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Show HN: Free foreign exchange rates API
- aaronedam 6y agoVery well. I have two questions. Why should one use this service, instead of using directly ecb(https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xm...)? How do you keep this service free since there is a server cost?
- arzzen 6y agohi @aaronedam, thanks for your question, - default api response is json format, this format is easy to parse then xml (eg directly usage in js/nodejs app..) - server cost is not too hight , api response is only static json data (data are sync. on midnight), so price is only for bandwige - i plan added crypto and comodities (like gold,silver etc)
- dang 6y agoPlease reply directly to the question rather than posting a top-level comment. (I've moved this one.)
- amerine 6y agoBased on how I understand the service, I’d posit you could run such a thing on Heroku for free forever, maybe spending a few dollars (7 usd) a month eventually if you needed some scale.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoWouldn’t it be more reliable to ask the ECB to support JSON alongside xml? Or require them to provide JSON by law? Shims are fine, but technical debt. Fix the problem at the source.
- sambe 6y agoYou'd enshrine in law a particular technical format? What is the cost of making such a law vs the cost of a different - but still very much usable - format?
- toomuchtodo 6y agoI would, with lifecycle and sunsetting requirements. Laws are requirements docs with more ceremony and stakeholder participation, but also with much more authority.
- sambe 6y agoThat all seems well-intentioned and plausible in terms of how things should have been originally. However, 1) I can't help but think of all the problems that apply in general to specifying requirements (too vague, too constraining, too expensive to hammer out to sufficient precision). 2) That's different from changing it retroactively. Would you change it again when JSON goes out of fashion? Or mandate HTTPS? I've not read the OP in detail, but the impression I have is that the existing service is very much functional. Even ignoring the cost of changing the law, do we really want our public institutions to be in breach of law whenever fashions change? I'd rather let them set their own priorities to a large extent - for example, specify a very general, minimal set of requirements and do better when they have capacity to do so. I'm fine with people building on top of that where convenient. It seems like a good thing, in fact.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoI think your points are important, but it's likely we won't reach an agreement on this issue. Appreciate you raising the points though!
- polote 6y agoWhat is the issue with XML ?
- deleted 6y ago
- dmurray 6y agoYeah. It's one rate a day x 33 currencies x 19 years, so a total of 250,000 numbers. You could compress the whole thing (500 KB?) and serve it to a million customers a month for free.
- jbaudanza 6y agoThank you for posting this! I had no idea this existed. It looks like all the rates are published with EUR as a base currency, so if you wanted to get the USD <> KRW exchange rate, you would have to use EUR at an intermediate. This is probably good enough for most applications. For anyone else that was wondering, this XML feed is linked off of this page (as well as CSV, RSS, and PDF): https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/euro_reference_exchange_rates/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/eu...
- dhruval 6y agoBank of Canada has a similar free API https://www.bankofcanada.ca/valet/docs https://www.bankofcanada.ca/valet/docs
- tzs 6y agoThat ECB link gives the latest rates. They also have one that give the last 90 days of rates [1]. There is a more general system for accessing ECB data that includes a vast amount beyond exchange rates, described here [2]. I think that lets you get anything they have in their statistical data warehouse. (If you don't need to get it programmatically, they have a web GUI [3]). The general system is also vastly more complex to use. I was quite happy when I found that 90 day link and did not have to deal with figuring out how to get what I wanted out of the general system. [1] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-hist-90d.xml https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-hist-90d... [2] https://sdw-wsrest.ecb.europa.eu/help/ https://sdw-wsrest.ecb.europa.eu/help/ [3] https://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/ https://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/
- osrec 6y agoNice work! What sort of rate limits do you impose on the API?
- xfalcox 6y agoHow frequent are intraday updates?
- gingerlime 6y agoHow is it different from frankfurter.app ? (from the original creator of fixer.io) Side note: I always wonder about those stories like uBlock Origin and fixer.io where the original author sold or lost control of the product and then restarted a fork of their own work :) there’s something slightly weird and fun about it somehow
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cjonas 6y agoI use fixer in a client project (started back when it was free, now i think it's a couple bucks a month)... Never heard of Frankfurter, but if it's the same guy that's super interesting and I too would like to know the backstory
- jacobriis 6y agoThis is cool thanks. What you do with days that the ECB doesn't publish rates (weekends and bank holidays)?
- transitivebs 6y agoIf you're interested in offering a paid version of this API with no extra work, let me know. I think it'd be interesting to consider what additional features your users might pay for. I'm the founder of https://saasify.sh https://saasify.sh btw which auto-generates full SaaS products from this type of core API functionality.
- pests 6y agoI just discovered your service not too long ago and was my first thought as I read your first paragraph. I've looked into other products and frameworks many times but yours was the first I found that was to my satisfaction. Would it be crass to ask for an invite to the beta? I requested access before and again just now but I've been wanting to take a look for awhile.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- transitivebs 6y agoHey yeah, please send me an email directly travis@saasify.sh
- moneywoes 6y agoHuge fan of the design of your landing page, what did you build and design it with?
