[HN Gopher] Show HN: Free foreign exchange rates API
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Show HN: Free foreign exchange rates API
Author : arzzen
Score : 151 points
Date : 2020-04-25 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (exchangerate.host)
(TXT) w3m dump (exchangerate.host)
| simzor wrote:
| Great work. Love the landing page!
| mszcz wrote:
| I would love something like this with commodities (gold, silver)
| and crypto included...
| 1996 wrote:
| json with no login or other constraints:
|
| http://cryptomarketplot.com/api.json
| alexis2b wrote:
| Check fcsapi.com Not sure how the business is run but fiat and
| crypto are covered and it is free...
|
| Edit: typo
| fbelzile wrote:
| 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?
| ggm wrote:
| 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.
| jacobriis wrote:
| This is cool thanks. What you do with days that the ECB doesn't
| publish rates (weekends and bank holidays)?
| StratusBen wrote:
| One other API I've found that includes foreign exchange (as well
| as a bunch of other different asset classes) is
| http://iexcloud.io -- they have a free tier that is pretty
| generous.
| denster wrote:
| We've used this API in our 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)
| transitivebs wrote:
| 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 btw which auto-generates
| full SaaS products from this type of core API functionality.
| hbcondo714 wrote:
| I posted a comment[1] on here recently wishing more API
| gateways offer monetization features but Saasify looks like a
| nice way to get this, just signed up!
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22885263
| transitivebs wrote:
| Awesome - we've received a lot of inbound interest lately.
| Please email me directly travis at saasify.sh or DM me on the
| Saasify slack.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Huge fan of the design of your landing page, what did you build
| and design it with?
| transitivebs wrote:
| Hey, 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
| huangbong wrote:
| Smart abstraction!
| transitivebs wrote:
| Thanks :)
| pests wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Hey yeah, please send me an email directly travis@saasify.sh
| [deleted]
| osrec wrote:
| Nice work! What sort of rate limits do you impose on the API?
| as300 wrote:
| 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.
| searchableguy wrote:
| 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
| timmit wrote:
| I host a service too.
|
| https://exchange-rate.bai.uno/
|
| - free
|
| - based on Eu Bank, update daily
|
| - host on a EC2 instance
| pbreit wrote:
| 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.
| aaronedam wrote:
| 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...)?
|
| How do you keep this service free since there is a server cost?
| jbaudanza wrote:
| Thank 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/eu...
| arzzen wrote:
| hi @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 wrote:
| Please reply directly to the question rather than posting a
| top-level comment. (I've moved this one.)
| amerine wrote:
| 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.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 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.
| polote wrote:
| What is the issue with XML ?
| [deleted]
| sambe wrote:
| You'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 wrote:
| I would, with lifecycle and sunsetting requirements. Laws
| are requirements docs with more ceremony and stakeholder
| participation, but also with much more authority.
| sambe wrote:
| That 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 wrote:
| I think your points are important, but it's likely we
| won't reach an agreement on this issue. Appreciate you
| raising the points though!
| dmurray wrote:
| Yeah. 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.
| dhruval wrote:
| Bank of Canada has a similar free API
|
| https://www.bankofcanada.ca/valet/docs
| gruez wrote:
| How often are these rates updated? Daily? Hourly?
| bt3 wrote:
| 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.
| erikrothoff wrote:
| We use 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?
| xfalcox wrote:
| How frequent are intraday updates?
| gingerlime wrote:
| 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
| [deleted]
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