name: CurrencyBeacon FinOps
description: Financial operations guidance for managing CurrencyBeacon API costs
url: https://currencybeacon.com/pricing
costDrivers:
  - name: Monthly Request Volume
    description: Primary cost driver; all API calls count against monthly quota regardless of endpoint
    unit: requests per month
    notes: REST API and MCP tool calls share the same quota
  - name: Update Frequency
    description: Higher-tier plans provide more frequent data updates, from hourly to real-time
    unit: plan tier
  - name: Feature Access
    description: Timeseries API and base currency switching are only available on Startup and higher plans
    unit: plan tier
costOptimization:
  - tip: Cache exchange rates locally to reduce redundant API calls
    impact: high
  - tip: Use the symbols parameter to fetch only needed currencies rather than all rates
    impact: medium
  - tip: Use the /convert endpoint instead of fetching rates and calculating manually to avoid extra calls
    impact: low
  - tip: Subscribe to annual billing for discounts (Basic saves 17%, Startup saves 24%, Professional saves 10%)
    impact: medium
  - tip: Monitor monthly usage via API dashboard before hitting limits to avoid service interruption
    impact: high
  - tip: For historical data, cache results since past rates do not change
    impact: high
pricing:
  monthly:
    - plan: Developer Sandbox
      price: 0
      requests: 5000
    - plan: Basic
      price: 10
      requests: 50000
    - plan: Startup
      price: 99
      requests: 500000
    - plan: Professional
      price: 599
      requests: 2000000
  annual:
    - plan: Basic
      price: 100
      requests: 50000
      monthlySavings: 20
    - plan: Startup
      price: 900
      requests: 500000
      monthlySavings: 288
    - plan: Professional
      price: 6500
      requests: 2000000
      monthlySavings: 688
  costPerThousandRequests:
    - plan: Basic
      monthly: 0.20
      annual: 0.167
    - plan: Startup
      monthly: 0.198
      annual: 0.15
    - plan: Professional
      monthly: 0.2995
      annual: 0.271