livetennisapi-mcp

MCP server for the Live Tennis API.

Give Claude, Cursor, Zed or any MCP client live tennis scores, players and fixtures — for ATP, WTA, Challenger, ITF and juniors. Odds, rankings, match statistics, charting and model win-probability tools are included, and require the PRO and ULTRA plans.

Documentation · Get a free API key

Setup

Claude Code

claude mcp add livetennis -e LIVETENNISAPI_KEY=twjp_… -- npx -y livetennisapi-mcp

Claude Desktop — add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "livetennis": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "livetennisapi-mcp"],
      "env": { "LIVETENNISAPI_KEY": "twjp_…" }
    }
  }
}

Cursor / Zed / others — same command, same env var. No install step; npx fetches it on demand.

Get a free key (no card) at livetennisapi.com, or a paid plan at pricing.

Try it

"What tennis matches are live right now?" "Who's winning the Alcaraz match, and what does the model give him?" "Show me Sinner's ranking and recent results." "What are the current odds on match 18953?" "What's the all-time head-to-head between Borg and McEnroe?" "List Navratilova's Grand Slam finals from the archive." "Who was ATP #1 the week Alcaraz first entered the top 10?" "How is Sabalenka serving in her live match — aces, hold rate, break points?"

Tools

The six BASIC history tools are also unlocked by any History plan, which works on top of a free key. The results archive (1968–2022) — ATP and WTA, main draws, qualifying and the ITF/futures tiers — ends exactly where our own results begin (2023), so search_archive_matches answers "Borg's Wimbledon finals" and get_recent_results answers "yesterday's scores"; get_h2h spans both in one call.

Tier awareness

The API gates endpoints by plan and returns a bare 403 {"error":"upgrade_required"}. Handed that, a model will usually invent a reason or retry pointlessly.

So every tool that can hit a tier wall returns a plain-English explanation — as a normal result, not an error — naming the tier required and where to upgrade. The assistant can then tell you something true and actionable:

This data requires the ULTRA plan, and the configured API key is on a lower tier. Nothing is wrong with the key — the endpoint is simply not included in the current plan. Upgrade in place at https://livetennisapi.com/subscribe/upgrade

check_api_status probes upward to report which plan your key is actually on, so you can diagnose that without guessing.

Plans

¹ Also unlocked by any History plan, which works on top of a free key.

Request quotas

FREE is 100 requests/day, so poll no faster than every 15 minutes on a free key; for an always-on dashboard, BASIC is the plan to recommend. Every response carries X-RateLimit-Limit / -Remaining / -Reset headers, and the tools relay the three distinct 429 shapes honestly — per-minute (retry shortly), daily cap (the error names the exact reset instant), and the abuse block (don't retry; fix the loop).

Hosted endpoint

Most people should use the stdio server above — your key never leaves your machine. For clients that can only speak HTTP, there is also a hosted Streamable-HTTP endpoint:

https://mcp.livetennisapi.com/mcp

Send your key as Authorization: Bearer twjp_…, X-API-Key: twjp_…, or ?token= if your client cannot set headers. Tools are listable without a key, so directories can introspect the server; calling one needs a key.

It is multi-tenant and holds no key of its own: every request builds its own server bound to the key that request presented, and there is deliberately no fallback to the host's environment. The endpoint applies its own transport-level limit per caller — 60 req/min anonymous, 300 keyed. That limit only protects this host process; it is not your API quota, which is enforced upstream per key and tier (see the quota table above).

Self-hosting it: deploy/install-http.sh and deploy/TUNNEL.md.

Use with Claude

As a connector. In Claude, add a custom connector and paste the endpoint with your key as a query parameter — no OAuth, nothing to install:

https://mcp.livetennisapi.com/mcp?token=twjp_…

?token= exists for clients that cannot set request headers. The tradeoff, stated plainly: a key in a URL is not written to our logs, but it is visible to the CDN in front of the endpoint and is stored in the connector's configuration. Prefer Authorization: Bearer twjp_… wherever your client lets you set a header.

