The Pinnacle API shut down on 23 July 2025. Here is what happened and what replaces it.

For about a decade the Pinnacle API was the quiet backbone of hobbyist and semi-professional betting software. It was free, it was documented on GitHub, and it exposed the lines of the one bookmaker that most modelers treat as the market's reference price. On 23 July 2025 that ended. This page records what happened, who was affected, and the practical options that exist in 2026. It is written by an independent site with no connection to Pinnacle.

What Pinnacle announced, and when

Pinnacle closed its public API on 23 July 2025 and replaced open sign-up with a bespoke access programme. The notice appeared in the official documentation repository on GitHub rather than as a wide press announcement, which is why many developers found out only when their requests started failing.

The pinnacleapi-documentation repository is still the primary source. Its current wording says that API access is available to "select high value bettors and commercial partnerships", and separately to academics and pregame handicapping projects, on application to [email protected]. The endpoint reference that used to live there describes an API that the general public can no longer call. We keep an archived summary of it on our Pinnacle API documentation page, together with a mapping to what replaces each endpoint.

Two things are worth noting about how this was done. First, there was no long deprecation window of the kind large platforms usually give. Second, nothing about the data itself changed. Pinnacle still publishes the same prices to its website and to its commercial partners. What disappeared was the free, self-serve door.

Who still has access

Three groups can still obtain a direct Pinnacle API connection: high-value bettors selected by Pinnacle, commercial partners with a signed agreement, and academic or pregame handicapping projects that apply and are accepted. Everyone else is outside the programme.

The application route is a plain email to [email protected]. Pinnacle has not published acceptance criteria, turnover thresholds or timelines, so we cannot tell you what a successful application looks like. From reading community threads, such as the arbusers.com discussion titled "Alternative to Pinnacle/PS moving forward?", the pattern is that individual developers and small tools are rarely accepted, while established B2B data companies and large-volume accounts sometimes are.

Sister brand ps3838 used the same API shape and was affected in the same way. If your code targeted ps3838 endpoints, the practical situation is identical.

If you are building a commercial product with meaningful volume, applying costs nothing but time. If you are an individual or a small team, plan for the independent-feed route described below and treat any bespoke acceptance as a bonus.

What broke for developers

Any script that authenticated with HTTP Basic auth against a funded Pinnacle account lost its data on 23 July 2025. The failure showed up as authentication errors, not as a graceful deprecation response, because the account-based access model itself was withdrawn.

To understand the migration effort, it helps to list what the old API assumed about you and your setup:

• A funded Pinnacle account. The API was free to call, but you had to hold a real account with a balance. Many developers in restricted jurisdictions never qualified in the first place.
• HTTP Basic auth. Your account username and password, base64-encoded in every request. Credential rotation meant changing your betting login.
• An IP allow-list. The documentation permitted at most two distinct IP addresses per client. Cloud deployments with rotating egress IPs needed a fixed NAT gateway or a proxy.
• Versioned endpoints. Code was written against paths such as /v1/fixtures, /v1/odds, /v1/line and /v2/leagues, with the newer /v3/odds arriving later. Response shapes were tied to those versions.
• Fair-use rate limits. Snapshot requests were limited to roughly one per minute per endpoint per sport, and the last published wording tightened odds endpoints to one request per two minutes. Delta requests using the since parameter were allowed more often.

The good news is that a well-structured client isolated all of this behind one HTTP layer. The bad news is that many hobby projects did not, and the auth, the IP rules and the versioned paths are scattered through the code. Our documentation archive lists the concepts you need to find and replace, and the migration kit turns that into a checklist.

Why Pinnacle data still matters

Pinnacle's prices are widely used as the reference for fair value in sports betting because the book runs low margins, accepts winning customers and moves its lines on sharp money. Losing the public API did not change the quality of the prices, only the ease of reading them.

This is why the shutdown mattered more than the closure of any single bookmaker's feed would have. A large share of odds-modeling work uses the Pinnacle line as the "true" probability against which other books are measured. Closing-line-value tracking, expected-value screens, arbitrage detection and academic studies of market efficiency all lean on it. pinnodds explains the reasoning in more depth in Why is Pinnacle the sharpest sportsbook and Why use Pinnacle odds as fair value; we will not repeat those arguments here.

There is a second reason the data matters: line movement. Because Pinnacle reacts quickly to informed money, a sudden drop in a Pinnacle price is a signal in its own right. Tools that watch for those drops need the data in near real time, which is exactly what polling a rate-limited public API never handled well. Several of the replacement services were built around this use case. Our guide on polling versus push odds feeds covers the trade-offs.

What to do now

In 2026 the practical route is an independent Pinnacle odds feed: a third-party service that carries Pinnacle's live and prematch market data over REST, and often SSE or WebSocket, and issues an API key without a Pinnacle account. Several exist; they differ in focus, transport and pricing rather than in the underlying prices.

We suggest working through it in three steps.

1. Pick a feed

   The Pinnacle API alternatives comparison covers seven services side by side: which ones are Pinnacle-only, which are multi-book, what transports they offer, whether they detect odds drops for you, and what their trial terms are. Our recommendation is pinnodds, for reasons set out there, but the page also links every competitor directly.

2. Map your old calls

   The documentation page has a table that maps each old endpoint to its 2026 equivalent, for example the old fixtures and odds calls to the pinnodds prematch fixtures and markets endpoints. Most migrations touch the auth layer, the base URL and a few field names.

3. Get a key and make one request

   The get-started page walks through sign-up, copying the key and a first curl request in under five minutes. For working code in Python, Node.js, WebSocket or SSE, pinnacleapi.dev has quickstarts that return real prices.

If you want to skip straight to a key, pinnodds issues a free trial without a card or a Pinnacle account. Get a free pinnodds trial key and then come back to the mapping table when you migrate.

Questions people ask

These are the questions we see most often in forums and search data about the shutdown, answered briefly.

Is the Pinnacle API completely gone?

Public access is gone. The API itself still exists for Pinnacle's commercial partners and for applicants accepted into the bespoke programme via [email protected]. For everyone else it is closed, with no announced reopening date.

Can I still apply for access?

Yes, by emailing [email protected]. Pinnacle describes the eligible groups as select high-value bettors, commercial partnerships, and academic or pregame handicapping projects. No public criteria or response times are published, so do not plan a project around approval.

Did ps3838 keep its API?

No. ps3838 shared the same API shape as Pinnacle and was affected in the same way. Code written against ps3838 endpoints needs the same migration.

Do I need a Pinnacle account to get Pinnacle odds now?

Not with an independent feed. Services such as pinnodds issue their own API key, which doubles as the account login, with no bookmaker account, no Basic auth and no IP allow-list. See how to get a key.

Is scraping the Pinnacle website a reasonable alternative?

It is fragile and usually a breach of the site's terms. Rendering, anti-bot measures and layout changes make it expensive to maintain compared with a feed that exposes structured JSON. pinnodds has a comparison at Pinnacle odds API vs scraping.

Are the prices from an independent feed the same as Pinnacle's?

They are Pinnacle's prices, relayed. Differences come down to how quickly a service picks up each change and how much depth it carries, such as quarter lines and player props. Those are the criteria in our comparison.

What did the old API cost?

Nothing directly. It was free to call, but required a funded Pinnacle account. Independent feeds are paid subscriptions after a trial; the pricing page shows a live price list.