Open Exchange Rates
Open Exchange Rates is a London-based, bootstrapped API provider delivering live and historical foreign exchange rates for over 200 currencies to developers and enterprises via a freemium, product-led subscription model.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2011
- HeadquartersLondon, United Kingdom
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Open Exchange Rates does
Open Exchange Rates, operated by Open Exchange Rates (UK) Limited (a private limited company registered in England and Wales, headquartered at 5 Luke Street, London), provides a JSON-based currency data API delivering live and historical foreign exchange rates for over 200 world and digital currencies. The platform aggregates and algorithmically blends rate data from multiple reliable sources, serving endpoints for latest rates, historical snapshots (back to 1 January 1999), time-series queries, currency conversion, OHLC and spot pricing, and account usage. It is accessed via App ID authentication, with update frequencies ranging from hourly (free tier) to 30-minute (Enterprise) to 5-minute (Unlimited) and 1-second (VIP). The trademark 'Open Exchange Rates' is held by a Jersey-registered entity (Open Exchange Rates Limited) and licensed exclusively worldwide to the UK operating company.
The business operates a freemium, product-led growth model. The Forever Free tier provides 1,000 monthly API requests with hourly updates; paid tiers are priced at $12/month (Developer, 10,000 requests), $47/month (Enterprise, 100,000 requests), and $97/month (Unlimited), with annual billing offering two months free. A VIP tier provides custom multi-year contracts with sub-second updates, Bid-Ask/Midpoint pricing, OHLC data, dedicated phone support, and an uptime SLA; a 20% discount applies to registered nonprofits and educational institutions. Over 200 community-built open source libraries and plugins span most major languages and frameworks, driving organic developer adoption. Distribution is exclusively digital and self-serve, with Paddle acting as global merchant of record for subscription billing. The platform claims 100,000+ developers and organizations as users, a 99.99% uptime over the trailing 90 days, and a customer base spanning Shopify, CoinDesk, Donorbox, Hatcher+, Sharesight, Avaza, Nomad List, FXLoader, and CData, among others.
No venture or private equity funding rounds are disclosed; the company appears bootstrapped. Two operational incidents occurred in 2026 (a major cache/pipeline failure in January affecting approximately 172 currencies, and a partial outage in April affecting up to 100 currencies), highlighting infrastructure risk despite the headline uptime figure. The management team is not publicly listed, and the company maintains a small footprint consistent with a lean, product-led operation.
Open Exchange Rates firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Open Exchange Rates
- Legal name
- Open Exchange Rates (UK) Limited
- Website
- https://openexchangerates.org
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2011
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Open Exchange Rates is a London-based, bootstrapped API provider delivering live and historical foreign exchange rates for over 200 currencies to developers and enterprises via a freemium, product-led subscription model.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Where Open Exchange Rates is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- London
- HQ country
- United Kingdom
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices1 record
Markets served
Open Exchange Rates business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Operations, Personnel, Marketing or Sales
Revenue model
- Subscription Plans: Tiered subscription model with four levels: Free (1,000 requests/month), Developer ($12/month for 10,000 requests), Enterprise ($47/month for 100,000 requests), and Unlimited ($97/month for unlimited requests). Annual billing offers 2 months free. Revenue is primarily subscription-based with predictable recurring revenue.
- Usage-Based Elements: Each plan includes a monthly request allowance. Exceeding allowances triggers contact from the company to discuss options. VIP service tiers offer additional premium features like live rate updates up to every 1 second, bid-ask prices, and dedicated support.
- Enterprise VIP Services: VIP tier offers live rate updates up to every 1 second, Bid-Ask and Midpoint prices, Open-High-Low-Close-Average prices, intra-day historical prices, dedicated phone support, and guaranteed uptime SLA. Custom tailored plans available for enterprise needs.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Monthly | Forever Free Plan - Basic API access with hourly updates |
| Subscription | Monthly | Developer Plan - $12/month for growing businesses |
| Subscription | Monthly | Enterprise Plan - $47/month for small to medium organizations |
| Subscription | Monthly | Unlimited Plan - $97/month for high-volume clients |
| Subscription | Multi-year contract | VIP Tier - Custom enterprise pricing for premium needs |
Go-to-market motion2 records
Distribution channels4 records
Marketing channels5 records
Open Exchange Rates product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Open Exchange Rates provides a JSON-based Currency Data API delivering live and historical foreign exchange rates for over 200 worldwide and digital currencies. The service exposes endpoints for latest rates, historical lookups, time-series queries, currency conversion, OHLC, and spot prices, with data algorithmically blended from multiple reliable sources. It is sold via tiered subscriptions (Free, Developer, Enterprise, Unlimited, VIP) targeted at developers and businesses integrating currency data into applications.
Product overview
Open Exchange Rates provides a unified currency data API ecosystem comprising a core Currency Data API (the primary JSON API delivering live and historical forex rates for over 200 currencies), augmented by add-on API features including the Conversion API, Time-Series API, and Base Currency Feature. The service is delivered through a tiered subscription model: the free Forever Free Plan provides basic hourly updates with limited requests, the Developer Plan ($12/month) adds all base currencies and 10,000 requests, the Enterprise Plan ($47/month) adds 30-minute updates and time-series, the Unlimited Plan ($97/month) adds 5-minute updates, unlimited requests, and conversion, and the VIP Tier provides sub-second real-time updates with OHLC pricing and enterprise SLAs. Historical data is available back to 1 January 1999.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- Currency Data API Primary JSON API providing live and historical foreign exchange rates for over 200 worldwide and digital currencies, blended algorithmically from multiple reliable sources. Exposes endpoints including latest.json, historical/*.json, time-series.json, convert, ohlc.json, and spot.json, sold to developers and businesses integrating currency data into their applications.