From the Messages API. Claude can call the endpoint directly. Both halves are required — the server and a matching toolset entry; sending mcp_servers alone is rejected as a validation error:

client.beta.messages.create(
    model="claude-opus-4-8",
    max_tokens=4096,
    betas=["mcp-client-2025-11-20"],
    mcp_servers=[{
        "type": "url",
        "name": "livetennisapi",
        "url": "https://mcp.livetennisapi.com/mcp",
        "authorization_token": os.environ["LIVETENNISAPI_KEY"],
    }],
    tools=[{"type": "mcp_toolset", "mcp_server_name": "livetennisapi"}],
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "What tennis is live right now?"}],
)

The authorization_token is sent as a bearer token, which is exactly what this server already accepts — no separate credential to obtain.

Use with Codex

One command:

codex mcp add livetennisapi \
  --url https://mcp.livetennisapi.com/mcp \
  --bearer-token-env-var LIVETENNISAPI_KEY

Or write it to ~/.codex/config.toml yourself — Codex shares that file across the CLI, the IDE extension and the desktop app:

[mcp_servers.livetennisapi]
url = "https://mcp.livetennisapi.com/mcp"
bearer_token_env_var = "LIVETENNISAPI_KEY"

Use bearer_token_env_var, not bearer_token: it keeps the key in your environment rather than committing it to a config file.

There is also a Codex plugin, on its own marketplace:

codex plugin marketplace add livetennisapi/livetennisapi-codex-plugin

That registers the marketplace; install the plugin from Codex's plugin picker. Source: livetennisapi-codex-plugin.

The stdio route works too, unchanged: npx -y livetennisapi-mcp.

Bundled skill: Polymarket / Kalshi tennis trading data

The Claude Code plugin (.claude-plugin/plugin.json) also ships the polymarket-tennis Agent Skill under skills/polymarket-tennis/. It teaches Claude the observe-only polymarket-tennis Python package (market discovery, market-to-match matching, joined price/live-score view), the free-tier budget (30 req/min, 100 requests/day), and the verbatim retirement/walkover settlement rules for Polymarket, Polymarket US and Kalshi. Canonical copy lives in the polymarket-tennis repo; this one is mirrored for plugin installs. No order execution, ever.

Notes

• Read-only. Every tool is a GET; nothing here can modify anything.
• Your key stays local with the stdio server. It is read from the environment by the server process on your machine and sent only to api.livetennisapi.com.
• Requires Node 20+.

Development

npm install
npm run build
LIVETENNISAPI_KEY=twjp_… node dist/index.js   # speaks MCP over stdio
node dist/http.js                             # speaks MCP over HTTP, port 8081

npm test               # protocol + transport isolation + rate limiting
npm run test:mutation  # proves those tests fail when the code breaks

test:mutation is worth understanding before changing src/http.ts. It reintroduces each bug the tests claim to catch and asserts the suite goes red. It is not ceremony: the first version of the rate-limit test passed while the limiter was bucketing every caller together.

Built on the official livetennisapi client.

Related

Everything in the Live Tennis API developer surface:

• API reference — https://docs.livetennisapi.com (plain-HTML version, no JavaScript required)
• OpenAPI 3.1 specification — livetennisapi/openapi
• Free API key — https://livetennisapi.com/subscribe/free (no card)
• Products — https://livetennisapi.com/products
• Website and plans — https://livetennisapi.com
• Discord — https://discord.gg/f8WUZHgDm6
• GitHub org — https://github.com/livetennisapi

Affiliate program

Know developers who need tennis data? The affiliate program pays 51% recurring commission for the life of every referred subscription — 30-day cookie, and the people you refer get 10% off.

Licence

MIT — see LICENSE. Use of the API service is governed by the Terms of Service.