Swap

April 29, 2026 · View on GitHub

The easy-to-use PHP currency conversion library. Retrieve exchange rates from 30 providers, with caching and fallback. Maintained since 2014.

Swap is a mature PHP currency conversion library for retrieving and working with exchange rates. It provides a single, easy-to-use API on top of multiple exchange rate providers, ranging from public sources (the European Central Bank, several national banks, exchangerate.host) to commercial exchange rate APIs that require an API key. Caching, historical rates, and a fallback chain are built in. Used in real-world PHP applications since 2014.

💡 What is Swap?

Swap is a PHP library for currency conversion and exchange rate retrieval.
It exposes a wide range of exchange rate providers behind a common interface.
It caches results via PSR-16 SimpleCache.
It supports historical rates.
It supports a fallback chain. When a provider errors, the next provider in the chain is tried.

🎯 When should you use Swap?

Use Swap when you need to retrieve exchange rates in a PHP application: currency conversion workflows, multi-currency pricing, invoice totals, reconciliation, or historical FX data.
Use the lower-level Exchanger library when Swap's defaults are too opinionated and you want finer control over chain composition, caching, or HTTP plumbing.

Why not call an exchange rate API directly?

You can integrate a single exchange rate API directly in your application.

Swap is useful when you need more than a single provider:

Provider abstraction — switch providers without rewriting your code
Fallback support — if one provider fails, another can be used automatically
Unified interface — all providers share the same API
Caching — reduce API calls and improve performance
Flexibility — combine public and commercial providers

For simple use cases, calling a single API may be enough.

Swap becomes valuable when you need reliability, flexibility, or long-term maintainability.

📦 Installation

Swap requires PHP 8.2 or newer.

composer require florianv/swap symfony/http-client nyholm/psr7

symfony/http-client is the PSR-18 HTTP client and nyholm/psr7 provides the PSR-17 factories. Any PSR-18 / PSR-17 implementation works (see the documentation for alternatives such as Guzzle).

⚡ Quickstart

use Swap\Builder;

// Build Swap with the European Central Bank (free, no API key required).
$swap = (new Builder())
    ->add('european_central_bank')
    ->build();

// EUR → USD exchange rate
$rate = $swap->latest('EUR/USD');

$rate->getValue();                 // e.g. 1.0823 (a float)
$rate->getDate()->format('Y-m-d'); // e.g. 2026-04-29
$rate->getProviderName();          // 'european_central_bank'

// Convert an amount using the returned rate
$amountInEUR  = 100.00;
$amountInUSD  = $amountInEUR * $rate->getValue();

// Retrieve a historical rate
$past = $swap->historical('EUR/USD', new \DateTime('-15 days'));

Swap retrieves the rate; your application multiplies the amount by $rate->getValue() to perform the conversion.

🔁 Configuring multiple providers (fallback chain)

$swap = (new Builder())
    ->add('your_primary_provider', ['api_key' => 'YOUR_KEY']) // see Providers below
    ->add('your_fallback_provider', ['api_key' => 'YOUR_KEY'])
    ->add('european_central_bank') // free fallback for EUR-base pairs
    ->build();

Providers are tried in order. If a provider does not support the requested currency pair, it is skipped silently. If a provider throws an error, the next provider is tried. If every provider fails, a ChainException is thrown with all collected errors.

🛠 Common use cases

Display localized prices in multi-currency storefronts.
Compute invoice totals across currencies.
Reconcile multi-currency ledgers using historical rates.
Power internal FX dashboards with rate history.
Build currency conversion infrastructure for fintech and ERP applications.

🧭 Which package should I use?

The Swap ecosystem is a layered toolkit for currency conversion in PHP:

Swap. The easy-to-use, high-level API (this package).
Exchanger. Lower-level, more granular alternative; direct access to the 30 provider implementations and the ExchangeRateService interface.
Laravel Swap. Laravel application of Swap.
Symfony Swap. Symfony integration of Swap.

All four packages are MIT-licensed and require PHP 8.2 or newer.

📊 Providers

Start with a single provider (for example the European Central Bank), then add others as needed.

