There are plenty of websites online that are able to give you a quick and easy conversion from one currency to another, but sometimes that doesn’t meet your needs. It is fine if you want to know what the exchange rate is today, but supposing you want to find out what the exchange rate was between the Algerian dinar and the Indian rupee on the 15th May two years ago?
If that sounds like more what you’re after, you need to find a website which will let you check into historical exchange rates as well as current ones. Here is a breakdown of the top eight websites that will let you do just that.
Oanda is a world famous website which appeals to different people for different reasons. Travellers use it to find exchange rates for the country they are visiting; business people use it on a daily basis, and traders also make good use of the wide range of information available on the site.
The historical exchange rates section is very easy to reach from the home page. If you look at the centre of the page you will see three circular pale green symbols. The second one down represents the FXHistory section, which gives you access to the historical exchange rates.
The next page will display an easy to understand form that needs to be filled in with the exact information in order to display the results you require. Firstly you need to enter the starting and ending dates you need. The date format is automatically displayed in American style, with the month before the day, but you can select the normal British way of writing down the date as well.
You then need to select your two currencies and enter the currency codes below each one if you know them. This is not required however. Once this step is complete you need to indicate which rate you want to see the results for. The basic choices are the Interbank rate, the credit card rate (plus 2%) and the cash card rate (plus 4%). You can select the Interbank rate plus your choice of percentage.
The final choice is what format you want the table to appear in, and once you hit the ‘get table’ button you will be able to see the results of your search. The table includes a helpful key to explain how to read it, which states plainly and simply what each figure means. You will see an average figure, plus a high and a low figure which were relevant for that day or period.
The Oanda site is extremely user friendly and there is a lot of supporting information and advice to help you get the most from your visit. You can find the site at http://www.oanda.com.
This free site is a joy to use and launches straight into an up to the minute currency converter on its home page. If you need historical rates they are very easy to find; all you need to do is go to the menu bar at the top of the page and hover your mouse over the Tools section. A drop down menu will appear, showing you the ‘current and historical rate tables’ option. Click on this and you will see an easy to use historical exchange rates table appear for you to use.
This is slightly different to the service offered by Oanda, as you only have the option to select one currency. Once you have done this you need to select the date that you want to see the relevant table for. You can select a date right back to the beginning of 1995 if you wish.
You then need to select whether you want to receive your results according to the name of the country, or according to the currency code it uses. The currency code is the simple three letter code used in stock exchanges and when working out exchange rates. You can also opt to include currencies which existed before the Euro came into being.
You will then receive a table which lists over ninety different currencies and what the exchange rate was between the currency you selected and every other currency in the list on the day you selected in the past few years. It also shows the exchange rate both ways – so for example on 28th April 1999 a single US dollar was worth sixty one pence compared to the British pound, and a single pound would get you one dollar and sixty one cents.
You are free to create as many historical tables as you like on this site, and they are very easy to read and understand when they appear. You can visit the site at http://www.xe.com.
This website is a very plain looking site compared to the previous two, but it is no less accessible or user friendly for that. In fact it is one of the easiest ones to use when it comes to looking up historical exchange rates.
When you enter the home page you need to look at the top left hand side of the page, where you will see a small menu box. Click on the link which says ‘Historic Lookup’ and the next page will load, giving you a small box which allows you to look up the exchange rate you need.
This site is simplicity itself, as there are only five drop down boxes you need to fill in. The first two are the currencies – your base currency and the currency you want to see the conversion for. The other three boxes relate to the specific day you want the information for, and you can go right back as far as 1990 here.
When your results are shown you will see a cluster of five consecutive days appearing, with your chosen day highlighted in pale green. This gives some indication of the typical rates on other days nearby as well. You can also see how the exchange rate worked in the opposite direction with a simple click of your mouse – so instead of seeing how many dollars your British pound will buy you, you can see how far your dollar would go instead.
