South African Reserve Bank Exchange Rates API — sarb-exchange-rate

Official South African Reserve Bank (South Africa) daily exchange rates for Node.js and TypeScript. The published central bank rates behind tax filings, customs valuations, audits, and compliant invoicing — not market estimates, but the numbers South African Reserve Bank itself prints, every business day.

🚀 Why this client?

• 🏛️ Official published rates — South African Reserve Bank's own table, with the publisher's own rate_date on every response
• 📅 History back to 2000 — point-in-time tables and daily series for any past date
• 🔀 Published vs derived, always flagged — computed inverse/cross pairs carry derived: true, never mixed with official prints
• ⚡ Zero dependencies — pure ESM + CJS over global fetch; Node 18+, Bun, Deno, and edge runtimes
• 🔷 Type-safe — full TypeScript definitions shipped with the package
• 🧾 Compliance-grade metadata — rate_type, publication date, and source disclaimer on every response

Official rate, not mid-market: every value here is a number South African Reserve Bank itself published, fixed once printed and carrying the central bank's own rate_date — what filings and audits require. Need the live mid-market rate for pricing or display instead? Use the mid-market API or @allratestoday/sdk. The two can diverge by several percent.

🔑 Get your API key

Get a free API key at allratestoday.com/register — no credit card required. Latest rates are on every plan, including free.

📈 Latest published table

The image is rendered live from the keyless endpoint, so it follows the central bank's publications on npm and on GitHub alike without a new release. The same table as text is folded below for search and copy-paste: on GitHub a daily Action refreshes it whenever the central bank publishes a new table; on npm it is as of the package's publish date.

Base	Quote	Type	Rate
EUR	ZAR	reference	18.6313
GBP	ZAR	reference	22.3275
USD	ZAR	reference	16.6418
ZAR	AUD	reference	0.0861
ZAR	BRL	reference	0.3267
ZAR	BWP	reference	0.8283
ZAR	CAD	reference	0.0839
ZAR	CHF	reference	0.0491
ZAR	CNY	reference	0.4012
ZAR	DKK	reference	0.4012
ZAR	HKD	reference	0.4714
ZAR	ILS	reference	0.1898
ZAR	INR	reference	5.6902
ZAR	JPY	reference	9.4909
ZAR	KES	reference	7.8087
ZAR	KRW	reference	80.6482
ZAR	MWK	reference	104.1961
ZAR	NOK	reference	0.5561
ZAR	NZD	reference	0.1069
ZAR	SEK	reference	0.5881
ZAR	THB	reference	2.0274
ZAR	TWD	reference	1.9699

Source: Official rates published by SARB, served by AllRatesToday. Rates are as printed by the central bank; AllRatesToday is not affiliated with it.

📦 Installation

npm install sarb-exchange-rate

yarn add sarb-exchange-rate

pnpm add sarb-exchange-rate

Requires Node 18+ (global fetch); also runs on Bun, Deno and edge runtimes. Also published under the org scope as @allratestoday/sarb-exchange-rate — same code, same versions.

🏁 Quick start

import { getRate } from 'sarb-exchange-rate';

const pair = await getRate('USD', 'ZAR', { apiKey: 'art_live_...' });
console.log(pair.rate, pair.rate_date); // the official South African Reserve Bank rate, on the central bank's own date

📚 API reference

• Latest pair rate — one pair from the latest published table
• Full published table — everything the central bank printed, in one call
• Table for a date — the official table for an invoice or filing date
• Daily time series — one pair across a date range

---

Latest pair rate

Free plan and up. Pairs the central bank does not print directly are resolved from its table and flagged (see Published vs derived rates below).

const pair = await getRate('USD', 'ZAR', { apiKey: 'art_live_...' });

Response:

{
  bank: 'sarb',
  name: 'South African Reserve Bank',
  rate_date: '2026-10-14',   // South African Reserve Bank's own publication date
  source: 'USD',
  target: 'ZAR',
  rate: 16.4706,
  rate_type: 'reference',
  derived: false,
  method: 'published',
  disclaimer: 'Official rates as published by the named central bank. On weekends/holidays the most recent published rate_date is returned.'
}

Full published table

Free plan and up. The complete table for the latest publication date.

import { getLatestRates } from 'sarb-exchange-rate';

const table = await getLatestRates({ apiKey: 'art_live_...' });
console.log(table.rate_date, table.rates.length);

