🏇 Racing Post Racecards Scraper

🚀 Export every runner on today's racecards in seconds. One row per horse, 58 columns: silks image, course, off time, race name, class, distance, going, prize money, then the horse with its number, draw, age, weight, jockey, trainer, owner, form figures, Official Rating, RPR, Topspeed and the Racing Post betting forecast price. A typical British and Irish day carries 6 to 9 meetings, 37 to 56 races and 370 to 940 runners, and the whole card is collected over plain HTTP on 1 GB of memory.

Racing Post is the reference publication for British and Irish horse racing. Its racecards are the version of the card that the industry actually reads: the declared field, the weights, the draw, the six most recent form figures, the Official Rating, the Racing Post Rating, the Topspeed figure and the paper's own betting forecast. This Actor reads the same JSON the racingpost.com page renders for an anonymous visitor, so the numbers match the page, and nothing is inferred from screen scraping a table.

Coverage follows the racing calendar. Cards are published for today and the days ahead, the field is declared about 48 hours before the off, and international meetings appear alongside the domestic ones: at verification time the index carried meetings in Great Britain, Ireland, France, the United States, Australia, Hong Kong and Peru.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Form analysts and racing modellers	Build a daily runner table with ratings, form figures and forecast prices
Tipping sites and racing media	Publish full cards with silks, jockeys, trainers and going without manual entry
Betting and trading desks	Feed a pricing model the declared field, weights, draw and going every morning
Bloodstock and syndicate managers	Track your horses, sires and trainers across every card in Britain and Ireland

📋 What the Racing Post Racecards Scraper does

💡 Why it matters: a British and Irish race day spreads 400 to 900 runners across six to nine meetings and dozens of separate pages, and the card changes as horses are withdrawn. Rebuilding that into a spreadsheet by hand is a morning's work every morning. This Actor returns it as one flat table in a single run, and never bills for a row it did not deliver.

• 🗓️ A whole day in one input: leave the defaults and you get every runner declared for today. Set raceDate to tomorrow or a YYYY-MM-DD date for any future card.
• 🔗 Any racecard URL: a day index (/racecards/2026-09-10/), a meeting (/racecards/15/doncaster/2026-09-10/) or a single race (/racecards/15/doncaster/2026-09-10/926640). A race URL returns only that race.
• 🏟️ The race, carried on every row: course, country, off time in ISO 8601, race name, class, age restriction, rating band, distance in furlongs and in yards, going, going detail with GoingStick and rail movements, surface, weather, winner prize, total prize money, declared runner count and the TV channel.
• 🐎 The runner: saddlecloth number, draw, age, weight in stones and pounds and in pounds, jockey with claim, trainer, owner, and links to each of their Racing Post profiles.
• 📈 The form that analysts use: the recent form figure string, the Official Rating for the day, the Racing Post Rating, the Topspeed figure, days since last run, headgear with a first-time flag and trainer recent form percentage.
• 🎯 Betting forecast: the Racing Post forecast price as the printed fraction (5/2) and as a decimal multiplier, ready for a model.
• 🧬 Breeding: colour and sex, country of origin, sire, dam and damsire.
• 🎽 Silks: the runner's silks image URL, first column, so a card renders straight out of the dataset.
• 🔁 Clean data: one runner per row, de-duplicated across sources, the same 58 columns on every row, Not Disclosed or N/A instead of blank cells, and non-runners excluded unless you ask for them.

🎬 Full Demo (🚧 Coming soon)

A short walkthrough video is in production.

📊 Output

Each row is one declared runner in one race. Fields, in dataset order:

