Central Bank Rates MCP Server — @allratestoday/central-bank-mcp

Website: https://allratestoday.com/central-bank-rates-api/ · Hosted endpoint (no install): https://allratestoday.com/api/mcp · Docs: https://allratestoday.com/mcp/

Give your AI assistant the official exchange rates that compliance, tax, and accounting actually require. A Model Context Protocol server that lets Claude Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop, Windsurf, and any MCP-compatible client fetch published central-bank and tax-authority rates from 130+ central banks and tax authorities — ECB, Fed, Bank of Japan, HMRC, US Treasury, and more — via the AllRatesToday API.

After installation, your assistant can answer questions like:

• "What is the ECB's official USD/EUR rate today?"

• "What HMRC rate should I use for this March invoice?"

• "Show me the Bank of Japan's official rate for every day of Q1."

• "Compare the official USD/LKR rate across every central bank that publishes one."

⚖️ Official rates vs mid-market rates

Everything this server returns is an official published rate: fixed once the institution publishes it, carrying that institution's own publication date — the number tax authorities, auditors, and customs require. It is not the live market rate. For live mid-market rates (price display, conversion, anything that should track the market), use the companion server @allratestoday/mcp-server. The two can diverge by several percent — pick by use case. Methodology: allratestoday.com/official-rates-methodology.

Related MCP server: plinth-fx-mcp

🚀 Why this server?

• 🏛️ 130+ central banks and tax authorities — central banks (ECB, Fed, BOJ, SNB, RBI, …) plus tax authorities (HMRC, US Treasury, …), each served from its own published tables

• 📅 Point-in-time correctness — ask for any date; weekends and holidays roll back to the rate legally in force, and the response tells you which publication date applied

• 📊 Cross-bank comparison — one call returns every institution's rate for a pair, with min/max/median and spread stats

• 🧮 Honest derivations — with an API key, pairs a bank doesn't publish directly are cross-computed only within that bank's own table and flagged derived; banks are never mixed. Keyless serves only published pairs and their inverses

• 🔓 Works with no API key — installs and answers out of the box; the latest published table of every source is open

• 🧰 Six focused tools — small surface, easy for the model to use correctly

• 🔌 Works everywhere MCP does — stdio transport, MCP 1.x; Claude Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop, Windsurf, or any generic host

🔑 Get your API key (free)

A free key adds cross-bank comparison, cross-computed pairs and publication calendars — free, no credit card required. Dated (historical) tables and time series need a paid plan: free and trial keys get a 403 for them.

1. Register at allratestoday.com/register — 30 seconds

2. Verify your email

3. Copy your key from the dashboard (format: art_live_xxxxx)

4. Use it as ALLRATES_API_KEY in the configs below

Without one the server prints a short summary of keyless mode (below) on stderr and keeps running — it never exits, because an MCP server that exits breaks the host client's whole configuration.

🔓 Keyless mode — what works with no setup

Install it with no configuration at all and it starts, connects, and answers:

The keyless path reads the open, edge-cached /api/open/central-bank/{bank} endpoint (the exact attribution wording also ships in each response's attribution field).

Attribution. Keyless use requires a visible, followable link to AllRatesToday wherever the rates are shown (a footer, an about page, a README). With an API key it is appreciated but not required.

<a href="https://allratestoday.com">Exchange rates by AllRatesToday</a>

Markdown: Exchange rates by [AllRatesToday](https://allratestoday.com). Full wording: https://allratestoday.com/terms/#attribution.

🧩 Easiest install: the Claude Code plugin

If you use Claude Code, install the plugin instead of configuring this server by hand — it bundles both AllRatesToday MCP servers, two skills, and five slash commands (/rate, /convert, /official-rate, /fx-history, /add-currency-support):

/plugin marketplace add AllRates-Today/claude-code-plugin
/plugin install allratestoday@allratestoday

Everything below still applies for other MCP clients.

☁️ Hosted endpoint — nothing to install

The same six tools also run as a hosted Streamable HTTP MCP server, together with the five tools of the sibling AllRatesToday server — eleven in total on the hosted endpoint (this npm package itself exposes six). Paste the URL into any client that supports remote MCP — Claude.ai and Claude Desktop connectors, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, Codex, Gemini CLI:

https://allratestoday.com/api/mcp

claude mcp add --transport http allratestoday https://allratestoday.com/api/mcp

Works keyless. With a key, send Authorization: Bearer art_live_… or, where the client only takes a URL, connect to https://allratestoday.com/api/mcp?api_key=art_live_…. Registry name: com.allratestoday/mcp. One-click Cursor / VS Code buttons: https://allratestoday.com/mcp/#hosted

📦 Installation

# Run without installing (recommended)
npx -y @allratestoday/central-bank-mcp

# Or install globally
npm install -g @allratestoday/central-bank-mcp
central-bank-mcp

Both commands launch the stdio MCP server and wait for a client to connect — your MCP client launches them as a subprocess.

🏁 Quick setup per client

Claude Code

claude mcp add central-bank-rates -e ALLRATES_API_KEY=art_live_xxxxx -- npx -y @allratestoday/central-bank-mcp

Restart Claude Code. Verify by asking: "Which central banks can you fetch official rates from?"

Cursor

Edit ~/.cursor/mcp.json (or .cursor/mcp.json inside your project):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "central-bank-rates": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@allratestoday/central-bank-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "ALLRATES_API_KEY": "art_live_xxxxx"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop

Edit claude_desktop_config.json (Settings → Developer → Edit Config) and add the same mcpServers block as the Cursor example above, then restart Claude Desktop.

🧰 Tools

🔒 Privacy

Only the request parameters and your API key ever reach allratestoday.com — never conversation context.

📚 More from AllRatesToday

• Central bank REST API docs

• Per-bank npm SDKs

• @allratestoday/mcp-server — live mid-market rates MCP server

• Open data archive — the same published tables mirrored daily: Hugging Face · Kaggle (CC BY-NC 4.0)

🔗 Links

• API Documentation

• Download central bank rates — every bank's tables as Excel, CSV or JSON

• Register (Free)

• Dashboard

• Status

• Postman collection

• ChatGPT app — ask ChatGPT for live and official central bank rates

• OpenAPI reference on Bump.sh — also on SwaggerHub

• GitHub

License

MIT © AllRatesToday