What the free key includes
The free tier is REST access to live and prematch markets with the full line depth, limited to 20 requests a minute and 100 a day. There is no card to enter and no expiry date; the key doubles as the login for the account panel. It reaches the same /kit/v1/markets route and the same response envelope as the paid REST plans, so code written against it moves to a paid plan without changes. Checked against the provider documentation on September 26, 2026.
Two things are not on it. The SSE drop stream is part of the alerts plan and the two combined plans, and the raw WebSocket is an add-on to the three REST plans. A free key that opens the stream receives a control message saying the plan lacks it, not alerts. For evaluating those transports the provider offers a three-day full demo on request, with SSE, raw WebSocket and 10 requests a second.
What 100 requests a day cover
One request returns a whole sport board, every event with its money line, spreads and totals across periods. The count that matters is boards multiplied by refreshes, not events.
| Use | Requests a day | Fits the free key |
|---|---|---|
| A spreadsheet that refreshes one sport every 15 minutes | 96 | Yes |
| One sport polled every 5 minutes for 8 hours | 96 | Yes |
| Three sports every 5 minutes for 8 hours | 288 | No |
| Inspecting responses while writing a parser | A few dozen | Yes |
| Live prices during a match, every 10 seconds | 360 an hour | No |
The first row is the pattern the Google Sheets quickstart on pnclFEED is built around: one call every 15 minutes, 96 a day, inside the allowance. The 20-a-minute ceiling rarely matters at these rates; it exists to stop a burst from spending the day in five minutes.
Making the budget go further
The since cursor does not reduce the request count, only the payload: a delta call is still a call. What reduces the count is scope and schedule. Poll one board rather than five, poll during the hours the sport is played, and make one process the only caller while every dashboard, sheet and model reads from that process’s copy. A cache in front of the key turns fifty readers into one request.
Check the count before it runs out. At 90 requests the remaining 10 should be reserved for the scheduled calls, and a poller that hits the daily limit should stop rather than retry, because a 429 for the day cannot be waited out in seconds. The API cost calculator on pnclAPI works the interval, hours and boards into a daily figure for any schedule.
When a paid plan pays off
The moment a schedule needs more than one board every 15 minutes, the free key is no longer the plan. The REST snapshots plan lifts the ceiling to 10 requests a second for $99 a month, or $249 for three months and $449 for six. Alerts without polling are the SSE plan at $99, alerts with polling are $149, and the high-volume plan at $229 runs at 30 requests a second with alerts included. The pricing page lists every term, and the plan guide matches each to the loop you are writing.
Getting and keeping the key
Create the account through the access link, copy the key from the panel, and keep it on the server in an environment variable. Send it in the x-portal-apikey header. Never put it in browser JavaScript or a public repository; the access checklist walks through the first request and how to validate the envelope it returns.
Questions about the free tier
Does the free key expire or need renewing?
No. The published terms have no expiry and no card. It stays valid until you upgrade or the account is closed.
Are the prices the same as on paid plans?
Yes. The endpoints and the envelope are the same; the plans differ in rate, in the daily cap and in which transports they include, not in the data.
Can I test the SSE stream for free?
Not on the free key. Ask the provider for the three-day full demo, which includes the stream and the raw WebSocket.
Allowances and prices follow the provider’s published terms, checked September 26, 2026. Published September 29, 2026.