Bank of Tanzania Exchange Rate API: Official TZS Rates as JSON

The Bank of Tanzania publishes the official exchange rates that accounting, tax, and customs practice in Tanzania reference — published official rates, not moving market prices. This guide shows how to pull them as JSON: via a REST endpoint or the zero-dependency bank-of-tanzania-exchange-rate npm package.

The indicative table Dar es Salaam works from

The BoT publishes daily indicative rates — mean, buying and selling — for about 38 currencies, and it is the official reference for Tanzanian customs valuation and accounting. The table includes the East African Community pairs (Kenyan and Ugandan shillings, Rwandan and Burundian francs) alongside the majors and the Gulf currencies of the remittance corridors.

Why official rates, not market rates

A live mid-market feed answers "what is USD/TZS trading at right now?" — the right tool for checkouts and dashboards. But accountants, auditors, and tax authorities ask a different question: "which rate were you required to use for this date?" That answer comes from the Bank of Tanzania’s published rates, and it never changes after publication.

Get the latest rates (REST)

curl "https://allratestoday.com/api/v1/central-bank/botz/latest" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

The response is the bank's most recent published table — every rate and the publication date. The latest rates are available on every plan, including the free tier (300 requests/month, no credit card).

The npm SDK

npm install bank-of-tanzania-exchange-rate

import { getRate, getLatestRates } from 'bank-of-tanzania-exchange-rate';

// One pair at the official rate
const pair = await getRate('USD', 'TZS', { apiKey: 'art_live_...' });
console.log(pair.rate, pair.rate_date);

// The bank's full published table
const table = await getLatestRates({ apiKey: 'art_live_...' });
console.log(table.rate_date, table.rates.length);

Zero dependencies, TypeScript types included, and it runs anywhere fetch exists — Node 18+, Bun, Deno, and edge runtimes.

Historical rates for an invoice date

import { getRatesForDate, getHistory } from 'bank-of-tanzania-exchange-rate';

const day = await getRatesForDate('2026-08-18', { apiKey: 'art_live_...' });

const series = await getHistory(
  { source: 'USD', target: 'TZS', from: '2026-01-01' },
  { apiKey: 'art_live_...' }
);

Historical dates and time series need a paid plan; the latest rates stay free.

Published vs derived pairs

If the Bank of Tanzania does not print a pair directly, the API resolves it from the bank's published rates — an inverse, or a cross via TZS — and flags it derived: true with the method used. Official and computed values are never silently mixed, which is exactly the distinction an auditor will ask about.

The archive

The archive is loaded from January 2010, covering the shilling’s move from ~1,300 to ~2,640 per dollar.

FAQ

Does the Bank of Tanzania have an official exchange rate API?

The bank publishes its official rates on its own site, and AllRatesToday serves the same published rates as clean JSON via REST or the bank-of-tanzania-exchange-rate npm package. The latest table is free.

How do I get the official Tanzania exchange rate for a past date?

The rates-for-date endpoint returns the official table for any archived date; non-publication days resolve to the most recent published date and are flagged, so audit trails stay honest. Historical dates require a paid plan; latest rates are free.

Are the dead legacy codes on the bank's table included?

No — the BoT's published table still prints a few long-retired codes (Austrian schilling, Dutch guilder, old metical). Those are dropped; SDR is served under its ISO code XDR.