Response:

{
  bank: 'sarb',
  name: 'South African Reserve Bank',
  rate_date: '2026-10-14',
  rates: [
    { "base": "USD", "quote": "ZAR", "type": "reference", "value": 16.4706 },
    // … the rest of the published table (23 currencies vs ZAR)
  ],
  disclaimer: '…'
}

Table for a date

Paid plans. The official table for any date since 2000 — weekends and holidays return the most recent published date, flagged via published_on_requested_date, which is exactly the in-force rate a filing needs.

import { getRatesForDate } from 'sarb-exchange-rate';

const day = await getRatesForDate('2026-06-30', { apiKey: 'art_live_...' });
// Optionally narrow to one pair:
const one = await getRatesForDate('2026-06-30', { apiKey: 'art_live_...', source: 'USD', target: 'ZAR' });

Response:

{
  bank: 'sarb',
  requested_date: '2026-06-30',
  rate_date: '2026-06-30',                // the date actually published
  published_on_requested_date: true,      // false when a weekend/holiday fell back
  rates: [ /* the full table for that date */ ],
  disclaimer: '…'
}

Daily time series

Paid plans. One resolved rate per publication date — ready for charting, revaluation runs, or audit workpapers.

import { getHistory } from 'sarb-exchange-rate';

const series = await getHistory(
  { source: 'USD', target: 'ZAR', from: '2026-01-01', to: '2026-10-14' },
  { apiKey: 'art_live_...' }
);

Response:

{
  bank: 'sarb',
  source: 'USD',
  target: 'ZAR',
  from: '2026-01-01',
  to: '2026-10-14',
  count: 152,
  rates: [
    // one entry per publication date
    { date: '2026-10-14', rate: 16.4706, rate_type: 'reference', derived: false, method: 'published' },
    // …
  ],
  disclaimer: '…'
}

Pass { symbol: 'USD' } instead of source/target to get the raw published rows for one currency (all rate types, no pair resolution).

---

🗺️ Currencies covered

South African Reserve Bank currently publishes rates covering 23 currencies against the ZAR (as of the latest table):

🇦🇺 AUD · 🇧🇷 BRL · 🇧🇼 BWP · 🇨🇦 CAD · 🇨🇭 CHF · 🇨🇳 CNY · 🇩🇰 DKK · 🇪🇺 EUR · 🇬🇧 GBP · 🇭🇰 HKD · 🇮🇱 ILS · 🇮🇳 INR · 🇯🇵 JPY · 🇰🇪 KES · 🇰🇷 KRW · 🇲🇼 MWK · 🇳🇴 NOK · 🇳🇿 NZD · 🇸🇪 SEK · 🇹🇭 THB · 🇹🇼 TWD · 🇺🇸 USD · 🇿🇲 ZMW

🏛️ Source

The South African Reserve Bank publishes daily weighted-average exchange rates for the rand — computed from the banks' foreign exchange transactions at around 10:30 SAST — covering more than 20 currencies including major African crosses.

• Publisher's own page: Selected historical exchange rates · www.resbank.co.za
• Publication: every business day; the exact schedule, freshness status and any current delay are on the South African Reserve Bank rates page
• In the API: usually by 10:15 UTC (measured over the last 11 publications). Schedule a sync at or after that time and retry hourly until rate_date moves; every response carries the same figure as available_by_utc — see when to poll
• Values are stored unmodified, with the publisher's own rate_date on every row — see the methodology

🧭 Reading the numbers

• value is always quote currency per 1 unit of base currency (base: "EUR", quote: "USD", value: 1.15 means 1 EUR = 1.15 USD).
• South African Reserve Bank quotes ZAR per 1 unit of foreign currency (e.g. base: "USD", quote: "ZAR" means ZAR per one US dollar).
• Need the other way round? Ask getRate(target, source) and the API inverts or crosses for you, flagged derived: true — never divide a published rate yourself in a compliance workflow.
• rate_type tells you which of the central bank's series a row belongs to (reference here); some publishers print buy/sell or several fixings for the same pair.

