Open Exchange Rates Pricing vs AllRatesToday: Which Exchange Rate API Is Cheaper in 2026?

Open Exchange Rates' pricing is straightforward on the surface: $12/month Developer, $47/month Enterprise, $97/month Unlimited, plus a Forever Free plan with 1,000 requests/month. The trick is reading what each tier gates.

Several features that most apps need — non-USD base currency, the conversion endpoint, 10-minute updates — are only available starting at Developer or Unlimited. By the time you've unlocked the basics, the monthly cost can exceed what you'd pay for a fully-featured tier elsewhere.

This article compares the two providers' pricing dollar-for-dollar and explains which tier you'd actually land on for common use cases.

Open Exchange Rates' plan breakdown

Key things to notice:

• Real-time-ish data (10-minute updates) only appears on the $97/mo tier.
• Every tier is hourly except Unlimited. There is no "true real-time" tier.
• The conversion endpoint is paid-only — $12/mo minimum.
• Any non-USD base currency requires paid — $12/mo minimum.

What Open Exchange Rates' tiers actually cost to unlock basic features

If your product needs any of these:

• Non-USD base currency (EUR, GBP, INR, AUD, etc.)
• The /api/convert.json endpoint
• Faster than hourly updates

...then the effective floor is:

• $12/month for Developer (non-USD base, conversion endpoint, hourly updates).
• $97/month for Unlimited (10-minute updates).

AllRatesToday's pricing approach

AllRatesToday bundles the features most teams need into every plan — including the free tier:

Paid tiers raise request quotas and add higher rate limits — but no core feature is gated behind them.

Dollar-for-dollar: three real scenarios

Scenario 1: European SaaS pricing display (EUR base, 5,000 lookups/month)

OpenExchangeRates requires Developer plan ($12/mo).

• Free plan fails: USD-only base currency.
• Developer plan: $144/year, 10,000 req/month, hourly updates, any base.

AllRatesToday covers it on the free tier.

• Free plan: 300 req/month + 60-second rates. But 5,000 lookups/month exceeds the free cap.
• With server-side caching (one hourly fetch serves all pageviews): 720 req/month — still over.
• With 5-minute caching: 8,640 req/month — still over.
• Realistic path: a paid plan sized for 5,000-10,000 req/month. For apples-to-apples, call it comparable to OXR Developer.

Verdict: similar total cost, but AllRatesToday ships 60-second updates vs OXR hourly. You pay the same and get fresher data.

Scenario 2: US e-commerce checkout (USD base, 2,000 lookups/month)

OpenExchangeRates Free works.

• USD-only base is fine for a US product.
• 1,000 req/month limit → either cache aggressively or upgrade to Developer ($12/mo).

AllRatesToday's free tier is tight at 2,000 lookups/month.

• Same deal: cache aggressively or use a small paid tier.

Verdict: OXR Free is cheaper here if you can fit in 1,000 req/month and don't care about hourly vs 60-second. Otherwise costs are similar.

Scenario 3: Analytics dashboard with year-to-date historical (1 year × 5 pairs, reloaded 50x/day)

OpenExchangeRates:

• time-series.json counts 1 request per day returned.
• 365 days × 5 pairs × 50 loads/day × 30 days = 2,737,500 requests/month.
• This is well beyond Unlimited's "unlimited" threshold in practice (expect throttling/pricing conversation).

AllRatesToday:

• historical-rates counts 1 request per range.
• 5 pairs × 50 loads/day × 30 days = 7,500 requests/month.

Verdict: 365x less quota consumption for the same user experience.

Per-feature cost rollup

For each feature, here's the minimum monthly cost to unlock it:

When Open Exchange Rates' pricing is competitive

• You're building a USD-only product (US e-commerce, US SaaS, US fintech).
• Hourly data is acceptable.
• You don't need the conversion endpoint.
• You already have an Open Exchange Rates integration and churn isn't worth a few dollars saved.

When AllRatesToday is the clear price winner

• Any product whose home currency isn't USD.
• Anything where fresher-than-hourly data matters.
• Analytics/dashboards that pull historical ranges.
• Teams that use AI coding assistants and want MCP integration.