Field	Description
imageUrl	Jockey silks image for this runner (SVG on rp-assets.com)
horseName	Horse name as printed on the card
horseUrl	Racing Post horse profile and form page
raceUrl	Racing Post racecard page for this race
raceId	Racing Post race identifier
course	Course name, for example Doncaster
countryCode	Country code of the meeting, for example GB, IRE, FR
country	Country name
raceDateTime	Scheduled off time, ISO 8601 UTC
raceDate	Race date, YYYY-MM-DD
raceTimeLocal	Off time in the meeting's local clock, for example 13:15
raceName	Full race title including sponsor
raceClass	Race class, N/A outside Britain where classes are not used
raceType	Flat, Hurdle, Chase or NH Flat
ageRestriction	Ages allowed, for example 2yo, 4yo+
ratingBand	Official rating band for handicaps, for example 0-100
distance	Race distance as printed, for example 6½f, 2m7f
distanceYards	Race distance in yards
going	Going description, for example Good To Soft
goingDetails	Full going statement with GoingStick and rail movements
surface	Turf, Polytrack, Tapeta, Beach or All-Weather
weather	Weather reported at the meeting
winnerPrize	Prize to the winner, formatted with its currency symbol
totalPrizeMoney	Sum of all advertised places, as a number
currency	Currency of the prize figures, GBP or EUR
runnerCount	Runners declared in this race
liveOn	Broadcaster showing the race, for example ITV, RTV, SKY
saddleClothNumber	Saddlecloth number
draw	Stall number, N/A in jumps races
age	Horse age in years
weight	Weight carried in stones and pounds, for example 8-11
weightLbs	Weight carried in pounds
jockey	Booked jockey
jockeyUrl	Racing Post jockey profile
jockeyClaimLbs	Weight allowance the jockey claims, 0 when none
trainer	Trainer
trainerUrl	Racing Post trainer profile
trainerFormPercent	Trainer runners to form percentage over the last 14 days
owner	Registered owner
ownerUrl	Racing Post owner profile
form	Recent form figure string, most recent run last, for example 3213
officialRating	Official Rating carried today
rpr	Racing Post Rating
topSpeed	Racing Post Topspeed figure
forecastOdds	Racing Post betting forecast price as a fraction, for example 5/2
forecastOddsDecimal	The same forecast price as a decimal multiplier
headGear	Headgear codes, for example t tongue tie, v visor, b blinkers
firstTimeHeadGear	Yes when the headgear is worn for the first time
daysSinceLastRun	Days since the horse last raced
countryOfOrigin	Country the horse was bred in
colourAndSex	Colour and sex code, for example b f, gr g
sire	Sire
dam	Dam
damSire	Damsire
comment	Racing Post race-reader comment on this runner
isNonRunner	Yes when the horse has been withdrawn
scrapedAt	When the row was collected, ISO 8601
error	null on data rows; error rows carry a message and are never charged

Three real records from a verification run:

