Currency exchange rate history, 1949–2026

How to read the currency history pages

Every page in the table below covers one currency pair and one calendar year per row. Each row reports four measurements: the annual average, the highest and lowest single observation that year, and the year-end rate. The change column compares the year-end rate with the year before it. A year marked YTD is the current partial year, and its average covers the published trading days so far, not a projection. Years marked as fixed parities use official rates rather than market prices and carry 0 daily observations. The pair pages also show the five largest year-end moves, a decade table and the record annual averages, so a single page answers both "what was the rate in a given year" and "how did the rate move over time".

The most-searched pairs are the natural starting points. EUR/USD covers 1999 to 2026, the full life of the euro, and includes the 2008 peak and the 2022 return below parity. GBP/USD runs from 1949 and records the September 1949 devaluation, the 1992 exit from the Exchange Rate Mechanism and the 2016 referendum year. USD/INR also starts in 1949 and shows the 1949 and 1966 parity changes, the 1991 devaluation and the long managed float that followed. For a wider view, browse the USD pairs or the cross rates grouped by base currency.

All annual figures come from the Federal Reserve H.10 release via FRED, with official Bretton Woods and sterling-area parities used for the pre-float years that the series covers. Cross rates such as EUR/JPY are arithmetic from two USD legs, joined on the same calendar date with up to seven days of holiday carry-forward. No figure is estimated or interpolated. Every pair page states its own source and its observation counts, and the latest daily observation in this build is 2026-10-30. Where a series contains a documented parity change, the source note is kept on the row and repeated in the page timeline, so the policy step and its measured effect appear together.

To take the data with you, download the CSV linked on each pair page (/data/fx/eurusd.csv, for example) or query the same series through the Historical FX API. The API returns point-in-time rates, full time series and period analysis, and the free tier includes 1,000 requests per month. The CSV files contain the same annual rows as the tables, so an export and the page figures match. For rankings built from the same data, see strongest currencies, most volatile currencies and the methodology page.