The LSE Directory / Data providers
Open Exchange Rates operates a JSON/REST API that delivers live and historical foreign exchange rates for more than 200 world and digital currencies, plus precious metals and Bitcoin. Core endpoints cover latest rates, a historical rates archive going back to 1 January 1999, currency conversion, and time series queries; rates refresh as often as every few minutes on paid tiers. Rather than sourcing prices directly from a single exchange or bank, the company blends quotes algorithmically from multiple third party providers with public facing APIs (its Bitcoin rate is drawn from the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index), publishing the result as a lightweight, self serve API aimed at developers rather than trading desks. Its niche is developer first simplicity rather than institutional grade FX execution data: no long term contracts, a free tier capped at 1,000 requests a month, and paid plans priced by request volume and update frequency, from $12 a month for 10,000 requests with hourly updates up to $97 a month for unlimited requests with 5 minute updates, plus a custom VIP tier with rates refreshed as often as every second, bid ask pricing and OHLC prices for higher touch customers. This positions it between consumer facing conversion widgets and heavier institutional FX data vendors: it is used mainly to power multi currency features inside e-commerce, accounting, fundraising and reporting software rather than for algorithmic trading. A community of outside contributors has built more than 200 open source libraries and plugins around the API across common programming languages. The service was founded in 2011 by William Crowcroft and operates under the entity Open Exchange Rates (UK) Ltd, registered in London. The company has taken no outside venture funding and describes itself as self funded. It reports serving over 100,000 developers, businesses and organisations, and its own client showcase names WooThemes/WooCommerce, Donorbox, Sharesight, Kindful, Hatcher+, Avaza, FXLoader, CData Software, CoinDesk and Nomad List among users who have built multi currency features on its data.
