The LSE Directory / Data providers
ExchangeRate-API is a foreign exchange rate data service built around a single REST/JSON endpoint for currency conversion. It returns a latest-rates response from a chosen base currency to all supported currency codes, a direct pair-conversion endpoint that also accepts an amount to convert, an enriched endpoint that adds localisation data such as currency names, symbols and country flags, and a historical rates endpoint that the company says reaches back as far as 1990 for some currency pairs. It covers 161 to 165 currencies across roughly 200 countries, blending rates from multiple central banks and commercial sources with a stated minimum of three sources per currency before a rate is published. The service targets developers and small to mid-size teams rather than institutional FX desks: SaaS platforms, e-commerce stores, dashboards and spreadsheet users who need localized pricing or simple conversion rather than tick-level market data. Its stated differentiators against other currency-API vendors are a free tier that still includes some historical access (most competitors reserve history for paid plans), a policy of never deprecating existing endpoints, and infrastructure run across multiple AWS availability zones, which the company reports delivered over 99.99 percent uptime in 2024 as measured by Pingdom. Paid tiers step up primarily on request volume and refresh frequency: a Free plan (1,500 requests per month, daily updates), a Pro plan at 10 USD per month or 100 USD per year (30,000 requests per month, hourly updates, historical data), and a Business plan at 30 USD per month or 300 USD per year (125,000 requests per month, five-minute updates, priority support). The service has operated continuously since 2010. It is owned and operated by AYR Tech (Pty) Ltd, a company incorporated in the Republic of South Africa (registration 2014/090625/07) and based at 183 Albion Springs, Rondebosch, Cape Town, 7700, South Africa; its terms of service state the agreement is governed by South African law with disputes resolved in South African courts. The company describes its customer base as tens of thousands of developers and cites Zoho, Alibaba, Mastercard, Salesforce, Accenture, PWC, Anker and FastSpring among its users, alongside more than 100,000 users on its free tier, and says it now serves hundreds of millions of API requests per month. Independent listings such as Capterra categorise it under currency exchange software with a full five-point rating band, though without a visible volume of published user reviews, and trade-press comparisons of currency APIs published in 2026 continue to position it as a low-friction, reliable option for basic conversion and localisation use cases rather than as a rates source for professional trading or treasury workflows.
