Transfermarkt's terms forbid its users to access or copy its content with bots, spiders, screen scraping or other automated processes. They also forbid using it to train AI. Its robots.txt lets crawlers in, but that file is not a permission. The site offers free RSS news feeds, and on the pages we read it offers no API. A proxy does not change what the terms allow.
What Transfermarkt's terms say
The terms of use cover transfermarkt.de "as well as all other country coded websites containing a 'Transfermarkt' URL". They print no date. The English copy that Common Crawl saved on September 14, 2026, matches the live page we read on October 4, 2026, from the heading through section 11.1.
| rule | what the terms say |
|---|---|
| scraping | "The User is not permitted to access or copy the Digital Content using bots, spiders, screen scraping or other automated processes." (11.1) |
| AI training | The user may not use the content "for the training or development of artificial intelligence (AI), including language models, machine learning, neural networks or other AI systems". (11.1) |
| text and data mining | "Uses for text and data mining (Section 44b UrhG) are expressly reserved." (11.1) |
| databases | All rights to the site's "databases, and all material related to Transfermarkt reside exclusively with Transfermarkt". Programs and their contents may be used only "for the purposes stated in their license agreements". (3.2) |
| breaches | The site may "limit your user rights, issue a warning or ban your account temporarily or permanently". (5.1) |
What robots.txt says
The robots.txt file of Transfermarkt was last modified on October 1, 2026. It has four groups:
| crawler | what the file says |
|---|---|
| wget | "Disallow: /", so the whole site is closed |
| Slurp | "Crawl-delay: 2", so it is asked to wait two seconds between requests |
| Mediapartners-Google | an empty "Disallow:", so nothing is closed |
| every other crawler | "Allow: /", so every path is open |
| What the file says | |
|---|---|
| wget | Disallow: /, the whole site is closed |
| Slurp | Crawl-delay: 2, wait two seconds between requests |
| Mediapartners-Google | an empty Disallow, nothing is closed |
| Every other crawler | Allow: /, every path is open |
It names no AI crawler. The standard behind the file, RFC 9309, says its rules "are not a form of access authorization". So an open robots.txt is no permission to scrape, and section 11.1 still applies.
What the site did when our server asked
Our server in the United States asked for the home page, the terms page and the RSS feed on October 4, 2026. Each answered HTTP 202 with an empty page and the header "x-amzn-waf-action: challenge". The robots.txt file answered normally.
AWS documents this as the Challenge action of its web firewall, where the client has to show that it is a browser "and not a bot". AWS sends its JavaScript check only to a request that asks for an HTML page. Ours did not, so each page came back empty. We did not run the check.
Is there a Transfermarkt API?
Not on the pages we read. The terms, the FAQ, the RSS guide and the site footer name no API and offer no data license. The FAQ's questions about the data are about corrections, not reuse. The results titled "Transfermarkt API" in our searches were scraping services run by others.
What the site does offer is free RSS news feeds for ten of its country sites, such as transfermarkt.co.uk/rss/news. Its guide says each item brings the headline, the text and a link to the full news, and you can subscribe "directly in your browser or via your email client".
For questions, the terms and the FAQ give info@transfermarkt.de, for revoking a registration and for sending photos and club crests. No page we read names an address for data requests.
The pages that rank
The pages that rank for "transfermarkt scraper" include open source scrapers, scraper marketplaces, an R package, and the landing pages of scraping and proxy services. Several promise CAPTCHA solving, rotating fingerprints or residential IPs against blocks. None of the pages we read quotes section 11.1, and the three that mention the site's terms leave them to the user.
Where a proxy fits
For collecting Transfermarkt data, a proxy does not fit. Section 11.1 forbids bots, spiders and screen scraping, and a proxy only changes the address a request comes from. For the news, the free RSS feeds can be read in a browser or an email client, as the site describes.
For other work where a proxy is allowed, what a residential proxy is explains the type. How to check if a proxy is working shows how to test one. Residential traffic without city targeting starts at $0.44/GB, and every plan is on our pricing page.
The limits of this page
We read the terms, the FAQ and the RSS guide in Common Crawl's copies of September 14, 2026, because our server got the bot check. We compared that copy once with the live terms, from a home connection on October 4, 2026, and they read the same. We did not register, run the check, or collect any data. The terms print no date. This page is due for a check by January 4, 2027.
Sources
Every page below was read on October 4, 2026.
- Transfermarkt, Terms of Use, sections 3.2, 5.1 and 11.1, live from a home connection in Germany and in Common Crawl's copy of September 14, 2026.
- Transfermarkt, the "FAQ" and "RSS feeds" pages, in Common Crawl's copies of September 14, 2026.
- The robots.txt file of transfermarkt.com, last modified October 1, 2026, read from our server in the United States.
- IETF, RFC 9309: Robots Exclusion Protocol, September 2022.
- AWS WAF Developer Guide, CAPTCHA and Challenge action behavior.
- Our requests from our server in the United States on October 4, 2026, and one read of the live terms from a home connection in Germany, to compare them with the copy.