[
  {
    "imageUrl": "https://www.rp-assets.com/svg/8/9/5/147598.svg",
    "horseName": "Speed Of Sound",
    "horseUrl": "https://www.racingpost.com/profile/horse/8688617/speed-of-sound/form",
    "raceUrl": "https://www.racingpost.com/racecards/15/doncaster/2026-09-10/926640",
    "raceId": "926640",
    "course": "Doncaster",
    "countryCode": "GB",
    "country": "United Kingdom",
    "raceDateTime": "2026-09-10T12:15:00.000Z",
    "raceDate": "2026-09-10",
    "raceTimeLocal": "13:15",
    "raceName": "British Stallion Studs 'Carrie Red' EBF Fillies' Nursery Handicap",
    "raceClass": "2",
    "raceType": "Flat",
    "ageRestriction": "2yo",
    "ratingBand": "N/A",
    "distance": "6½f",
    "distanceYards": 1431,
    "going": "Good To Soft",
    "goingDetails": "GOOD TO SOFT, Good in places (GoingStick: 6.1) (Rail Movements: 2.25 & 5.20 +19yds and 3.00 +9yds)",
    "surface": "Turf",
    "weather": "Light rain",
    "winnerPrize": "£28,347",
    "totalPrizeMoney": 54104,
    "currency": "GBP",
    "runnerCount": 12,
    "liveOn": "ITV",
    "saddleClothNumber": 4,
    "draw": 5,
    "age": 2,
    "weight": "8-11",
    "weightLbs": 123,
    "jockey": "Saffie Osborne",
    "jockeyUrl": "https://www.racingpost.com/profile/jockey/100350/saffie-osborne/",
    "jockeyClaimLbs": 0,
    "trainer": "Richard Spencer",
    "trainerUrl": "https://www.racingpost.com/profile/trainer/30665/richard-spencer/",
    "trainerFormPercent": 69,
    "owner": "Phil Cunningham",
    "ownerUrl": "https://www.racingpost.com/profile/owner/147598/phil-cunningham/",
    "form": "3213",
    "officialRating": 81,
    "rpr": 95,
    "topSpeed": 91,
    "forecastOdds": "5/2",
    "forecastOddsDecimal": 2.5,
    "headGear": "N/A",
    "firstTimeHeadGear": "No",
    "daysSinceLastRun": 21,
    "countryOfOrigin": "IRE",
    "colourAndSex": "b f",
    "sire": "Sioux Nation",
    "dam": "All Speed",
    "damSire": "Camacho",
    "comment": "Form of Yarmouth win lifted since; good 3rd in York sales race latest (6f, good to soft)",
    "isNonRunner": "No",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-09-09T18:53:43.868Z",
    "error": null
  },
  {
    "imageUrl": "https://www.rp-assets.com/svg/3/5/4/231453.svg",
    "horseName": "Art Of Life",
    "horseUrl": "https://www.racingpost.com/profile/horse/9472243/art-of-life/form",
    "raceUrl": "https://www.racingpost.com/racecards/15/doncaster/2026-09-10/926640",
    "raceId": "926640",
    "course": "Doncaster",
    "countryCode": "GB",
    "country": "United Kingdom",
    "raceDateTime": "2026-09-10T12:15:00.000Z",
    "raceDate": "2026-09-10",
    "raceTimeLocal": "13:15",
    "raceName": "British Stallion Studs 'Carrie Red' EBF Fillies' Nursery Handicap",
    "raceClass": "2",
    "raceType": "Flat",
    "ageRestriction": "2yo",
    "ratingBand": "N/A",
    "distance": "6½f",
    "distanceYards": 1431,
    "going": "Good To Soft",
    "goingDetails": "GOOD TO SOFT, Good in places (GoingStick: 6.1) (Rail Movements: 2.25 & 5.20 +19yds and 3.00 +9yds)",
    "surface": "Turf",
    "weather": "Light rain",
    "winnerPrize": "£28,347",
    "totalPrizeMoney": 54104,
    "currency": "GBP",
    "runnerCount": 12,
    "liveOn": "ITV",
    "saddleClothNumber": 2,
    "draw": 9,
    "age": 2,
    "weight": "8-12",
    "weightLbs": 124,
    "jockey": "Rossa Ryan",
    "jockeyUrl": "https://www.racingpost.com/profile/jockey/95744/rossa-ryan/",
    "jockeyClaimLbs": 0,
    "trainer": "Clive Cox",
    "trainerUrl": "https://www.racingpost.com/profile/trainer/5863/clive-cox/",
    "trainerFormPercent": 38,
    "owner": "Isa Salman Al Khalifa",
    "ownerUrl": "https://www.racingpost.com/profile/owner/231453/isa-salman-al-khalifa/",
    "form": "622",
    "officialRating": 82,
    "rpr": 87,
    "topSpeed": 73,
    "forecastOdds": "4/1",
    "forecastOddsDecimal": 4,
    "headGear": "N/A",
    "firstTimeHeadGear": "No",
    "daysSinceLastRun": 27,
    "countryOfOrigin": "GB",
    "colourAndSex": "b f",
    "sire": "Palace Pier",
    "dam": "Musical Art",
    "damSire": "Dutch Art",
    "comment": "All races on good to firm; pulled hard but kept tabs on winner over 7f latest; improve",
    "isNonRunner": "No",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-09-09T18:53:43.878Z",
    "error": null
  },
  {
    "imageUrl": "https://www.rp-assets.com/svg/b/0/7/267270b.svg",
    "horseName": "Wondervision",
    "horseUrl": "https://www.racingpost.com/profile/horse/8881440/wondervision/form",
    "raceUrl": "https://www.racingpost.com/racecards/15/doncaster/2026-09-10/926640",
    "raceId": "926640",
    "course": "Doncaster",
    "countryCode": "GB",
    "country": "United Kingdom",
    "raceDateTime": "2026-09-10T12:15:00.000Z",
    "raceDate": "2026-09-10",
    "raceTimeLocal": "13:15",
    "raceName": "British Stallion Studs 'Carrie Red' EBF Fillies' Nursery Handicap",
    "raceClass": "2",
    "raceType": "Flat",
    "ageRestriction": "2yo",
    "ratingBand": "N/A",
    "distance": "6½f",
    "distanceYards": 1431,
    "going": "Good To Soft",
    "goingDetails": "GOOD TO SOFT, Good in places (GoingStick: 6.1) (Rail Movements: 2.25 & 5.20 +19yds and 3.00 +9yds)",
    "surface": "Turf",
    "weather": "Light rain",
    "winnerPrize": "£28,347",
    "totalPrizeMoney": 54104,
    "currency": "GBP",
    "runnerCount": 12,
    "liveOn": "ITV",
    "saddleClothNumber": 11,
    "draw": 2,
    "age": 2,
    "weight": "8-2",
    "weightLbs": 114,
    "jockey": "Nicola Currie",
    "jockeyUrl": "https://www.racingpost.com/profile/jockey/92938/nicola-currie/",
    "jockeyClaimLbs": 0,
    "trainer": "Jack Channon",
    "trainerUrl": "https://www.racingpost.com/profile/trainer/40161/jack-channon/",
    "trainerFormPercent": 41,
    "owner": "Bramble Syndicate",
    "ownerUrl": "https://www.racingpost.com/profile/owner/267270/bramble-syndicate/",
    "form": "331",
    "officialRating": 72,
    "rpr": 95,
    "topSpeed": 86,
    "forecastOdds": "11/2",
    "forecastOddsDecimal": 5.5,
    "headGear": "N/A",
    "firstTimeHeadGear": "No",
    "daysSinceLastRun": 24,
    "countryOfOrigin": "IRE",
    "colourAndSex": "b f",
    "sire": "Minzaal",
    "dam": "Wonderworld",
    "damSire": "Sea The Moon",
    "comment": "Overcame some trouble in running to win handicap debut over 6f on AW; can progress",
    "isNonRunner": "No",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-09-09T18:53:43.880Z",
    "error": null
  }
]