Swap supports 30 exchange rate providers via Exchanger. Pass the identifier to Builder::add().

Public providers (no API key required)

Service	Identifier	Base	Quote	Historical
Bulgarian National Bank	`bulgarian_national_bank`	*	BGN	Yes
Central Bank of the Czech Republic	`central_bank_of_czech_republic`	*	CZK	Yes
Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey	`central_bank_of_republic_turkey`	*	TRY	Yes
Central Bank of the Republic of Uzbekistan	`central_bank_of_republic_uzbekistan`	*	UZS	Yes
Cryptonator	`cryptonator`	* (crypto)	* (crypto)	No
European Central Bank	`european_central_bank`	EUR	*	Yes
exchangerate.host	`exchangeratehost`	*	*	Yes
National Bank of Georgia	`national_bank_of_georgia`	*	GEL	Yes
National Bank of Romania	`national_bank_of_romania`	(limited list)	(limited list)	Yes
National Bank of the Republic of Belarus	`national_bank_of_republic_belarus`	*	BYN	Yes
National Bank of Ukraine	`national_bank_of_ukraine`	*	UAH	Yes
Russian Central Bank	`russian_central_bank`	*	RUB	Yes
WebserviceX	`webservicex`	*	*	No

Commercial providers (require an API key)

Service	Identifier	Base	Quote	Historical
AbstractAPI	`abstract_api`	*	*	Yes
coinlayer	`coin_layer`	* (crypto)	*	Yes
Currency Converter API	`currency_converter`	*	*	Yes
Currency Data (APILayer)	`apilayer_currency_data`	USD (free), * (paid)	*	Yes
CurrencyDataFeed	`currency_data_feed`	*	*	No
currencylayer (direct)	`currency_layer`	USD (free), * (paid)	*	Yes
Exchange Rates Data (APILayer)	`apilayer_exchange_rates_data`	USD (free), * (paid)	*	Yes
exchangeratesapi (direct)	`exchange_rates_api`	USD (free), * (paid)	*	Yes
fastFOREX.io	`fastforex`	USD (free), * (paid)	*	No
Fixer (APILayer)	`apilayer_fixer`	EUR (free), * (paid)	*	Yes
Fixer (direct)	`fixer`	EUR (free), * (paid)	*	Yes
1Forge	`forge`	*	*	No
Open Exchange Rates	`open_exchange_rates`	USD (free), * (paid)	*	Yes
xChangeApi.com	`xchangeapi`	*	*	Yes
Xignite	`xignite`	*	*	Yes

You can also add your own provider by implementing the Exchanger\Contract\ExchangeRateService interface and passing the instance to Builder::addExchangeRateService().

⚙ Caching, HTTP client, and error handling

Caching. Swap uses PSR-16 SimpleCache. Configure once on the builder:
```
$swap = (new Builder())->useSimpleCache($psr16Cache)->add('european_central_bank')->build();
```
Disable caching for a single query: $swap->latest('EUR/USD', ['cache' => false]). Override the TTL for a single query: $swap->latest('EUR/USD', ['cache_ttl' => 3600]).
HTTP client. Any PSR-18 client (symfony/http-client, php-http/guzzle7-adapter, etc.) is supported and auto-discovered via php-http/discovery. To pass an explicit instance, use Builder::useHttpClient().
Errors. When every configured provider has either skipped (unsupported pair) or thrown, Swap raises an Exchanger\Exception\ChainException containing all collected exceptions.

📚 Documentation

The full documentation is in doc/readme.md, and is also published at florianv.github.io/swap.

The Swap ecosystem:

Swap: easy-to-use PHP currency conversion library.
Exchanger: lower-level, more granular alternative; direct access to provider implementations.
Laravel Swap: Laravel application of Swap.
Symfony Swap: Symfony integration of Swap.

🤝 Sponsorship

The Swap ecosystem is open to selected sponsorships from exchange rate API providers and financial infrastructure companies.

Sponsorship can include:

Documentation visibility
Integration examples
Ecosystem-level visibility across Swap, Exchanger, Laravel Swap, and Symfony Swap

For inquiries, contact the maintainer via GitHub.