- transitivebs 6y agoHey, it's all built and designed by lil old me with React & CSS. It's also all open source: https://github.com/saasify-sh/saasify/tree/master/website https://github.com/saasify-sh/saasify/tree/master/website
- moneywoes 6y agoThank for you reply. Do you have any suggestions on design or building sites with that aesthetic? Great work!
- gruez 6y agoHow often are these rates updated? Daily? Hourly?
- bt3 6y agoFrom the FAQ's: The API delivers EOD / End of Day historical exchange rates, which become available at 00:05am GMT for the previous day and are time stamped at one second before midnight.
- simzor 6y agoGreat work. Love the landing page!
- mszcz 6y agoI would love something like this with commodities (gold, silver) and crypto included...
- pbreit 6y agoI usually don't care much about such things but how are you financing this project? I did not see any evidence of a paid plan. If I were going to depend on this I'd like some assurance that you'd be able to keep it going. That you've run it for 12+ months (I think) is helpful.
- timmit 6y agoI host a service too. https://exchange-rate.bai.uno/ https://exchange-rate.bai.uno/ - free - based on Eu Bank, update daily - host on a EC2 instance
- erikrothoff 6y agoWe use https://openexchangerates.org/ https://openexchangerates.org/ and they also have a free plan. I’d love to know how you compare. They do commodities (silver, gold, etc) and some crypto. What is your USP?
- StratusBen 6y agoOne other API I've found that includes foreign exchange (as well as a bunch of other different asset classes) is http://iexcloud.io http://iexcloud.io -- they have a free tier that is pretty generous.
- denster 6y agoWe’ve used this API in our https://mintdata.com/docs https://mintdata.com/docs examples, but the limits run out fairly quickly. Would be curious to ask here — are there any alternative APIs you’d recommend for showing financial application examples? (Ideally something that fetches the delayed price of a stock (CUSIP) and related news for it)
- as300 6y agoThis is a bit unrelated, but how do folks make those nice shiny landing pages like this one, which all seem to have almost the exact same layout and format (e.g. the animation with the little people at the top and the link to learn more, along with the tiles in the middle with different features). I'm interested in launching products like this while doing as little frontend work as humanly possible.
- searchableguy 6y agoSearch for templates. HTML templates, react templates, Gatsby, Hugo, wordpress, insert anything else etc templates with whatever you want them for. You can also check out market places like envato. There are free open source illustrations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21858822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21858822
- as300 6y agothanks!
- fbelzile 6y agoI'm really interested in using this, I just can't seem to easily find the 33 currencies that are supported. Any chance you could clarify which ones?
- ggm 6y agoDo you monetize the query stream to inform fourex investment decisions? What if they are adversarial to my intent? You profit from asymmetric knowledge. If you detected you could leverage an advantage by lying about the rates, what constraints are there and how do we know? Banks are highly regulated. What's your regulatory oversight. Profitable information is hedged by conditions. Therefore beset by utility limits.
- senthil_rajasek 6y agoThanks for sharing. What are some ways people buy foreign currencies as an investment?
- tzs 6y agoOne thing to be careful of when using 3rd party exchange rate services: make sure they are using the right rate source for your needs. For example, if you need the exchange rate on order to convert a quarter's sales from some non-EUR currency to EUR for quarterly VAT MOSS reporting, you are supposed to use the rate reported by the European Central Bank on the last reporting day of the VAT MOSS quarter. The submitted service is using ECB, so should be fine for that specific use case.
- Galanwe 6y agoDid not find the information on the website: this is the fixing spot rate only right?
- krembo 6y agoofftopic - I wonder if it's possible to make arbitrage only by switching currencies setting aside commissions. ie - Exchanging USD > EUR > RUB > ILS > HKD > back to USD --> Profit!!!1
- markdown 6y agoNote: This website only supports 33/180 currencies.
- TheMightyLlama 6y agoThis is a great service and I’d like to thank the developer regardless of whether there are other services out there that provide similar services. Why do I say this? I’ve just spent the last year and a couple of solid corona weeks doing some development on a personal project which requires historical access (-1 day mostly) to high / low / open / close data on all LSE companies. I’ve hunted round for companies that offer this as an api even as a paid service and I’ve found it ridiculously difficult to get data. Most of the product offerings mean I have to login each time, download a file and parse the cvs or pay for access to incrementally tiered historical data. In the end I’ve had to scrape data which costs a lot in processing time. My point is here that this will be useful to someone somewhere. And I’m willing to bet they are also willing to pay for it.
- darekkay 6y agoRelated discussion for a different product: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22087612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22087612
- gigatexal 6y agoshould put something on the website that while the API follows fixer.io it doesn't support all the currencies that fixer.io does
- gigatexal 6y agoalso I would like to pay for this so that it stays online