There are a number of other options you can select at this stage; graphs showing monthly trends and more accurate graphs showing the day to day trend over a longer period of time can also be accessed if you require a more detailed look at historical exchange rates.
X-rates.com is an excellent site – don’t be taken in by its basic look because the information is second to none. Take a look for yourself by visiting http://www.x-rates.com.
This website is quite new to the world of historical exchange rates, and as such they want to shout about it. When you arrive on their home page you will immediately see a green bar across the centre of the page, proclaiming their brand new web tool for checking out exchange rates that were in effect on different dates in the past.
The actual calculator itself is very similar in design to the one on X-rates.com, and is similarly easy to use. The information you are required to enter is exactly the same, but the main difference here is that you will see a graph appearing the second you reach the page. The example data given as standard is the exchange rate between the Euro and the dollar for the current day, which appears below the drop down boxes (along with the previous two days as well), and the graph on the right hand side will also show the average exchange rates for each month of the current year.
When you have entered the information you want the graph will change to reflect that, giving you an instant picture of how the economics were set between two countries as far back as 1990.
The quick, simple and efficient layout of Go Currency’s historical exchange rates calculator makes light work of finding the data you need. To see it for yourself, pay a visit to http://www.gocurrency.com.
If it’s exchange rates you want, you can’t do much better than to visit the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. This solid and functional website gives a great deal of information about many economic matters, and while most of these are current the site also has a facility for you to search for historical exchange rates.
The historical rates aren’t that easy to find at first glance, but once you are in the right section they become clear. Hover your mouse over the ‘markets’ tab in the top menu bar and you will see a drop down menu box appear. You then need to click on the Foreign Exchange option (the top one in the list) to be taken into that section. Once you are there, scroll down and look for the box on the right hand side of the page which is headed Historical Data. The first option is for the historical search, and that’s the one you need to click on.
This site approaches the data in a slightly different way, and it provides information from as far back as 1993. Firstly you select your two dates to indicate the beginning and end of the period in which you want your exchange rates for, and then you select the currency you want. The US dollar is not listed since you are requesting the exchange rate between the dollar and whatever other currency you have in mind. You cannot alter the default currency from the dollar.
Instead of typing in the dates you want, you click on the small calendar button and use the small calendar box to select the appropriate dates. When you click on the go button you will receive the results you have requested in a table.
Each separate date between the two dates you have selected will have a single exchange rate figure next to it, depicting the rates which applied at either 10am or noon, depending on which one you selected on the previous page. This data can be exported into an Excel document should you wish to make use of it for your work.
The site is comprehensive and easy to use once you find the link to the historical exchange rates page, and there is certainly plenty of other information to read and digest should you need it. For a closer look, visit http://newyorkfed.org.
The Bank of Canada website may look a little daunting at first, but don’t be deceived. There are two sections to the menu bar – one in a tan colour and one in sea green, and it’s the green one you need. Simply look for the tab that says Rates and Statistics, and hover over it to see the options you have. All you need to do then is click on the exchange rates option.
On the next page you will see a menu on the left hand side of the page which gives you an idea of the vast number of statistics you can get hold of through this site.
Now you actually have two options here. The first option is to select the daily noon rates of the currency you want on whatever date you are looking at within the past ten years. Simply enter the dates you want – whether it is a single day or a particular group of days – scroll down to select the country you want the exchange rate for (remember that this will be against the Canadian dollar) and scroll back up to hit the ‘get rates’ button. You will then see what the exchange rate was on that date.
If you select a number of dates – say for example over the course of a fortnight – you will see a result for each separate date, with the exchange rate from one currency to the other and also in reverse. The website also displays the low, average and high results for that period, with the relevant dates written down for you to take note of.
The second option you have is to select the ten year currency converter. This allows you to choose other currencies, so if the exchange rate you need doesn’t involve the Canadian dollar then you should select this option.