✨ Why choose this Actor

	What you get
Racing Post's own numbers	Official Rating, RPR, Topspeed, form figures, weights and the betting forecast come from the JSON the page renders, not from parsing a rendered table.
The grain form analysis needs	One row per runner, with the race repeated on every row, so a CSV opens straight into a pivot table or a model.
Silks in the first column	Every row carries the runner's silks image URL, so you can render a card without a second lookup.
The going, in full	Not just Good To Soft but the whole going statement with GoingStick reading and rail movements, which is what actually moves a time.
Fractions and decimals	The forecast price is given both as the printed fraction and as a decimal multiplier, so no parsing on your side.
58 columns, one shape	Every row has the same keys in the same order, so CSV imports, joins and Excel filters behave.
No blanks, no nulls	A value Racing Post withholds is Not Disclosed; a value that does not apply, such as a draw in a chase, is N/A. Never an empty cell.
Fast and cheap	HTTP only, 1 GB of memory, no proxy needed, no browser to warm up. One request per meeting returns the whole card.

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Feature	This Actor	Typical racecard scrapers	By hand
Fields per runner	58	10 to 20	Whatever you copy
Official Rating, RPR and Topspeed	All three	Usually the Official Rating only	Three columns to transcribe
Betting forecast price	Fraction and decimal	Sometimes	Yes
Full going statement with GoingStick	Yes	Rarely	Yes
Silks image URL	Yes	Rarely	No
Pedigree (sire, dam, damsire)	Yes	Rarely	Behind a click
International meetings	GB, IRE, FR, USA, AUS, HK and more	Usually GB and IRE only	Page by page
Requests per meeting	1	1 per race	1 per race
Memory and speed	1 GB, no proxy, no browser	2 to 4 GB with a browser	Hours
Subscriber-only Spotlight, Postdata and Verdict	Not included, and said so plainly	Sometimes promised, rarely delivered	Needs a subscription

🚀 How to use

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the Racing Post Racecards Scraper.
3. Keep the defaults for today's full card, or set a date, paste a meeting or race URL, add filters, choose Max Items and click Start.
4. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML from the Storage tab, or read it through the API.

Every runner on tomorrow's cards:

{
  "raceDate": "tomorrow",
  "maxItems": 1000
}

British and Irish jumps runners only, for a named day:

{
  "raceDate": "2026-09-11",
  "maxItems": 5000,
  "countryCodes": ["GB", "IRE"],
  "raceType": "jumps"
}

A single race, including any withdrawn horses:

{
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.racingpost.com/racecards/15/doncaster/2026-09-10/926640" }],
  "maxItems": 50,
  "includeNonRunners": true
}

Free-plan runs return up to 10 runners as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 rows per run.

💼 Business use cases

📊 Daily form table. A modeller runs the Actor every morning for today and tomorrow, joins officialRating, rpr, topSpeed, form and weightLbs onto a horse key, and refits a speed model before the first race.

🎯 Price your own book. A trading desk compares forecastOddsDecimal against its own model line for every runner on the card, and flags the races where the two disagree most.

📰 Publish full cards. A racing site renders every meeting from one dataset: silks, saddlecloth number, draw, jockey, trainer, weights and the race-reader comment, with the going and the prize money in the header.

🐴 Track a stable or a sire. A bloodstock analyst filters rows by trainer, owner or sire across every card in Britain and Ireland, and gets an alert the day a horse is declared.

🌱 Going and draw research. An analyst collects goingDetails, surface, draw and distanceYards over a season to measure how much the draw is worth at each course on each going.

🔌 Automating Racing Post Racecards Scraper

Racecards change every day, so schedule the run rather than starting it by hand.

