IPL 2026 Cricket API

A free, open-source REST API that scrapes live IPL 2026 data (schedule, points table, squads, winners and three independent live-score sources) and serves clean JSON.

Table of Contents

1. Features
2. Endpoints
3. Sample Response
4. Local Setup
5. Deployment Guide
6. Vercel Deployment
7. Contributing
8. License

Features

• Live IPL 2026 schedule with venue, date and team details
• Real-time points table with NRR, wins, losses and form
• Three independent live-score sources for redundancy (Sportskeeda, Crex, Cricbuzz)
• Squad lookup for every franchise by short code
• Historical winners list since IPL 2008
• Graceful error handling, every endpoint returns JSON (never crashes)
• Lightweight footprint, no database required

Note

Data is scraped on-demand from public sources. There is no caching layer, so each request hits the upstream site. For heavy production use you should add a cache (Redis, in-memory, or a CDN) in front of these endpoints.

Endpoints

Method	Route	Description
GET	/	HTML documentation page
GET	/health	Service health probe
GET	/ipl-2026-schedule	Full season fixture list
GET	/ipl-2026-points-table	Live points table
GET	/ipl-2026-live-score	Live scores from Sportskeeda
GET	/ipl-2026-live-score-s2	Live scores from Crex
GET	/ipl-2026-live-score-s3	Live scores from Cricbuzz
GET	/squad/<code>	Squad of a franchise
GET	/ipl-winners	Past IPL winners

Squad codes: mi, csk, rcb, kkr, srh, dc, pbks, rr, gt, lsg

Tip

Every live-score route also has a season-less alias (e.g. /ipl-live-score) that always points at the current season constant inside app.py.

Sample Response

GET /ipl-2026-live-score-s3

{
  "status_code": 200,
  "season": "2026",
  "source": "cricbuzz",
  "status": "Live",
  "live_count": 1,
  "matches": {
    "Match 1": {
      "status": "Live",
      "title": "Sunrisers Hyderabad vs Kolkata Knight Riders, 45th Match",
      "team_1": "Sunrisers Hyderabad",
      "score_1": "106-2 (9.2)",
      "team_2": "Kolkata Knight Riders",
      "score_2": "N.A",
      "status_text": "Sunrisers Hyderabad opt to bat"
    }
  }
}

Local Setup

Prerequisites

• Python 3.11 or newer
• pip and virtualenv

Steps

git clone https://github.com/cu-sanjay/IPL-2026-API-Free.git
cd IPL-2026-API-Free

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate          # Windows: venv\Scripts\activate

pip install -r requirements.txt

python app.py

The API will be live on http://localhost:5000.

For production-like serving locally:

gunicorn -b 0.0.0.0:5000 -w 2 -t 60 app:app

Important

Always run with gunicorn (or another WSGI server) in production. Flask's built-in dev server is single-threaded and not safe for public traffic.

Deployment Guide

This app is a standard long-running Flask service, so any platform that runs Python web workers will host it.

Render (recommended, free tier available, sleeps on inactivity)

1. Push the project to GitHub.
2. Go to render.com and click New > Web Service.
3. Connect your repo.
4. Fill in:
   • Environment: Python
   • Build Command: pip install -r requirements.txt
   • Start Command: gunicorn app:app
5. Click Create Web Service. Done.

Railway

1. Go to railway.app and create a new project from your GitHub repo.
2. Railway auto-detects Python and reads the Procfile.
3. Click Deploy.

Heroku (Not Free Anymore)

heroku login
heroku create ipl-2026-api
git push heroku main
heroku open

The included Procfile and app.json are already configured.

Fly.io

fly launch                        # answer the prompts, decline a database
fly deploy

Docker (any VPS)

Create a Dockerfile:

FROM python:3.11-slim
WORKDIR /app
COPY requirements.txt .
RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt
COPY . .
EXPOSE 5000
CMD ["gunicorn", "-b", "0.0.0.0:5000", "-w", "2", "-t", "60", "app:app"]

Then:

docker build -t ipl-2026-api .
docker run -p 5000:5000 ipl-2026-api

Vercel Deployment

Warning

Vercel is built for serverless functions, not long-running web servers. A traditional Flask + gunicorn setup will not work directly. You can still run this project on Vercel by adapting it to their Python serverless runtime.

Steps to make it Vercel-compatible

1. Create a folder called api/ in the project root.

2. Move app.py into api/index.py (or create api/index.py that imports app):

   from app import app

3. Add a vercel.json at the project root:

   {
     "version": 2,
     "builds": [
       { "src": "api/index.py", "use": "@vercel/python" }
     ],
     "routes": [
       { "src": "/(.*)", "dest": "api/index.py" }
     ]
   }

4. Push to GitHub.

5. Import the repo on vercel.com, framework preset Other.

6. Click Deploy.

Caution

Vercel free-tier serverless functions have a 10-second execution limit. Some scraped pages (especially Cricbuzz) can take longer than that under load and your endpoint will time out. For a reliable deployment, prefer Render, Railway, Fly.io or a small VPS.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a feature branch: git checkout -b feature/my-feature
3. Commit your changes: git commit -m "feat: my feature"
4. Push the branch: git push origin feature/my-feature
5. Open a Pull Request

License

Released under the MIT License.

Note

This project is for educational purposes. All cricket data belongs to its respective owners (Sportskeeda, Crex, Cricbuzz). Please respect their terms of service and add appropriate caching when using this API in production.