exchangerate-api.com Review, Pricing & Features

ExchangeRate-API provides currency conversion data for 165 currencies via a simple REST API, with a free plan and paid tiers starting at $10/month.

Category
Finance
Pricing
Freemium, from Free
Verified
Not yet
Last updated
July 20, 2026
Founded
2010
Free PlanAPIFreemium

What Is exchangerate-api.com?

ExchangeRate-API is a currency data provider that supplies live and historical foreign exchange rates through a JSON-based REST API. Founded in 2010, it's built by AYR Tech (Pty) Ltd and has grown into one of the more widely used currency conversion APIs, with the company citing more than 100,000 developers on its free plan alone.

The API returns rates for 165 currencies across around 200 countries, and the company blends data from a minimum of three independent sources per currency to reduce the risk of a single feed being wrong or unavailable. It also offers over 30 years of historical exchange rate data, supporting use cases like financial reporting and backtesting.

Key Features

ExchangeRate-API is built on fault-tolerant infrastructure spread across multiple AWS availability zones, and the company reports over 99.99 percent uptime as measured by Pingdom in 2024. It commits to long-term API stability, stating it avoids breaking changes to legacy endpoints so integrations built years ago should continue to work.

Multi-source data blending is a differentiator versus single-feed competitors, since it reduces the chance that a bad data point from one exchange feeds directly into a customer's application. The company also lists enterprise-scale customers such as Mastercard, Salesforce, Zoho, and Alibaba as users of its paid plans, which lends credibility to its reliability claims at scale.

exchangerate-api.com Pricing

The free plan includes 1,500 API requests per month with rates updated once daily, enough for low-traffic apps, prototypes, or personal projects. The Pro plan costs 10 dollars per month, or 100 dollars billed annually, and increases the allowance to 30,000 requests per month with hourly rate updates.

The Business plan costs 30 dollars per month, or 300 dollars annually, and raises the limit further to 125,000 requests per month with rates refreshed every 5 minutes, suited to applications where near-real-time currency data matters. All paid tiers are priced in US dollars with a straightforward monthly-or-annual billing choice.

Key Features

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Genuinely usable free tier with 1,500 requests per month
  • Long operating history since 2010 with a stated commitment to endpoint stability
  • Multi-source data blending reduces reliance on a single feed
  • Reasonably priced paid tiers compared to some competitors
  • Used by large, recognizable companies, supporting reliability claims

Cons

  • Free plan only updates rates once daily, unsuitable for time-sensitive use cases
  • Highest update frequency (5-minute) is reserved for the more expensive Business plan
  • Company headquarters location isn't publicly disclosed
  • No mobile SDKs advertised beyond the core REST API

Pricing

Frequently Asked Questions

Is ExchangeRate-API free to use?

Yes, the free plan includes 1,500 requests per month with daily rate updates and no cost.

How much does the paid plan cost?

The Pro plan is 10 dollars per month (or 100 dollars annually) for 30,000 requests with hourly updates, and the Business plan is 30 dollars per month (or 300 dollars annually) for 125,000 requests updated every 5 minutes.

How many currencies are supported?

The API covers 165 currencies across roughly 200 countries.

How is the data sourced?

The company blends data from a minimum of three independent sources per currency to reduce reliance on any single feed.

Does it provide historical exchange rates?

Yes, it offers more than 30 years of historical rate data.

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