# Exchange Rates API

> Exchange Rates API (exchangeratesapi.io) is a real-time, historical, time-series, and fluctuation foreign exchange (forex) rates REST API, trusted by thousands of businesses and developers to power currency converters, financial apps, e-commerce pricing, and accounting systems. Built and maintained by APILayer GmbH in Vienna, Austria, it delivers accurate exchange rates for 168 world currencies and precious metals (including Gold "XAU" and Silver "XAG"), sourced from 15+ market and banking data providers (including the European Central Bank). A validation-and-fallback algorithm assigns priorities to each source and validates each rate, providing spot rates with precision up to six decimal places. Historical end-of-day data reaches back to 1999. Rates are returned as currency pairs at the representative "mid" market value in lightweight JSON, over 256-bit HTTPS, with an average uptime of 99.9%. Exchange Rates API is part of the APILayer suite (one account, one API key, one dashboard across the APILayer product family).
A free API key is available at https://manage.exchangeratesapi.io/signup/free — the Free Plan is a no-time-limit trial with 100 monthly API requests, daily-updated rates, historical data, and specific-currency requests; paid plans add faster refresh (every 60 minutes, 10 minutes, or 60 seconds), base-currency switching, commercial-use rights, and higher request volumes. A helpful billing note: any endpoint or feature — including time-frame, fluctuation, and multi-currency requests — counts as only one API Request. To call the API, append your access_key as a query parameter. The base URL is api.exchangeratesapi.io/v1. A single lookup is one HTTP GET request: api.exchangeratesapi.io/v1/latest?access_key=YOUR_KEY. The default base currency is EUR unless overridden with the base parameter (base-switching requires a paid plan). Core endpoints include Symbols (list of all supported currencies), Latest (most recent real-time rates), Historical (rates for a specific past date by appending /YYYY-MM-DD to the base URL), Convert (convert an amount with from, to, amount, and optional date), Time-Series / Timeframe (rates between two dates, up to 365 days), and Fluctuation / Change (change and margin/percentage between two dates). The symbols parameter limits results to a comma-separated set of 3-letter currency codes. Code examples are provided for multiple languages.
## Getting Started
- [Exchange Rates API Homepage](https://exchangeratesapi.io/): Free, real-time and historical currency exchange rate API
- [API Documentation](https://docs.apilayer.com/exchangeratesapi/docs/api-documentation): Full reference — endpoints, parameters, response objects, errors, and code examples
- [Free API Key Signup](https://manage.exchangeratesapi.io/signup/free): Create a free account with 100 monthly requests
- [Login](https://manage.exchangeratesapi.io/dashboard): Access your dashboard, API key, and usage statistics
- [Pricing](https://exchangeratesapi.io/#pricing_plan): Free and premium plan tiers with request volumes, refresh rates, and features
## Tools
- [API Status](https://exchangeratesapi.io/api-status/): Real-time updates on API performance and uptime
## Resources
- [FAQs](https://exchangeratesapi.io/faq/): Common questions on real-time accuracy, historical data, request counting, data sourcing, and plans
- [API Glossary](https://exchangeratesapi.io/api-glossary): Definitions of common API and forex terms used across the documentation
- [APILayer Blog](https://blog.apilayer.com/): Tutorials, use cases, and product updates
## Support
- [Contact Us](https://exchangeratesapi.io/contact/): Sales and technical support