ECB Euro Exchange Rates Scraper — Official FX Reference Rates

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🎯 What this scrapes

This Actor queries the ECB's SDMX 2.1 Data API (data-api.ecb.europa.eu, the EXR reference-rate dataflow) and returns one structured row per (currency, date) observation: date, currency, the EUR-denominated rate, frequency, and the ECB's own quality/status flags.

The ECB doesn't serve a flat table — it serves an index-keyed SDMX-JSON cube that has to be joined against a separate structure block to mean anything, and the series order the API returns is not guaranteed to match the order you requested. Getting that join right — and never silently attaching the wrong rate to the wrong currency — is the actual work this Actor sells.

🔥 What we handle for you

• 🛡️ We rotate browser fingerprints (curl-cffi impersonation) so every request looks like a real browser, not Python.
• 🔁 We retry with exponential backoff on 408 / 429 / 503 and honour Retry-After — up to 5 attempts per page.
• 🌐 We rotate residential proxies through Apify Proxy on every retry — fresh session, fresh exit IP.
• 🧱 We isolate per-series/per-observation failures — one malformed series is skipped and logged, the run keeps going.
• 🧊 We keep the dataset clean — Pydantic-validated rows, nullable fields typed correctly, dimensions resolved by index rather than assumed request order.
• 💰 You pay only for observations that land. A query for a window with no published rates still succeeds — you're never charged for a failed run.

💡 Use cases

• Fintech & payments — reconcile transactions against the official EUR reference rate for a given settlement date.
• Treasury / FP&A — pull historical daily/monthly rates for multi-currency reporting and budgeting.
• Accounting & invoicing tools — attach an authoritative, audit-defensible FX rate to a cross-border invoice.
• Econ research — build long-run time series of ECB reference rates for any published currency.
• Compliance / audit — cite the exact ECB rate (and its status flag) used to convert a historical transaction.

⚙️ How to use it

1. Click Try for free at the top of the page.
2. Set Currencies — ISO-4217 codes against EUR, e.g. USD, GBP.
3. Pick a Frequency — Daily, Monthly, Quarterly, or Annual.
4. Optionally set Start date / End date (YYYY-MM-DD). Leave blank to get the latest published rates.
5. Set Max results (up to 50,000).
6. Click Start. Rows stream into the run's dataset as each series/observation is resolved.
7. Export from Storage → Dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the API.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
currencies	array<string>	no	["USD"]	ISO-4217 currency codes against EUR. At least one.
frequency	string	no	"D"	One of D (daily), M (monthly), Q (quarterly), A (annual).
startDate	string	no	—	YYYY-MM-DD. Omit for the ECB API's default window.
endDate	string	no	—	YYYY-MM-DD. Omit to fetch through the latest published observation.
maxResults	integer	no	1000	Cap on total observation rows across all requested series (1-50,000).
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Apify Proxy configuration.

Example input

{
  "currencies": ["USD", "GBP"],
  "frequency": "D",
  "maxResults": 1000,
  "proxyConfiguration": {"useApifyProxy": true}
}

📤 Output

Every row is one (currency, date) exchange-rate observation.

Field	Type	Notes
date	string	Observation date (YYYY-MM-DD).
currency	string	Resolved currency code (e.g. "USD").
currency_denom	string	Denominating currency — always "EUR" for the EXR dataflow.
rate	number | null	The exchange rate, when published.
frequency	string	Resolved frequency (D, M, Q, or A).
exr_type	string	ECB exchange-rate type (e.g. "SP00" — spot rate).
exr_suffix	string	ECB series-variation suffix (e.g. "A" — average).
obs_status	string | null	ECB observation status/quality flag, when published.
series_key	string	Raw SDMX series key, for traceability.

Example output

{
  "date": "2024-01-02",
  "currency": "USD",
  "currency_denom": "EUR",
  "rate": 1.0956,
  "frequency": "D",
  "exr_type": "SP00",
  "exr_suffix": "A",
  "obs_status": "A",
  "series_key": "0:1:0:0:0"
}

💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire:

Event	USD	What it is
actor-start	$0.20	One-off warm-up charge per run
observation-scraped	$0.002	Per (currency, date) exchange-rate row written to the dataset

Example: 100 observations ≈ $0.40 total per run; at 1,000 rows that's $2.20/1,000 ($0.20 start + 1000 x $0.002). No subscription, no minimum, no card to start — Apify gives every new account free credit.

🚧 Limitations

This Actor covers the ECB's EXR reference-rate dataflow only — other ECB dataflows (BSI, ICP, YC, …) are out of scope for v1. It publishes the ECB's official reference fix, not live/intraday market quotes, and only currencies the ECB itself publishes (cross-rates the ECB does not publish, e.g. USD/GBP, are not derived). Non-trading days (weekends, TARGET holidays) simply have no observation — row counts do not equal the number of calendar days requested.

❓ FAQ

Does this need an ECB account or API key?

No. The ECB's SDMX Data API is free and keyless.

Why doesn't the row count match the number of days I requested?

The ECB doesn't publish a rate on weekends or TARGET holidays — those dates simply have no observation in the response.

What happens if my date window has no published rates?

The run finishes successfully with zero rows and a status message describing the query — you're not charged for a failed run.

Can I get rates between two non-EUR currencies (e.g. USD/GBP)?

Not in v1 — only rates the ECB itself publishes against EUR. Deriving cross-rates is a candidate for a future version.

💬 Your feedback

Spotted a bug, hit a weird edge case, or need another ECB dataflow covered? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab on Apify Console — we ship fixes weekly and we read every report.

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