• Schedule: set a daily schedule for 07:00 with raceDate left at today, and a second one the evening before with tomorrow if you want the field as soon as it is declared.
• Webhooks: fire a webhook on ACTOR.RUN.SUCCEEDED to push the dataset into your warehouse or into a Google Sheet.
• API: call run-sync-get-dataset-items for a one-shot pull straight into a script.
• Integrations: the dataset is available to Make, Zapier, Airbyte, n8n and LangChain from the Actor page.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

🏆 Syndicate mornings. A syndicate manager sends members a table of the day's runners, silks and all, the moment the field is declared.

📚 Teaching form reading. A tutor uses form, officialRating and comment side by side to show what each figure is actually telling you.

🎲 Friendly office sweepstakes. A sweepstake organiser pulls the runners for a big race, complete with silks and forecast prices, and prints the slips.

📈 Learning data science. A student uses a season of racecards as a clean, well-shaped tabular dataset with real categorical and numeric features.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Paste this into ChatGPT, Claude or any assistant that can browse:

I want to collect British and Irish horse racing racecards as structured data. Explain how the Apify Actor parseforge/racing-post-racecards-scraper works, what each of its 58 output fields means, and write me a Python script that calls it through the Apify API for tomorrow's cards and loads the result into a pandas DataFrame.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🗓️ Which dates can I scrape?

Today and any future date that Racing Post has published. Past dates return no racecards, because a finished race moves to the results section of the site.

⏱️ How far ahead are runners available?

Racing Post lists the meetings and race titles weeks ahead, but the field is declared roughly 48 hours before the off. Ask for a date further out and you will see the meetings listed with no runners yet.

🔗 Which Racing Post URLs can I paste?

A day index such as /racecards/2026-09-10/, a meeting such as /racecards/15/doncaster/2026-09-10/, or a single race such as /racecards/15/doncaster/2026-09-10/926640. A race URL returns only the runners in that race.

🎯 Are these live bookmaker odds?

No. forecastOdds is the Racing Post betting forecast, the paper's own prediction of the starting price, and it is what the racecard publishes. Live bookmaker prices arrive on the site over a websocket feed and are not part of this dataset.

🔒 Does this include Spotlight, Postdata, Verdict or the tips?

No. Those are Racing Post Members' Club content and are empty for an anonymous visitor, so the Actor does not include them. The shorter race-reader comment in the comment field is public and is included, as are the Official Rating, RPR and Topspeed figures.

🏁 Does it return results, finishing positions or starting prices?

No. This Actor covers racecards, meaning the runners declared before a race. Results live on a separate part of the site with a different shape.

🚪 Why is draw sometimes N/A?

Jumps races have no starting stalls, so there is no draw. The field is N/A there rather than 0, which would look like a real stall number.

⚠️ What is the difference between Not Disclosed and N/A?

Not Disclosed means Racing Post withholds a value it would normally publish. N/A means the field does not apply to that runner or race, such as a draw in a chase or a race class outside Britain.

🌍 Which countries are covered?

Whatever Racing Post lists that day. Britain and Ireland always, and at verification time also France, the United States, Australia, Hong Kong and Peru. Use the country filter to narrow it, or leave it empty for everything.

🚫 Are withdrawn horses included?

Not by default, so every row is a horse still expected to run. Switch on Include non-runners and withdrawn horses come back with isNonRunner set to Yes.

🛡️ Do I need a proxy?

No. Racing Post answers plain HTTP from Apify's datacenter egress and the proxy input is off by default. If you run very large volumes you can switch Apify Proxy on from the input.

🔐 Do I need an API key or a Racing Post account?

No. Only public pages are read, exactly as an anonymous visitor sees them.

📦 How many runners can I collect?

Free-plan runs return 10 rows as a preview. Paid plans go up to 1,000,000 rows per run, which is far more than a single day of racing carries.

⏰ Can I run this on a schedule?

Yes. A daily schedule at 07:00 with raceDate set to today keeps a warehouse current, and an evening run with tomorrow catches the field as soon as it is declared.

📄 What output formats are supported?

CSV, Excel, JSON, XML, JSONL and RSS, from the Storage tab or through the API.

❌ What happens when a request fails?

The Actor retries up to five times with a backoff. If a source still does not answer, it writes one error row naming the source and continues; error rows are never charged.

🔌 Integrate with any app

The dataset is available through the Apify API the moment the run finishes. Use the run-sync-get-dataset-items endpoint for one-shot calls, webhooks to trigger downstream jobs, or the Make, Zapier, Airbyte and LangChain integrations listed on the Actor page.

🔗 Recommended Actors

• Sporting Life Scraper
• Racing TV Racecards Scraper
• Equibase Scraper
• SportyTrader Scraper

---

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form with your run ID, your input and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer: This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Racing Post or Racing Post Ltd. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the data in compliance with Racing Post's terms of use and applicable data-protection laws.