Load The Odds API data to DuckDB

Odds API is a sports betting odds platform providing event data, bookmaker odds, and live market updates for production applications. Everything needed to build a working The Odds API → DuckDB pipeline is on this page: the API's base URL, authentication, endpoints, pagination and incremental field — plus a prompt that hands the whole job to your coding agent.

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Build your The Odds API to DuckDB pipeline

Paste this prompt into Claude, Codex, or Cursor. The agent does the rest.

PromptCopy prompt
Run uvx dlthub-init@latest to build a pipeline from The Odds API to DuckDB and run it on dltHub

That scaffolds a dltHub workspace and installs the dltHub AI harness — the project rules, the secrets-management skill, and the dlt MCP server your agent needs to work safely. From there it reads the The Odds API API, proposes the endpoints to load, then writes, runs and validates the pipeline while you review rather than type. Credentials are inspected through MCP tools, so your agent never reads secrets.toml itself. How the LLM-native workflow works →

Prefer to write it yourself? Every fact the agent uses is below.

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The Odds API API at a glance

These values come from the The Odds API API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

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How do I authenticate with the The Odds API API?

The service uses an API key authentication mechanism where the key is passed as a header named 'X-API-Key'.

1. Get your credentials

To obtain an API key for The Odds API, navigate to the official website at https://the-odds-api.com/ and select the 'Get API Key' option. You will typically be prompted to register with your email address. Once registered, your API key will be delivered to your email or accessible via the account dashboard at https://dash.the-odds-api.com/. Keep this key private to prevent unauthorized depletion of your usage quota.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.the_odds_api_source]
api_key = "your_api_key_here"

dlt reads this file automatically at runtime. With the harness, the setup-secrets skill prompts you for the values and never handles the raw credential in chat. For production, see setting up credentials with dlt.

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What The Odds API data can I load into DuckDB?

These are the The Odds API endpoints dlt can load into DuckDB:

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How do I load only new The Odds API records?

The Odds API exposes None on v4/sports, so dlt can request only the records that changed since the last run. Set it as the cursor_path and dlt tracks the high-water mark for you between runs.

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{"name": "sports", "endpoint": {
    "path": "v4/sports",
    "incremental": {"cursor_path": "None", "initial_value": "2024-01-01T00:00:00Z"},
}}

On the first run dlt loads everything from initial_value; on every run after that it requests only what changed and appends with write_disposition="merge" if you set a primary key. See incremental loading.

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What does the generated The Odds API pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading sports and odds from the The Odds API API into DuckDB:

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import dlt
from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources

@dlt.source
def the_odds_api_source(api_key=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://api.odds-api.net/v1",
            "auth": {"type": "api_key", "api_key": api_key, "name": "X-API-Key"},
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "sports", "endpoint": {"path": "v4/sports"}},
            {"name": "odds", "endpoint": {"path": "v4/sports/{sport}/odds"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_the_odds_api_to_duckdb() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="the_odds_api_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="the_odds_api_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(the_odds_api_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_the_odds_api_to_duckdb()

Run it with python the_odds_api_pipeline.py. The agent iterates on this until it loads cleanly — you review and approve, rather than write it from scratch.

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How do I query The Odds API data in DuckDB?

dlt creates one table per resource. Query the loaded data with Python or SQL — or ask your agent to, through the MCP server's execute_sql_query tool.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

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import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("the_odds_api_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.sports.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM the_odds_api_data.sports LIMIT 10;

See querying your data with dataset and exploring it in marimo notebooks.

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How do I deploy the The Odds API to DuckDB pipeline in production?

The pipeline runs locally, which is ideal for prototyping and one-off analysis. When you need it on a schedule, monitored on every load, and shared with your team, deploy the same dlt code on the dltHub platform — no infrastructure to maintain. The prompt above already ends with "run it on dltHub", so your agent can take it there directly.

• Deploy & schedule — run the pipeline as a managed job with automatic retries.
• Monitor — observable job queues, alerting, and load metrics for every run.
• Transform — promote raw The Odds API loads into governed, documented models.
• Visualize & share — explore data in notebooks and publish live dashboards instead of static screenshots.

Book a demo →

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What other destinations can I load The Odds API data to?

dlt loads into any of these — only the destination argument changes:

Set dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. On the dltHub platform the same pipeline runs against a managed Iceberg lakehouse. See the full destinations list.

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Next steps

• Ready for production? Book a demo of the dltHub platform →
• dlt LLM-native workflow docs
• REST API source reference
• Join the dlt community on Slack