So all you need to do is indicate the two currencies you require the exchange rate for, and enter the dates you need data for. The next page will then give you a complete rundown of all the data in existence for those dates, not including weekends or Bank Holidays. You will also easily be able to tell what the lowest and highest exchange rates were, since the relevant dates will appear with those words written next to them.
The Bank of Canada website provides data going back to 1998, and covers around fifty five different currencies. Its historical rates options are more limited in terms of the time span than some other sites cover, but the two different options you have for actually finding the data you need make it a good bet for keeping handy when you need to look back at exchange rates which applied several months or even years ago.
To try it for yourself, visit the Bank of Canada website at http://bankofcanada.ca.
It seems that many of the currency converter sites actually have a very simplistic look about them, and the International Currency Converter website is certainly one of those.
The home page doesn’t require any scrolling, since all the basic information is included within the first screen you see. Reaching the section which shows you the historical exchange rates is simplicity itself – all you need to do is hover your mouse over the Services section of the menu bar and you will see a drop down box appear, which gives you the option of going to the historical rates page.
Once you are there, you will see two options which set this particular website apart from all the others we have seen so far. The first option is rather familiar. You simply select your base currency and the currency you want to get the exchange rates for when compared to the first one, and fill in the appropriate dates for the period you want.
When you get your results you will see that you get a ‘potted history’ of the dates you specified. The high and low points of the particular exchange rate between the two currencies you selected will be indicated, along with the average taken from the dates given. There is also a button you can click on to do the same calculation in reverse.
But what sets this site apart from the others is that they give you a quick query option as well. You will need to know the ISO codes (currency codes) for each currency you want to use, but if you don’t know them you simply need to click on the link below the quick query section which lets you check the availability of data for the various currencies. You will find them all listed on that page – along with their currency codes, which all consist of three letters.
This is certainly a quick and efficient way to grab some data for a specific date if one day is all you are interested in; just make sure you enter the date in the British format, with the day appearing before the month.
This site is definitely one to have saved in your bookmarks if you frequently find yourself needing to know the historical exchange rates for a particular day or period. Try out the system yourself by visiting http://iccfx.com.
Of all the sites we have reviewed, this one is perhaps the most basic looking. But this doesn’t mean the information within it is any less valuable.
Fxtop.com gives you a currency converter for your up to date rates right on the home page, and it lists the most common currencies people want to get conversions for. To find historic rates for times that have gone by, you need to check the left hand side of the home page for the link that says ‘historic rates’.
This will take you into a page where you can work out the exchange rate which applied on any day and in any date range going right back to 1990. You simply select your first and second currencies and the required dates you have in mind, and hit the Go button. You can also opt to get the monthly averages if applicable and if you want them.
When your results page appears you will see several things. Firstly the site displays the exchange rate for the current day. So for example you will see how many US dollars you will get to the British pound and vice versa. You will then see a graph detailing the historic exchange rates you have requested. You can click on this graph to enlarge it in another tab if you wish.
You will then see a table beneath the graph which lists the exchange rate for every single day of the period you needed data for. On weekends or Bank Holidays the amount will be indicated as remaining the same with no increase or decrease in the percentage next to it.
You can also quickly and easily reverse the exchange rate by clicking on the link which tells you to do just that. Right at the bottom of the table you will see the high and low points of the rates during the requested period, as well as the average exchange rate for that time. If you select a single date for which you want information, you will get a box displaying the rates but no graph, since it is not relevant to provide one for a single day.
Try the historical rates calculator on this site by visiting http://fxtop.com.
As you can see, no matter what data you need or what currencies you are searching for, there are several sites which can provide you with the information you need. The best approach is to try all of them and see which one best meets your needs. You can then bookmark your favourite two or three so that when you need to use them you can find them quickly and easily, without the need to go hunting for them first.
One final tip – bookmark the historical exchange rates pages themselves, rather than the home page; it saves time when you need to use them.