--- title: "Open Exchange Rates Free Plan vs AllRatesToday Free Tier: What You Actually Get" description: "Open Exchange Rates' free plan offers 1,000 requests/month but with USD-only base and hourly updates. AllRatesToday's free tier gives 300 one-time requests with 60-second rates and any base currency. Here's the full breakdown." canonical: https://allratestoday.com/blog/openexchangerates-free-tier-vs-allratestoday/ source: AllRatesToday (https://allratestoday.com/) — Markdown mirror of the page above; index of all pages at https://allratestoday.com/llms.txt generated: 2026-10-19T19:47:59.842Z --- ![Free tier comparison](https://images.pexels.com/photos/3305/numbers-money-calculating-calculation.jpg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&dpr=2&h=650&w=940) "Free" does a lot of work in API pricing pages. Two providers can both claim a free tier and deliver wildly different value. Open Exchange Rates' headline number — **1,000 requests/month** — looks generous on paper, but the headline request quota isn't the whole story until you put the feature matrices side by side. This article walks through what each free tier actually gives you, and explains why more requests per month isn't the right metric for most apps. ## Side-by-side feature matrix | Feature | AllRatesToday Free | OpenExchangeRates Free | | --- | --- | --- | | Monthly requests | 300 total (one-time, never resets) | 1,000 | | Update frequency | **60 seconds** | 60 minutes | | Base currency | **Any** | USD only | | Multiple targets per call | **Yes** | Yes | | Historical data | Paid plans (from €4.99/mo) | Yes (one request per day) | | Conversion endpoint | **Yes** | Paid plans only | | Time-series endpoint | Paid plans | Yes but burns quota | | HTTPS | Yes | Yes | | CORS | Yes | Yes | | Official SDKs | **JS, Python, PHP** | None | | MCP / DeepSeek integrations | **Yes** | No | | Credit card required | No | No | ## Request quota: the number everyone looks at **Headline request quota.** Numerically, Open Exchange Rates' 1,000/month is the larger number. But the value of that quota depends entirely on what you can do with each request. But — critically — request *count* is not the same as *data coverage*. If you query Open Exchange Rates 1,000 times per month on the free tier, you're getting the same hourly snapshots over and over. Rates only change once per hour on their free plan. With AllRatesToday's 60-second cadence: - You can poll once per minute and always get fresh data (1,440 new snapshots per day available, you fetch what you need). - Each of your 300 free requests returns a rate that's at most 60 seconds old, which makes the free tier a realistic evaluation. Serving real users needs a paid plan (from €4.99/mo for 5,000 requests/month), since the free tier is non-commercial. With Open Exchange Rates' 60-minute cadence: - The data only updates 24 times per day. - You can fire 1,000 requests per month, but anything above 24 × 30 = 720 requests fetches duplicate data. - For serving page loads, the cap-per-month number dominates; for serving fresh data, the cadence does. ## Update frequency: 60x difference This is the biggest real gap between the two free tiers. - **AllRatesToday Free:** 60-second updates from institutional foreign exchange market data. - **OpenExchangeRates Free:** 60-minute updates, sourced from a blended feed (providers not publicly disclosed). For anything involving money — checkout, invoicing, treasury, payments — 60-second beats 60-minute every time. We [break down the cost of hourly staleness in a separate article](https://allratestoday.com/blog/openexchangerates-hourly-updates-vs-realtime/). ## Base currency: USD-only is a wall Open Exchange Rates' free plan **only supports USD** as a base. Want EUR-based rates? Upgrade to Developer ($12/mo). Want INR? Same. Want GBP? Same. AllRatesToday's free tier accepts any supported currency as the source: ``` GET /api/v1/rates?source=EUR&target=USD,GBP,CHF GET /api/v1/rates?source=INR&target=USD,EUR,AED GET /api/v1/rates?source=AUD&target=NZD,USD,EUR ``` If your product's home currency isn't USD, this single difference can decide which API you pick. ## Historical data: quota-friendly vs quota-burning Open Exchange Rates includes historical data on its free tier. AllRatesToday does not: history starts on the €4.99/mo Small plan. The two also count it differently. **OpenExchangeRates:** - `historical/{date}.json` — one request per specific date. - `time-series.json` — **one request per day returned**. A 30-day range uses 30 requests. A one-year backfill uses 365 requests (36.5% of your monthly quota in a single call). **AllRatesToday:** - `/api/historical-rates?period=1y` (paid plans) — **billed per month of data, not per day**. A one-year backfill for one pair is 12 requests, not 365. If you're doing analytics, charting, or backtesting, Open Exchange Rates' free tier lets you start at no cost, while AllRatesToday's paid plans make large backfills cheap in quota terms. ## Conversion endpoint: free vs paid Open Exchange Rates has a dedicated `/api/convert.json` endpoint for "convert 1,000 USD to EUR" — but it's **paid plans only**. On the free tier, you fetch rates and do the multiplication client-side. AllRatesToday ships conversion on every plan. With the SDK: ``` const result = await client.convert('USD', 'EUR', 1000); // { from: 'USD', to: 'EUR', amount: 1000, rate: 0.9234, result: 923.4 } ``` For typical shopping-cart and invoicing flows, this alone saves a fair amount of glue code. ## SDKs and AI integrations Open Exchange Rates' free tier gives you raw HTTP access. AllRatesToday's free tier includes: - Official JavaScript/TypeScript SDK. - Official Python SDK. - Official PHP SDK. - MCP server for Claude Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT Desktop. - DeepSeek function-calling package. None of these incur extra cost — they're tools for working with the free tier. ## When to pick each free tier **Pick OpenExchangeRates Free when:** - You need 500+ rate lookups per month *and* hourly data is fine *and* USD-only base works *and* you don't need the conversion endpoint. - You already have a working integration and switching isn't worth the effort. **Pick AllRatesToday Free when:** - You need real-time (60-second) rates — the top reason. - Your product isn't USD-centric (EUR, GBP, INR, AUD, SGD, BRL, etc.). - You plan to move to a paid plan with history (from €4.99/mo) and want backfills billed per month instead of per day. - You want the conversion endpoint. - You want an official SDK. - You want MCP or DeepSeek support for AI tools. ## The bigger picture Free tiers are marketing. The numbers on the pricing page are chosen to make the provider look good on a comparison chart. Look at what each free tier *enables* — fresh data, flexible queries, real endpoints — and the gap narrows or reverses. For non-US products, AllRatesToday's free tier is the better one to evaluate with, thanks to 60-second data and any base currency. At 300 one-time, non-commercial requests it is not a production tier, though; its paid plans start at €4.99/mo. For USD-only products on hourly data, Open Exchange Rates works. ## Get the fresher free tier 60-second rates, any base currency, conversion endpoint, official SDKs, historical data from €4.99/mo. No credit card. [Get your free API key](https://allratestoday.com/register/)