# Open Exchange Rates Scraper (`parseforge/openexchangerates-free-scraper`) Actor

Collects live mid-market foreign exchange rates for 166 currencies from the Open Exchange Rates public feed. Returns each currency pair as a flat row with base, target, and rate. No API key required.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/parseforge/openexchangerates-free-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [ParseForge](https://apify.com/parseforge) (community)
- **Categories:** Business, Developer tools, Automation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 89.7% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $11.00 / 1,000 result items

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

[![ParseForge](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ParseForge/apify-assets/main/banner.jpg)](https://apify.com/parseforge?fpr=vmoqkp)

### Open Exchange Rates Scraper

**Scrape live foreign exchange rates for 166 world currencies, updated hourly, with no API key.** Get every rate against your chosen base currency in one flat dataset. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Open Exchange Rates provides a free, public feed of mid-market currency rates, but pulling it into a pipeline usually means signing up for an API key and dealing with usage limits. This Actor reads the live feed directly, so you get the latest rates for all 166 supported currencies without any registration. Pick a base currency like USD or EUR, optionally filter to only the target currencies you care about, and the run returns one clean row per rate.

| Who uses it | What they scrape Open Exchange Rates for |
|---|---|
| Finance analysts | Pull the latest mid-market rates into a spreadsheet for daily reporting. |
| E-commerce operators | Update storefront prices by fetching live rates for a handful of target currencies. |
| Travel platforms | Feed a pricing engine with hourly exchange rates for every currency a customer might pay in. |
| Data engineers | Ingest a reliable, no-auth currency feed into a data warehouse on a schedule. |

### What it does

This Actor collects live foreign exchange rates from the Open Exchange Rates public feed and returns each currency pair as a flat row with the base, target, and rate.

- 🌐 **166 supported currencies:** every ISO 4217 code from USD and EUR to exotics like XDR and ZWL.
- 🎯 **Base currency selector:** express all rates against USD, GBP, JPY, CNY, or any of the 166 supported codes.
- 📋 **Target currency filter:** return only the rates you need by passing a list of codes, or leave empty to collect all 166.
- ⚡ **No API key required:** reads the public feed directly so you skip registration, OAuth, and rate-limit headaches.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

### What you can do with Open Exchange Rates data

**💱 Daily FX rate reporting.**

A treasury analyst runs the Actor each morning with USD as the base and the company's 12 exposure currencies as targets, then loads the CSV into a reporting dashboard.

**🛒 Multi-currency storefront pricing.**

An e-commerce developer schedules the Actor hourly for EUR, GBP, and JPY against USD, feeding the rates into a product-price updater so storefront prices stay current.

**📊 Financial model inputs.**

A quant researcher pulls all 166 rates once a day to seed a volatility model that compares cross-rates across emerging and major currencies.

**✈️ Travel booking engine.**

A travel platform runs the Actor every hour with a base of USD and all 166 targets, caching the rates so customers see real-time conversions when booking in their local currency.

### Why choose this scraper

|  | What you get |
|---|---|
| **Live mid-market rates** | Hourly updated rates straight from the Open Exchange Rates feed, the same data their paid API serves. |
| **Zero authentication** | No app registration, no API key, no OAuth flow. The Actor reads the public endpoint so you stay anonymous. |
| **Fixed flat schema** | Every run returns the same columns: base currency, target currency, and the current rate. No nested objects to unpack. |
| **Scheduled refreshes** | Set the Actor on a cron schedule and push fresh rates into your database, dashboard, or pricing engine every hour. |

### How it compares

No other Store actor targets Open Exchange Rates the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.

| | Open Exchange Rates Scraper | Build it in-house | By hand |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup | Run it now, zero config | Days of engineering | None, but hours per pull |
| When Open Exchange Rates changes | Maintained for you | You fix it | You re-learn the page |
| Proxies, retries, anti-bot | Built in | Your problem | Browser only |
| Output | Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export | Whatever you build | Copy-paste |
| Cost | Pay per result | Engineering time | Analyst hours |

### Configure the run

Drive the Actor with a base currency and an optional list of target currencies. The feed returns mid-market rates updated hourly, and the Actor outputs one row per requested currency pair. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

```json
{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "baseCurrency": "USD"
}
```

A larger pull:

```json
{
  "maxItems": 200,
  "baseCurrency": "USD"
}
```

### Pricing

Pay-per-result: **$0.01467 per result** collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

| Results collected | Approximate cost |
|---|---|
| 100 results | $1.47 |
| 1,000 results | $14.67 |
| 10,000 results | $146.70 |

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

### Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. [Upgrade your Apify plan](https://console.apify.com/sign-up?fpr=vmoqkp) to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

### Run it

1. [Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit](https://console.apify.com/sign-up?fpr=vmoqkp).
2. Open the [Open Exchange Rates Scraper](https://apify.com/parseforge/openexchangerates-free-scraper?fpr=vmoqkp).
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click **Start**.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the **Dataset** tab.

