Use Official Exchange Rates in Power BI

In this guide, we will see how to pull official exchange rates directly into Power BI from the Global Exchange Rates API. These rates come from trusted sources such as central banks and are suitable for accounting, regulatory reporting, and internal dashboards.

1Open Power BI Desktop

Create a new report.

2Connect to the data source

Go to Home → Get Data → Web

The URL field of the From Web dialog in Power BI Desktop, with the Global Exchange Rates API address

In the URL field, enter:

URL

https://api.globalexchangerates.org/v1/latest?subscription-key=YOUR_API_KEY

Optionally you can also specify a base currency or a specific provider, for example for the ECB (European Central Bank):

URL

https://api.globalexchangerates.org/v1/latest?subscription-key=YOUR_API_KEY&provider=ECB

Click OK to proceed.

3Transform the Response

We will need to transform the response as a flat table, starting from the Source select the exchangeRates record.

The API response in Power Query: provider, date, base and the exchangeRates record

This will output the exchange rates as a key-value pair list.

The exchangeRates record expanded into a list of currency codes and values

In the ribbon, choose the To Table action from the Conversion tab.

This will generate a table with our exchange rates, we can now rename the column Name in Currency

The final ExchangeRates table with Currency and Value columns

Conclusions

We now have a table with the most recent exchange rates by official central banks, and we can use these for example to:

Create a calculated column to convert each value into the desired currency.
Join the rates table to the transaction data using the currency code

It is also possible to:

Schedule refreshes in the Power BI Service to pull updated exchange rates daily
Use the /historical endpoint to fetch exchange rates by date.