Rateweb API

A free, read-only API for live South Africa rate data. If your site quotes the prime rate, this stops that number quietly going stale the next time it moves.

Who this is for

Property blogs, estate agents, vehicle dealerships, brokers, and anyone publishing a rate that has to stay current. You get the same figures our own calculators run on, updated when the underlying rate changes.

Getting a key

Keys are free and issued by hand so we know who's using the data. Get in touch with your site's URL and what you're building, and we'll send one.

A key is shown once when issued and stored hashed afterwards — we can't retrieve it later, so save it somewhere safe. Lost keys get replaced, not recovered.

Authentication

Send your key any of these three ways:

Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY
X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY
?api_key=YOUR_KEY

The query-string form exists for browser embeds that can't set headers. Prefer a header where you can — query strings end up in referrer headers and server logs.

Endpoints

GET /api/v1

Service metadata and the endpoint list. No key needed, so you can check connectivity before you have one.

GET /api/v1/rates

This market's headline rates — policy (repo) rate, prime lending rate, and the best advertised savings rate across the products we track.

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY" \
  https://www.rateweb.co.za/api/v1/rates

GET /api/v1/rates/prime/history

Every prime rate change with its effective date and the move in basis points, newest first. Optional ?limit= (default 50, maximum 200).

South Africa only — the series describes SARB decisions, so other markets' hosts return 404 rather than presenting South African policy as their own.

What every response contains

Alongside data, every payload carries a meta block with as_of (how current the figures are), source (who publishes them) and the market they describe. Please surface the date wherever you display a rate — a rate without a date isn't a fact, and a stale number on your page is your credibility as much as ours.

Rate limits

60 requests per minute per key by default. Every response returns X-RateLimit-Limit and X-RateLimit-Remaining; exceeding it returns 429 with a Retry-After header.

Rates change rarely — most integrations should cache for an hour or more rather than calling on every pageview. If you genuinely need a higher ceiling, ask.

Terms

  • Attribution required. Link to www.rateweb.co.za wherever the data appears.
  • Information only. Advertised rates change without notice — verify with the provider before anyone relies on them for a decision.
  • Don't resell it. Display it on your own site freely; don't repackage the feed as your own data product.
  • We may change or withdraw the API, but v1 will keep behaving like v1 — breaking changes get a new version.

Errors

Errors return the appropriate status with a machine-readable error.code: missing_api_key or invalid_api_key (401), rate_limit_exceeded (429), not_available_in_market (404).