Understanding exchange rate APIs

An exchange-rate API delivers up-to-date currency prices that your application can query programmatically, instead of scraping websites or hard-coding values.

How rates are sourced

Rate-API aggregates rates from trusted upstream providers and refreshes them hourly. Each currency is stored relative to USD, which makes cross-rate conversion fast and consistent.

What to look for

• Coverage — 160+ currencies, including the majors and many emerging-market currencies.
• Freshness — hourly updates with a transparent /health endpoint.
• Formats — JSON, XML and CSV so the API fits any stack.
• Limits — clear per-plan quotas and rate-limit headers on every response.

Rate-API is built around all four. Start on the Free plan and scale up when you need more.