, with the rights its license gives | Hosting, odds and results data, development, maintenance, security |
| Free trial | Full or partial product for a limited time | The product after the trial; often setup and integration |
| Free tier (hosted) | A working product with limits | Nothing up to the limits; a paid plan beyond them |
Many pages that rank for this search mix these up, or use "free" for a demo that turns into a quote. Worth checking before you invest time: read the pricing or license page before the feature list, because that's where the meaning of "free" is decided.
Open source sportsbook projects
Open source sportsbook code exists, but there isn't much of it, and what exists varies a lot. Two examples we looked at on GitHub, described from their own pages as of September 2026:
- openbookie/sportbook (opens in a new tab). Its README describes it as "a free open source web app for sports betting (or prediction) pools in Ruby on Rails (version 3.2 and up)", dedicated to the public domain. It's aimed at pools and predictions among friends rather than a sportsbook with a market list.
- thelee141/bte (opens in a new tab). Described as an "open-source play-money sportsbook engine" with atomic bet placement, double-entry accounting, real-time odds, settlement and a React customer UI, in TypeScript with PostgreSQL, under AGPL-3.0. Its public version runs on built-in fixture data, not a live sports data feed.
These are useful if you want to learn how a betting engine is structured or build your own. Neither gives you live fixtures and odds for real leagues out of the box, and the AGPL license has obligations to read carefully if you run a modified version as a service.
What you take on with any open source sportsbook: hosting and uptime, security updates, a fixtures and odds feed, results for settlement, corrections, and the time to connect them all.
Sportsbook scripts and clones
Search for a free sportsbook script and you'll find clone scripts from development agencies, marketplace listings and GitHub repositories tagged as betting scripts. The quality ranges from demo-grade to serious, and "free" often means a free demo with a paid license.
A script saves you UI and some back-end work. It doesn't save you the parts that keep a sportsbook running:
- A data feed. Fixtures, odds, and for live betting, fast price updates and suspensions.
- Settlement. Grading each market you show, including Asian lines that settle half won or half lost, voids and cancelled matches.
- Corrections. Re-settling bets when an official result changes after the fact.
- Balances. Idempotent credits and debits, so a network retry doesn't move tokens twice.
- Operations. Hosting, monitoring, updates, and someone on call when a popular match settles.
The build vs embed comparison goes deeper into each of these and what building them from scratch takes.
The odds and results problem
This is why free software isn't a free sportsbook. A sportsbook is software plus data, and the data isn't free.
Major odds providers don't publish prices, so the numbers you'll find are estimates from industry guides:
- TRUEiGTECH's white label cost guide (opens in a new tab) (June 2026) puts odds and data feeds at $1,000 to $5,000 a month.
- According to NowG's free sportsbook software guide (opens in a new tab) (updated September 2026), pre-match-only feeds from major providers start around €3,000 to €5,000 a month, and full pre-match plus live coverage runs €10,000 to €25,000 a month for mid-sized operators.
Those figures are aimed at real-money operators and vary by sport and coverage, but the point holds for any sportsbook: without a feed, the code has nothing to show; without results, nothing settles.
A hosted play-for-fun sportsbook removes that line. On The Sportsbook, odds, results and settlement come with the platform on every plan, including Free. Most bets settle minutes after the final whistle; a few wait for official results or a check by our team, and corrected results are re-settled automatically.
Hosted free sportsbook software: The Sportsbook's Free plan
The Sportsbook is a white-label, play-for-fun sportsbook you embed with an iframe, a JavaScript SDK and an API key. Players bet free tokens you give them, never real money. The Free plan, at the time of writing (September 2026):
| Free plan | |
|---|---|
| Price | $0; no time limit today |
| Sports | 1 of 11 (football, basketball, tennis, ice hockey, baseball, volleyball, American football, esports, UFC, martial arts (MMA), boxing) |
| Leagues | up to 3, picked one by one |
| Betting | pre-match; singles and accumulators; six odds formats |
| Players | up to 250 monthly active players |
| Balances | managed token balance via API |
| Branding | logo, favicon, colors, presets, radius, layout, betslip position |
| Badge | a small "Powered by" badge is shown |
| Console | 1 seat, 1 API key, stake limits, maintenance mode |
| Languages | English and Spanish |
What it doesn't include: live betting, extra sports, more leagues, the seamless wallet, custom fonts, CSV export and the audit log, which come with Custom (from $49 a month, $39 billed yearly) or Full ($490 a month, $399 billed yearly). See pricing. A Free sportsbook with no activity for 12 months may be closed after 30 days' notice.
Setup is an API call on your server and two lines of HTML:
<div data-thesportsbook data-launch-url="LAUNCH_URL_FROM_YOUR_SERVER"></div><script src="https://play.thesportsbook.app/sdk.js"></script>The step-by-step guide to embedding a sportsbook on your website covers the server call, tokens and branding.
