
Show HN: Free foreign exchange rates API - arzzen
https://exchangerate.host
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aaronedam
Very 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.xm...](https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml))?

How do you keep this service free since there is a server cost?

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amerine
Based 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.

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toomuchtodo
Wouldn’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.

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polote
What is the issue with XML ?

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LoSboccacc
there's some hip environment that handles xml quite badly compared to json and
people with little cross experience think the problem is xml

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transitivebs
If 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
I 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.

~~~
transitivebs
Hey yeah, please send me an email directly travis@saasify.sh

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gingerlime
How 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

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cjonas
I 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

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StratusBen
One 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.

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denster
We’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)

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erikrothoff
We 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?

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tzs
One 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.

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ggm
Do 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.

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as300
This 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.

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searchableguy
Search 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
thanks!

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TheMightyLlama
This 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.

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mszcz
I would love something like this with commodities (gold, silver) and crypto
included...

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1996
json with no login or other constraints:

[http://cryptomarketplot.com/api.json](http://cryptomarketplot.com/api.json)

~~~
lozf
Last updated: 2020-02-13T12:14:19Z :(

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pbreit
I 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.

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darekkay
Related discussion for a different product:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22087612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22087612)

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senthil_rajasek
Thanks for sharing.

What are some ways people buy foreign currencies as an investment?

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fbelzile
I'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?

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markdown
Note: This website only supports 33/180 currencies.

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timmit
I 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

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jacobriis
This is cool thanks. What you do with days that the ECB doesn't publish rates
(weekends and bank holidays)?

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Galanwe
Did not find the information on the website: this is the fixing spot rate only
right?

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krembo
offtopic - 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

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gigatexal
should put something on the website that while the API follows fixer.io it
doesn't support all the currencies that fixer.io does

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gigatexal
also I would like to pay for this so that it stays online

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osrec
Nice work! What sort of rate limits do you impose on the API?

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gruez
How often are these rates updated? Daily? Hourly?

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bt3
From 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.

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simzor
Great work. Love the landing page!

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xfalcox
How frequent are intraday updates?

