Caveat Emptor

I have recently discovered that Betfair now charges anyone attempting to create a live AppKey for the first time as of 10th May 2016. Anyone creating the live and delayed AppKey from now on will see a disabled live key for which there is a £299 charge to enable it. If you do not pay the fee then your data will be delayed for upto 60 seconds but betting operations are live. At least you only have to pay the fee once unlike third-party software where the recurring monthly fee will eventually be greater than £299.

Supposedly the fee is to to stop unlicensed commercial use. However, the AppKey you are buying is used to indentify users so rogue users can simply have their access blocked when they try to login with their AppKey.

To summarise...

a) As of 10th May 2016 you will have to pay a £299 fee to access live data through API-NG.

b) Betting operations can be accessed live with a delayed key.

c) Althought the lastpricematched returned by the delayed key might be upto 60 seconds old it will have a timestamp.

For those of us who had created AppKeys before the introduction of the fee or who have paid the activation fee we have have access to two keys; a live one and a delayed one. The live AppKey allows us to use API-NG as normal. The delayed AppKey is for testing purposes; you can place bets in realtime but the data you are receiving can be up to 60 seconds old. New accounts will only get access to the delayed AppKey and will have to pay for the live AppKey.

Here is the official reason for the charge

We have recently introduced an application process for new customers who'd like to use the Betfair API for betting. This is to prevent unlicensed commercial use of the API.

The application process does not affect active customers who are currently using the API (personal customers or Vendors), nor will there be any retrospective charge applied to active customers.

New customers who create a new Application Key are able to use the API with a Delayed Key (which by default now allows betting operations for new API customers) but need to apply and be approved for Live App Key API access before paying the £299 one off fee.

The Delayed App Key has always been intended for use by customers for development purpose and functional testing.