looking for a free Currency API

[Acid0]

Hi,
is there a free currency API that I can use to consume current currency indicators against the ZAR.

What do you guys use to import the current rand vs other currencies?

Regards

 

[Speedster]

Hi,
is there a free currency API that I can use to consume current currency indicators against the ZAR.

What do you guys use to import the current rand vs other currencies?

Regards

Google finance?

What app do you want to pull the data in to?

 

[_kabal_]

Open Exchange Rates

The original simple, accurate and transparent exchange rates and currency conversion data API.

openexchangerates.org

1000 api requests a month.
If you only using zar, and you use caching, you can easily use this.

 

[Johnatan56]

Google's finance API is technically still available (deprecated 2012), but you can't use it for public consumption, only personal, and it allows 100req/100sec/user, but you can increase that to 100 req/sec, with a cap of 50k/day per project (I was looking at it back in 2016 for a uni project).

You could probably use: https://exchangeratesapi.io/ stats are from: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/pol...o_reference_exchange_rates/html/index.en.html

 

[bchip]

Hi,
is there a free currency API that I can use to consume current currency indicators against the ZAR.

What do you guys use to import the current rand vs other currencies?

Regards

Remember though you cant rely too much on any of the info/data
FX does not have a central exchange, which means that if you collected the data from 1 broker
that would be their values, another broker will give you their close, etc
Thats why all the sources will always differ.

If you just want an idea of the latest prices, great.
If the prices make a significant impact to what your doing then going with a free api probably isnt the right route.

 

[Acid0]

Thanks for all the response it is greatly appreciated.

This will be used in a production environment and it needs to be accurate.

Just a silly question but doe s the banks not expose an api for this to help us out?

 

[bchip]

Thanks for all the response it is greatly appreciated.

This will be used in a production environment and it needs to be accurate.

Just a silly question but doe s the banks not expose an api for this to help us out?

Remember accurate means what that broker will charge you at the point in time.
Like if you go to
https://securities.standardbank.co.za/ost/ you'll see a tab with the prices that are out quite a bit
from something like https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/USDZAR/?exchange=FX
https://www.nedbank.co.za/content/nedbank/desktop/gt/en/personal/forex/forex-rates.html
https://www.absa.co.za/indices/exchange-rates/

The banks compete with how much is added to the spread.
So "spot" / avg price between the banks are taken then brokers add (eg) 0.5% above/below that
depending if your buying or selling.
Eg. (at this moment)
Standard Bank = 16.64
Nedbank = 17.07
Trading View = 16.56
ABSA = 16.73

So you'll have to connect to the bank that your dealing with, but all these firms should have something.
JP Morgan, Deutsche bank, Standard Bank, ABSA, FNB, etc.
Most likely you'll just end up speaking to the bank where the account is held.

 

[pobedonosec]

Hi,is there a free currency API

Just get page from

Exchange Rate US Dollar to South African Rand (Currency Calculator) - X-Rates

This Free Currency Exchange Rates Calculator helps you convert US Dollar to South African Rand from any amount.

www.x-rates.com

and fetch data from specific tag! smth like <span class="ccOutputRslt"

 

[John_Phoenix]

It honestly depends what you are using the conversion for. Possibly build in a buffer value of about 0.5% ~ 1%.

 

[startuphacker]

I can recommend www.exchangerate-api.com, there's a free endpoint without any required API key or signup here: https://www.exchangerate-api.com/docs/free

Most of the free & open access endpoints only have 30 or so currencies but you'll see this one has all 160 codes.

Also, @bchip is absolutely right, if you actually plan to do transactions then you need the rates & spread that your bank/provider is offering. All these services that provide a single "midpoint" rate are perfect for things like price indications on an e-commerce site, running a stats dashboard or calculating shipping costs in your app etc.

But as soon as you're settling an account across borders you need to get a feed of the actual prices on offer by whoever you're dealing with. Because even though these midpoint services are typically pretty accurate they're always showing the *aggregate* picture, and your bank on a specific day could be quite far from this for lots of different reasons.

Hope you found a service that sorted you out! I can give you advice on other options if you still haven't found something suitable.