How to Download Historical Exchange Rates as CSV with a Free API

Developers and spreadsheet users often need historical exchange rates for reporting, bookkeeping, ecommerce reconciliation, or dashboards.

The usual workflow is awkward:

• Search a currency converter.
• Copy a single number.
• Repeat for many dates.
• Paste everything into a spreadsheet.

This tutorial shows a simpler workflow using FXpeek's free JSON and CSV endpoints.

1. Get The Latest Reference Rate

curl 'https://fxpeek.com/api/rates?from=CNY&to=TRY'

Example response:

{
  "from": "CNY",
  "to": "TRY",
  "rate": 6.789,
  "timestamp": 1780576363130
}

2. Get A Historical Series

curl 'https://fxpeek.com/api/history?from=CNY&to=TRY&days=365'

Use this when you want to build:

• A chart
• A dashboard
• A report
• A validation script
• A lightweight finance tool

3. Download CSV For Excel Or Google Sheets

curl -L 'https://fxpeek.com/api/csv?from=CNY&to=TRY&days=365' \
  -o cny-try-history.csv

CSV output:

date,base,target,rate
2026-05-28,CNY,TRY,6.7699
2026-05-29,CNY,TRY,6.7811
2026-06-01,CNY,TRY,6.7839

4. Use It In JavaScript

async function getHistory(from, to, days = 365) {
  const url = new URL('https://fxpeek.com/api/history');
  url.searchParams.set('from', from);
  url.searchParams.set('to', to);
  url.searchParams.set('days', String(days));

  const res = await fetch(url);
  if (!res.ok) {
    throw new Error(`FX API error: ${res.status}`);
  }
  return res.json();
}

const history = await getHistory('CNY', 'TRY', 30);
console.log(history.rates);

5. Use It In Python

import requests
import pandas as pd

url = "https://fxpeek.com/api/history"
params = {"from": "CNY", "to": "TRY", "days": 365}

data = requests.get(url, params=params, timeout=20).json()
df = pd.DataFrame(data["rates"])
df.to_csv("cny-try-history.csv", index=False)

Notes

FXpeek provides reference rates for historical lookup, spreadsheets, reports, and lightweight apps. These are not transaction quotes.

API docs:

https://fxpeek.com/en/api?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=fxpeek_wave1_api_csv&utm_content=csv_tutorial

Example pair page:

https://fxpeek.com/en/cny-to-try?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=fxpeek_wave1_api_csv&utm_content=pair_page

Good Next Steps

• Add a date picker.
• Cache the API result.
• Build a chart with Recharts or Chart.js.
• Export monthly averages.
• Combine rates with ecommerce order data.