- Currency Symbols Coverage Expansion (SLE, XCG, ZWG) Additions to the Currency Data API's currency symbol coverage, extending the range of supported worldwide and digital currencies through new endpoints at no format change.
Quantifiable outcome
- 99.99% uptime over the past 90 days
- +2 more outcomes
Companies that use Open Exchange Rates
Customer profileNamed customers11 records
Segments7 records
Ideal customer profiles4 records
Open Exchange Rates technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration8 records
Feature6 records
Open Exchange Rates partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
One partnership is on record.
- PaddlecorePaddle serves as the payment processor for subscription billing. For US customers, transactions are handled by Paddle.com Inc (3811 Ditmars Blvd#1071 Astoria NY 11105-1803). For all other customers, Paddle Payments Limited (Company number 572448, Limerick House, Limerick Lane, Newbridge, Kildare, Ireland) handles transactions. Paddle Terms apply to customer contracts.
Scale indicators7 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights5 records
Open Exchange Rates competitors and assessment
Company assessmentOthers
- Currencycloud: Cross-border payments-as-a-service platform that acquired fixer.io. Relevant as an acquirer/ecosystem participant shaping the FX data competitive landscape, especially for fintechs using OXR today.
Broad incumbents
- Refinitiv (LSEG): Global incumbent financial data vendor (now part of LSEG) providing institutional-grade FX reference, cross-rates, and historical data via enterprise platforms. Anchors the high end of the FX data market that OXR's VIP tier reaches into.
- XE.com: Established consumer and business FX data and payments brand with public currency data APIs and a much wider portfolio (money transfer, business payments). Competes with OXR for FX data use cases but at much larger scale.
- OANDA: FX broker and data provider offering historical and live rates plus exchange-rate APIs to fintechs and corporates. Larger FX trading business but directly comparable on the data/API side and on serving compliance/treasury use cases.
Direct peers
- exchangerate-api: Open and paid FX rate API covering 160+ currencies with strong developer adoption and a free tier. Competes with OXR for the same self-serve developer segment, particularly for budget-sensitive hobbyist and SMB use.
- Fixer.io: API-first FX rate data service with a near-identical freemium-to-paid tier structure (Free, Basic, Pro, Enterprise). Directly competes with Open Exchange Rates for the same developer/fintech customer base on JSON-delivered reference and historical FX rates.
- Currencylayer: Tiered subscription API providing real-time and historical exchange rates for 168+ currencies. Same product category, same buyer (developers / SMB fintech), and very similar pricing architecture — a head-to-head substitute.
- TraderMade: Provides real-time and historical FX, CFD, and crypto data via REST/WebSocket APIs with tiered access. Closely comparable in delivery mechanism and pricing model, and overlaps in serving fintech and trading platform customers.
Emerging players
- CoinGecko: Major digital-currency price data aggregator; OXR already lists CoinDesk (a CoinDesk/CoinGecko-adjacent customer) and supports 'digital currencies' in its dataset. Comparable as a pricing/reference data API in the digital-asset segment.
- Frankfurter: Free, open-source FX rates API backed by ECB reference data, used by many developers as a no-cost alternative to paid APIs. Overlaps materially with OXR's Free and Developer tiers and is often benchmarked against it.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Open Exchange Rates social profiles
Digital presenceOpen Exchange Rates financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Open Exchange Rates leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Open Exchange Rates funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Open Exchange Rates M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Open Exchange Rates
What does Open Exchange Rates do?
Open Exchange Rates provides a JSON-based Currency Data API delivering live and historical foreign exchange rates for over 200 worldwide and digital currencies. The service exposes endpoints for latest rates, historical lookups, time-series queries, currency conversion, OHLC, and spot prices, with data algorithmically blended from multiple reliable sources. It is sold via tiered subscriptions (Free, Developer, Enterprise, Unlimited, VIP) targeted at developers and businesses integrating currency data into applications.
Is Open Exchange Rates a public or private company?
Open Exchange Rates is a private company. It is classified as founder individual operated bootstrapped and is currently operating.
When was Open Exchange Rates founded?
Open Exchange Rates was founded in 2011. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is Open Exchange Rates based?
Open Exchange Rates is headquartered in London, United Kingdom, in the Europe region.
How does Open Exchange Rates make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. Subscription Plans are the primary driver. The others are usage-Based Elements and enterprise VIP Services.
Who are Open Exchange Rates's main competitors?
Currencycloud is listed as an others. Broad incumbents are Refinitiv (LSEG), XE.com and OANDA. Direct peers are exchangerate-api, Fixer.io, Currencylayer and TraderMade. Emerging players are CoinGecko and Frankfurter.
Does Open Exchange Rates have an API?
Yes. Open Exchange Rates provides a JSON API for live and historical foreign exchange (forex) rates for over 200 worldwide and digital currencies. Data are blended algorithmically from multiple reliable sources. The API uses App ID authentication and serves data in transparent JSON format. Endpoints include latest.json, historical/*.json, time-series.json, convert, ohlc.json, spot.json, currencies.json, and usage.json. Update frequencies range from hourly (Free) to every 5 minutes (Unlimited) to every 1 second (VIP). Over 200 open source libraries and plugins have been created by the community for various languages and frameworks. Developer documentation is at docs.openexchangerates.org.