Central Bank Rates (AllRatesToday)

What Central Bank Rates (AllRatesToday) does

Central Bank Rates (AllRatesToday) provides MCP tools for retrieving official exchange rates published by central banks and tax authorities. Coverage includes 121 central banks and three tax authorities, including institutions such as the ECB, Federal Reserve, Bank of Japan, HMRC, and the US Treasury. The returned values are official published figures, not live mid-market prices.

The Central Bank Rates (AllRatesToday) MCP server is suited to tax calculations, accounting records, customs work, compliance checks, and audits where the applicable published rate and its publication date matter. For a requested historical date, the service can identify the rate that was legally in force, including a prior publication when the requested date falls on a weekend or holiday.

How it works

The package can be launched as a local stdio process with npx or a global installation. An MCP client starts the process and sends tool calls to it. A hosted Streamable HTTP endpoint is also available at https://allratestoday.com/api/mcp, allowing supported remote-MCP clients to connect without installing the package.

Without configuration, the server can list its bundled institution catalogue and retrieve the latest published table for a source or currency pair. These keyless requests use an open AllRatesToday endpoint and include an attribution field. An API key unlocks dated tables, historical series, cross-bank comparisons, and publication calendars. The key is passed as ALLRATES_API_KEY for local use, or as a bearer token or URL parameter for the hosted endpoint.

Derived currency pairs are calculated within an individual institution's own table and marked as derived. Rates from different banks are not combined to produce those values.

Setup and configuration

Run the local server with:

npx -y @allratestoday/central-bank-mcp

Alternatively, install it globally with npm install -g @allratestoday/central-bank-mcp and start central-bank-mcp. Register the command in the MCP client's server configuration. Cursor and Claude Desktop use an mcpServers entry with npx, the package name, and an optional ALLRATES_API_KEY environment value. Claude Code can add the server with claude mcp add and set the key with claude mcp env.

Create an account at AllRatesToday to obtain a key in the art_live_xxxxx format. The README states that the free tier covers latest tables and light historical use, while deep history and dated tables may require a paid plan. The server remains running when no key is configured and reports the available keyless mode on stderr.

Tools and capabilities

The Central Bank Rates (AllRatesToday) MCP server exposes five focused tools:

• list_central_banks returns covered institutions, codes, metadata, and latest dates.
• get_official_rates retrieves a source's published table or a single pair, either latest or dated when authorized.
• get_official_rate_history returns a date-by-date official series for one currency pair.
• compare_official_rates checks one pair across covered banks and returns minimum, maximum, median, and spread statistics.
• get_publication_calendar lists dates on which a bank published rates, without returning rate values.

The local server uses MCP 1.x over stdio. The hosted service uses Streamable HTTP and combines these tools with the sibling AllRatesToday server's tools.

Limitations and notes

This service should not be used when the requirement is a live market or mid-market conversion rate; the README directs those use cases to a separate AllRatesToday MCP server. Keyless access is limited: historical dates, rate history, comparisons, and publication calendars require an API key. The latest open tables are available without one.

Only request parameters and the API key are sent to AllRatesToday according to the README; conversation context is not sent. Coverage and publication dates belong to the underlying institutions, so a source may not publish every day. The comparison tool requires a key even though it is listed as free to use, and deeper historical access may depend on the account plan.