Central Bank Rates MCP Server — @allratestoday/central-bank-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 60+ institutions — 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.

🚀 Why this server?

• 🏛️ 100+ official sources — 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 — pairs a bank doesn't publish directly are cross-computed only within that bank's own table and flagged derived; banks are never mixed
• 🔓 Works with no API key — installs and answers out of the box; the latest published table of every source is open
• 🧰 Five 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

🔓 Keyless mode — what works with no setup

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

| Tool | Keyless | What you get | |---|---|---| | list_central_banks | ✅ | Every covered institution, from a catalogue bundled with the package (no coverage dates). | | get_official_rates | ✅ | The latest published table of any source, or one pair from it, with the publisher's own rate_date. | | get_official_rates with a date | 🔑 | One sentence explaining how to get a key. | | get_official_rate_history | 🔑 | Same. | | compare_official_rates | 🔑 | Same. | | get_publication_calendar | 🔑 | Same. |

The keyless path reads the open, edge-cached /api/open/central-bank/{bank} endpoint — free to use with a visible attribution link back to allratestoday.com (the exact wording ships in each response's attribution field).

🔑 Get your API key (free)

A key adds historical dates, time series, cross-bank comparison and publication calendars. The free tier covers the latest published tables and light historical use — no credit card required. Deep history and dated tables need a paid plan.

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 on stderr and keeps running — it never exits, because an MCP server that exits breaks the host client's whole configuration.

🧩 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.

📦 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 -- npx -y @allratestoday/central-bank-mcp
claude mcp env central-bank-rates ALLRATES_API_KEY=art_live_xxxxx

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

| Tool | What it does | Plan | |---|---|---| | list_central_banks | All covered institutions with codes, metadata, latest date | Free (keyless: bundled catalogue) | | get_official_rates | A bank's published table (or one pair), latest or for a given date | Keyless (latest) / Paid (dated) | | get_official_rate_history | Date-by-date official series for one pair | Paid, billed ~1 call per month covered | | compare_official_rates | One pair across every bank, with spread stats | Free (key required) | | get_publication_calendar | Dates a bank actually published (no values) | Free (key required) |

🔒 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

License

MIT © AllRatesToday