The limits of this route are real, and worth stating. You don't own the code. There's no custom domain today (the sportsbook loads from play.thesportsbook.app inside your page). And it's play-for-fun only: no real-money betting in any form, prizes of value aren't allowed, and it's for businesses and professional creators with players aged 18 or over.
Questions to ask before you download anything
Whichever route you lean towards, five questions save most of the wasted weekends:
- Where do fixtures and odds come from, and who pays for them? If the answer is "you plug in your own feed", price the feed before you price anything else.
- Who grades the bets? Ask how a market settles when a match is abandoned, when extra time counts or doesn't, and when an official result is corrected two days later. If nobody has an answer, you'll be writing that code.
- What happens on a retry? A player double-clicks "Place bet" on a slow connection. Does the system place one bet or two? Idempotent balance movements are the difference.
- What does it look like on a phone? Most sports fans check scores on their phone during the match. A betslip that doesn't fit a narrow screen is a betslip nobody uses.
- Who fixes it at 10 pm on a Saturday? Popular matches end at the same time, and settlements arrive in a burst. Somebody has to be responsible when that goes wrong.
For a hosted plan, the same questions have short answers: the provider handles data, grading, retries and operations, and you check the limits of the plan. For open source and scripts, the answers are "you", and that's fine as long as you planned for it. If the project is a community or a site with its own users, also ask where player balances live and what your players' tokens are worth. On The Sportsbook the answer to the second is always nothing: tokens are free, and nothing of value comes in or out.
Comparison table
| Open source project | Script or clone | Hosted free plan (The Sportsbook) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | $0 | $0 to a paid license | $0 |
| Odds and results | You source and pay for them | You source and pay for them | Included |
| Settlement and corrections | You build or adapt them | Depends on the script | Included |
| Time to first bet | Weeks to months of engineering | Days to weeks, plus data integration | Minutes to hours |
| Who maintains it | You | You (sometimes the seller, for a fee) | Us |
| Own the code | Yes | Depends on the license | No |
| Real money | Depends on your licenses and legal advice | Same | No, play-for-fun only |
| Limits | Your infrastructure | Your infrastructure | 1 sport, 3 leagues, pre-match, 250 players on Free |
Which to choose
Choose open source if you want to learn how a sportsbook engine works, need full control of the code, and have engineering time plus a budget for data. Read the license first.
Choose a script only if a specific one already does most of what you need and you have a data source lined up. Ask the seller what's included for settlement and corrections.
Choose a hosted free plan if you want a working sportsbook on your site this week, for a community, fan site, streamer audience or company league, and play-for-fun with free tokens suits you. It's the only one of the three where "free" means you can put it in front of players today.
Look elsewhere entirely if you need real-money betting. That involves licenses, payments and compliance that vary by country; talk to real-money providers and take legal advice where you operate. The white label sportsbook cost guide lists what those projects typically cost.
If what you want is betting without money for a community, what a play-for-fun sportsbook is explains the model and its rules. If you're comparing free-to-play products specifically, the free-to-play sportsbook platforms comparison covers predictor games and virtual-currency products too. Otherwise, start on the Free plan (opens in a new tab); nobody has to approve it.
Frequently asked questions
Is there free sportsbook software that works out of the box?
Open source projects are free to download but need odds, results, hosting and maintenance before they work as a sportsbook. Hosted free plans work out of the box within their limits. The Sportsbook's Free plan runs a play-for-fun sportsbook with one sport, 3 leagues and pre-match betting.
Can I build a sportsbook on open source code?
Yes, if you have the engineering time and a source of odds and results. The code covers bet placement and balances; you still need a data feed, settlement for each market you offer, corrections, hosting and someone to keep it running. Budget for that before you pick a repository.
How much does an odds feed cost?
It depends on the provider, sports and live coverage, and major providers don't publish prices. Industry guides we read put feeds between $1,000 and $5,000 a month (TRUEiGTECH) and €3,000 to €5,000 for pre-match alone (NowG), with full live coverage costing several times more. A hosted play-for-fun sportsbook includes odds, results and settlement.
Is free sportsbook software suitable for real-money betting?
That's a different question involving licences, payments and compliance in each country, and it needs legal advice. The Sportsbook doesn't support real-money betting in any form: players only ever bet free tokens with no monetary value.
Does The Sportsbook's Free plan expire?
There's no time limit on the Free plan today. A Free sportsbook with no activity for 12 months may be closed after 30 days' notice. You can move to a paid plan at any time for more sports, leagues, players or live betting.
Written by
The Sportsbook team
The people who build The Sportsbook. We have spent seven years building sportsbook software, and we write these guides from that work.
Last updated .