🧩 ERP & accounting systems

Loading the official South African Reserve Bank rate into an accounting system is a supported workflow, not a hack. Step-by-step guides with the direction each system expects:

• Dynamics 365 Business Central — built-in Currency Exchange Rate Service, no code
• Xero · QuickBooks Online · SAP S/4HANA and ECC · Odoo

The same keyed endpoints return ?format=csv, ?format=xml and ?format=xlsx, and accept the key as ?api_key= on the URL for importers that cannot send headers:

curl "https://allratestoday.com/api/v1/central-bank/sarb/latest?format=xml&api_key=art_live_..."

🤖 AI agents

• MCP server: npx -y @allratestoday/central-bank-mcp (stdio) or the hosted endpoint https://allratestoday.com/api/mcp — tools for official rates, history, cross-bank comparison and publication calendars
• Already using the general SDK or MCP server? Since 2026-10-01 @allratestoday/sdk 1.4+ has officialRates('sarb') and @allratestoday/mcp-server 0.6+ has a get_official_rates tool — both return this source's latest table with no key, so you can add it without a second dependency
• Claude Code plugin (no key): /plugin marketplace add AllRates-Today/claude-code-plugin then /plugin install allratestoday@allratestoday — bundles both MCP servers plus an /official-rate sarb ... command
• Evaluating? Agents can self-issue a trial key with no signup: POST https://allratestoday.com/api/agent/keys (send Content-Type: application/json) returns a 100-call key valid 7 days that covers the free-plan methods (latest table, pairs); dated tables and history need a paid plan. The MCP servers expose it as request_trial_key
• Machine-readable site guide: llms.txt · for-ai-agents

⚖️ Published vs derived rates

If South African Reserve Bank does not print a pair directly, the API resolves it from the central bank's own table and says so — official and computed values are never confused:

method	derived	Meaning
published	false	The central bank printed this pair directly
inverse	true	Computed as 1 ÷ the published opposite direction
cross	true	Computed via ZAR from two published rates

🛡️ Error handling

Errors are thrown as Error with status (HTTP code) and body (the API's JSON error) attached:

try {
  const pair = await getRate('USD', 'XXX', { apiKey: 'art_live_...' });
} catch (err) {
  console.log(err.message); // human-readable reason
  console.log(err.status);  // e.g. 404
}

Status	Meaning
—	Missing apiKey (thrown before any request)
400	Malformed date or parameters
401	Invalid API key
403	Endpoint needs a paid plan (historical dates & series)
404	Pair or date range not covered by South African Reserve Bank
429	Monthly quota exceeded

🔷 TypeScript

Full definitions ship with the package — no @types install:

import type { LatestRates, PairRate, DatedRates, RateEntry, HistoryQuery, RequestOptions } from 'sarb-exchange-rate';

📦 CommonJS

const { getRate } = require('sarb-exchange-rate');

getRate('USD', 'ZAR', { apiKey: 'art_live_...' }).then((pair) => console.log(pair.rate));

💡 Quota tips

• Rates change once per business day — cache the published table locally and a small monthly quota goes a long way.
• Every request counts toward your AllRatesToday quota, shared across all AllRatesToday endpoints on your key.

📖 Methods reference

Method	Plan	Description
getRate(source, target, { apiKey })	Free	Latest rate for one pair, resolved from the published table
getLatestRates({ apiKey })	Free	The central bank's full latest published table
getRatesForDate(date, { apiKey, source?, target? })	Paid	The official table (or one pair) for a YYYY-MM-DD date
getHistory({ symbol | source+target, from?, to? }, { apiKey })	Paid	Daily series since 2000

📥 Bulk data (no key)

Need the whole archive rather than an API call? The same published tables are mirrored daily as open data:

• Hugging Face: AllRatesToday/central-bank-exchange-rates — one CSV per institution (rates/sarb.csv)
• Kaggle: allratestoday/central-bank-exchange-rates
• Raw JSON on GitHub: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AllRates-Today/central-bank-exchange-rates/main/data/sarb/latest.json

🔗 Links

• Website: allratestoday.com
• South African Reserve Bank rates page — live table, publication cadence, FAQ
• All central bank sources
• Download central bank rates — every bank's latest table and history as Excel, CSV or JSON
• Package docs on the site · ERP integration guides
• API documentation · Interactive reference · Methodology
• Register (Free) · Dashboard · Pricing
• Status
• Postman collection
• ChatGPT app — ask ChatGPT for live and official central bank rates
• GitHub

📜 License

MIT