Run it programmatically through the [Apify API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2) (`run-sync-get-dataset-items`) or the [ApifyClient](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js) for JavaScript and Python.

### Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to Open Exchange Rates through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=parseforge/openexchangerates-free-scraper"
```

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

### Troubleshooting

**Why am I getting fewer rates than I expected?**

Check the Target Currencies field. If you entered a list, only those codes are returned. Leave the field empty to collect all 166 supported currencies. Also check maxItems, which caps the row count.

**Why is the rate for my currency missing?**

Verify the ISO 4217 code is spelled correctly and is in the supported list shown in the baseCurrency dropdown. Some less common codes like CNH or XDR are included, but not every theoretical code is covered.

**The rates look stale or haven't changed since my last run.**

The public feed updates hourly. If you run the Actor more frequently than that, you will see the same rates until the next hourly refresh. Schedule your runs at an hourly interval for fresh data.

**I got an error or empty dataset on the first run.**

Make sure you selected a base currency from the dropdown. While the field is not strictly required, an invalid or missing base can cause the feed request to fail. Try running with the default USD first.

**Can I use these rates for real-time trading?**

No. These are hourly mid-market rates from a free public feed. They are not suitable for trade execution, which requires tick-level or real-time bid/ask data from a licensed market data provider.

### FAQ

| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Do I need an Open Exchange Rates API key? | No. This Actor reads the public, free feed that Open Exchange Rates publishes without authentication. You do not need to sign up or provide any credentials. |
| How often are the rates updated? | The public feed is updated hourly with mid-market rates. Running the Actor more than once an hour will return the same rates until the next refresh. |
| Which currencies are supported? | All 166 ISO 4217 currency codes that Open Exchange Rates covers, from major pairs like USD and EUR to exotic codes like XDR, ZWL, and STN. |
| Can I get only a few currencies instead of all 166? | Yes. Use the Target Currencies field to pass a list of codes like EUR, GBP, JPY. Leave it empty to return every supported currency. |
| What is the base currency? | The base currency is the currency against which all rates are expressed. If you set USD as the base, you get rates like USD/EUR, USD/GBP, and so on. |
| Are these buy, sell, or mid-market rates? | The feed provides mid-market rates, which are the midpoint between buy and sell. They are suitable for reporting, modeling, and reference pricing but not for actual trade execution. |
| Can I schedule this Actor to run automatically? | Yes. Use Apify's scheduler to run it every hour, day, or any cron interval you need, and push the results to a dataset, API, or external storage. |
| What output formats are supported? | You can export the dataset to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML directly from the Apify console or via the API. |
| Does this Actor support historical rates? | No. This Actor only returns the latest live rates from the current feed. For historical time-series data you would need Open Exchange Rates' paid API. |
| Is there a limit on how many rates I can collect? | The feed always returns up to 166 rates. The maxItems input lets you cap how many rows land in your dataset, but the source data is the full set of supported currencies. |

### Related actors

Browse the full [ParseForge collection](https://apify.com/parseforge?fpr=vmoqkp) for more scrapers.

🆘 **Need help?** Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ **Disclaimer.** This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Open Exchange Rates. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.

# Actor input Schema

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

How many rates to collect per run.

## `baseCurrency` (type: `string`):

Currency to express all rates against. The open feed supports 166 currencies. Most popular: USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CNY.

## `targetCurrencies` (type: `array`):

Optional. ISO 4217 codes (e.g. EUR, GBP, JPY). Leave empty to return all 166 supported currencies for the base.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "baseCurrency": "USD"
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `overview` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "maxItems": 10,
    "baseCurrency": "USD"
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("parseforge/openexchangerates-free-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "maxItems": 10,
    "baseCurrency": "USD",
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("parseforge/openexchangerates-free-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "baseCurrency": "USD"
}' |
apify call parseforge/openexchangerates-free-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,parseforge/openexchangerates-free-scraper"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/hs7zIOdY5NkM6KJKY/builds/oxBwxBAbkk11oya3P/openapi.json