football-api-mcp

MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for the 5DollarFootballAPI — gives Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and any MCP-capable AI assistant live football (soccer) data: fixtures, live scores, standings, statistics, betting odds and the full odds movement history, including corner and card lines.

Ask your assistant things like:

• "What Premier League matches are on today, and what are the current scores?"

• "Show the corner standings for league 39 this season."

• "How did the 1x2 odds move for fixture 1234567 before kickoff?"

Setup

You need an API key from 5dollarfootballapi.com — the free tier (no card) covers fixtures, live scores and standings; odds tools need a paid plan (from $5/mo).

Hosted (nothing to install)

Use the hosted server at https://mcp.5dollarfootballapi.com — your API key is the only setup. Every call is made with your own key and counts against your own plan.

Claude (web, desktop, mobile) and ChatGPT — add a custom connector (remote MCP server) and paste this as the server URL. No OAuth or other sign-in is involved; the key in the URL is the credential:

https://mcp.5dollarfootballapi.com/mcp/fb_live_your_key

Claude Code, Cursor and other clients that can send headers — keep the key out of the URL:

claude mcp add --transport http football-api https://mcp.5dollarfootballapi.com/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer fb_live_your_key"

The URL with your key in it is a secret: anyone who has it can spend your quota. Create a separate key for it in your dashboard, and delete that key if the URL ever leaks.

Prefer to run it yourself? The local setups below work the same way.

Claude Code

claude mcp add football-api -e FIVEDOLLARFOOTBALL_API_KEY=fb_live_your_key -- npx -y football-api-mcp

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "football-api": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "football-api-mcp"],
      "env": { "FIVEDOLLARFOOTBALL_API_KEY": "fb_live_your_key" }
    }
  }
}

Cursor

Add to .cursor/mcp.json (project) or ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "football-api": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "football-api-mcp"],
      "env": { "FIVEDOLLARFOOTBALL_API_KEY": "fb_live_your_key" }
    }
  }
}

ChatGPT (Developer mode)

ChatGPT only connects to remote MCP servers (Streamable HTTP over HTTPS), not local stdio commands, and needs a Plus/Pro/Business plan with Developer mode enabled. The quickest route is the hosted server: use https://mcp.5dollarfootballapi.com/mcp/fb_live_your_key as the Server URL in the steps below and skip the tunnel. To run your own instead, start the server in HTTP mode and expose it with a tunnel:

FIVEDOLLARFOOTBALL_API_KEY=fb_live_your_key npx -y football-api-mcp --http --token pick-a-secret
# in another terminal — any tunnel works, e.g. cloudflared or ngrok
cloudflared tunnel --url http://localhost:3333

Then in ChatGPT (verified 2026-08): Settings → Security and login → Developer mode (toggle on), open Plugins in the sidebar, click the + (Create app), and in the New Plugin form set Connection to Server URL, paste https://<your-tunnel-host>/mcp/pick-a-secret, set Authentication to No Auth, tick the acknowledgement and Create, then Connect. --token matters here: ChatGPT cannot send custom headers, so the secret in the path is what keeps a leaked tunnel URL from spending your API key.

Options: --host (default 127.0.0.1), --port (default 3333), or the equivalent MCP_HTTP_HOST / MCP_HTTP_PORT / MCP_HTTP_TOKEN environment variables. The same HTTP mode works for any other remote-only MCP client.

To serve many users from one instance (what the hosted server runs), use --hosted instead of --http: no server-side API key, each caller supplies their own as /mcp/<api-key> or Authorization: Bearer <api-key>. Put it behind a reverse proxy that terminates TLS and keeps the path out of the access log.

Related MCP server: api-football-mcp-server

Tools

Prompts

One-shot analysis templates you can invoke from any prompt-aware client:

Resources

Attachable context data: football://leagues/popular (popular league ids) and football://bookmakers (bookmaker slugs for the odds tools).

All tools are read-only. Errors come back as tool errors with the API's error code and request id, so the assistant can explain what went wrong.

Development

npm install
npm test          # in-memory MCP client/server tests, no network
FIVEDOLLARFOOTBALL_API_KEY=... npm start          # run over stdio
FIVEDOLLARFOOTBALL_API_KEY=... npm start -- --http # run over Streamable HTTP
npm start -- --hosted                              # multi-user HTTP, callers bring their own key

The underlying HTTP client is the official fivedollarfootball package. Endpoint reference: 5dollarfootballapi.com/docs.

License

MIT