Stats & analytics for sports betting

Why a football stats site helps more than watching

You cannot watch forty matches in a weekend. A stats site records all of them and keeps every record.

After one match you remember how a team looked. A stats site can tell you how often that team scores, how often it concedes, and how often it keeps a clean sheet across ten matches. A side that played badly last week may still have taken twelve points from its last six games. A side that looked dangerous may have scored in only half of its home matches.

Statistics do not tell you who will win. They tell you what usually happens, which you can then compare with the price the bookmaker offers.

Which football statistics matter for betting

Six things cover most bets.

• Form over the last five to ten matches, not the whole season. A squad in December is not the squad from August.

• The home and away split. A team can take two thirds of its points at home and still finish mid-table, and you are betting on one ground.

• Goals scored and conceded per game. For a total, take the goals the home side scores per game and the goals the away side concedes per game, and average those two numbers. Do the same for the other direction, then add the two results.

• Clean sheet and both teams to score rates. These two answer the most popular markets directly.

• Expected goals, or xG. The metric gives every shot a value between 0 and 1, based on how often similar shots are scored. A shot from close range with the goalkeeper beaten may be worth about 0.7, while a shot from thirty metres may be worth about 0.03. A team's xG for a match is the total of its shot values, so it shows chance quality instead of luck.

• Head to head, used with care. A meeting from three seasons ago involved different players and often a different manager.

For card markets, use fouls and cards per minute played rather than per match. A per-match count treats a substitute who played twelve minutes the same as a defender who played ninety.

Corners are the weak spot of the free sites. Live apps show the corner count during a match, and season averages for corners are harder to find for free than goals or cards.

A number on its own is not a bet. Turn your percentage into a price with an odds converter, then compare it with what the bookmaker charges.

Which football stats site has which numbers

No single site holds everything, and the free picture changed in January 2026 when FBref lost its advanced data. Many stats guides have not caught up.

• FBref. Free, no account, more than 100 men's and women's competitions in about 45 countries. Results, tables, home and away points splits, goals per game, clean sheets, shots and shots on target, cards, fouls, penalties, referees, and a deep archive. Four match log types are left: scores and fixtures, shooting, goalkeeping and miscellaneous. It no longer has xG.

• Understat. Free, no account, expected goals for six leagues: the Premier League, La Liga, the Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and the Russian Premier League. Seasons run back to 2014/15. It also has shot maps, xG against, expected points, home and away splits and a file export.

• SofaScore, FotMob and Flashscore. Live match numbers on a phone: shot maps, heatmaps, player ratings and match momentum. Each runs its own xG model.

• Soccerway. Results and fixture history across a very wide range of leagues.

• WhoScored and FootyStats. WhoScored is known for player ratings and detailed match statistics. FootyStats collects season rates for markets such as both teams to score. We have not tested either one yet, so this page states no figures for them, and reviews are planned.

Head to head data has a free home that most guides never mention. FBref keeps a Records vs Opponents page for every club and a separate page for each pair of clubs, and the links sit next to the fixtures on its daily matches page. Those pages are built from results, so they were not touched in January.

One rule covers every site here. Two sites can give the same shot a different xG value, because each model is built on different data. Pick one source for each number and stay with it.

Replacing what FBref lost

FBref lost expected goals, expected assists, progressive passes and carries, pressure counts and the percentile scouting reports. No free site replaces all of that at once. Understat covers expected goals for six leagues, SofaScore and FotMob cover it during a match, and three things have no free replacement at all: chance quality in small leagues, the scouting reports, and the women's game. Our full comparison of the FBref alternatives covers what each site holds, which leagues it reaches and what the paid options sell.

Free football stats sites and paid tools

For most bettors the free sites are enough. The leagues where the most money is bet are the leagues that are covered best, and none of the sites above asks for a card.

Stathead is the search tool for the Sports Reference family, which is FBref plus four American sports sites. One sport costs $9 a month or $80 a year, and all five cost $16 a month or $160 a year. The first month is free. Since January 2026 it can only search basic statistics, because the advanced data left FBref and Stathead at the same time.

A search tool is worth the money if you run the same query every week. An example: every away team that has failed to score in three straight matches. It is not worth the money if you expect numbers that the free sites hide, because they do not hide any.

Some paid products put hit rates and live odds on one screen. That saves time, and the data behind them is usually the same data the free sites publish.

Common mistakes with betting stats

Five mistakes cost more than any missing metric.

• A sample that is too small. About ten matches is a usable minimum, and splitting home from away halves the sample again.

• Too many metrics. A page with ninety numbers will always hold one that supports the bet you already wanted.

• Old data. Team news arrives a few hours before kick-off and moves prices more than any season average. No stats page carries an injury that was announced twenty minutes ago.

• Mixed sources, which is the xG problem above.

• A number read without a price. A team that scores in 80% of its home games is not a bet until you see what the bookmaker charges for it.

Stats sites for tennis, basketball and other sports

This section is not football only. SofaScore and Flashscore cover tennis, basketball, ice hockey and more than twenty other sports. FotMob and Understat are football only.

Three habits carry across every sport: use recent form rather than the season average, split home from away, and keep the sample above ten events. The metrics themselves do not carry. Expected goals is a football model. Tennis is read through first serve percentage, points won on serve and break points saved. Basketball is read through pace and points per possession, because a fast team can score more without playing better.

How to pick a stats site for the way you bet

If you bet on the big European leagues and want chance quality, start with Understat. If you bet on smaller leagues, FBref is the only free source with that reach. If you bet during a match, a live app is the tool, not a database. If you build your own model, look for downloadable tables instead of a smart interface.

Two sites are usually enough: one for research before the match and one for live data. A third site normally adds a second opinion rather than new information.

What we have reviewed in this section

Every service in this section is opened and used before we write about it. Prices are taken from the service itself, not from another review. When a tool has lost a feature, we say so instead of repeating an old description.

The expected goals guide is the place to start if the term is new to you. The FBref review covers what the site is still the best free source for, including the head to head pages. Understat, SofaScore, WhoScored and FootyStats are next.