Exchange Rates Realtime MCP

The CoinAPI Exchange Rates Realtime API is available through a hosted Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. It exposes the current exchange-rates API as self-describing tools that can be used from Cursor, Claude Desktop, or custom agent runtimes.

Why use MCP?

MCP layers self-describing JSON-Schema tools over the underlying HTTP API, so agent runtimes can discover available operations, validate arguments, and call the service without a custom integration layer.

With the realtime Exchange Rates MCP server you can:

• Reuse the same X-CoinAPI-Key authentication you already use with CoinAPI.
• Let MCP-aware clients inspect tool schemas before calling the API.
• Connect directly to a dedicated hosted endpoint instead of building your own adapter.

Server endpoint

https://api-realtime.exrates.coinapi.io/mcp

Use your regular CoinAPI API key in the X-CoinAPI-Key header.

Only the /mcp endpoint is supported for this service.

What is available through MCP?

The realtime server currently exposes 4 tools grouped into two areas:

Typical workflows

Discover assets for the UI

1. Call exchange_rates_list_assets to confirm valid asset_id values.
2. Use filter_asset_id when you only need a shortlist such as BTC, USD, and EUR.
3. Call exchange_rates_list_asset_icons to render asset pickers or watchlists.

Get realtime pricing

1. Call exchange_rates_get_rate for a single pair such as BTC/USD.
2. Call exchange_rates_get_all_rates when one base asset needs to be priced against many quotes.
3. Use invert: true when the consumer expects reciprocal rates.

Live-tested notes

• exchange_rates_get_rate returns a single object with time, asset_id_base, asset_id_quote, and rate.
• exchange_rates_get_all_rates returns an object with asset_id_base and a nested rates array.
• exchange_rates_list_assets can return metadata such as name, type_is_crypto, price_usd, id_icon, and chain_addresses.
• Both exchange_rates_list_assets and exchange_rates_get_all_rates accept filter_asset_id as a comma- or semicolon-delimited list.
• exchange_rates_list_asset_icons returns asset_id and url pairs for the requested icon size.
• MCP uses HTTP streaming transport, so most clients work with the standard hosted server configuration.

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