BCRA API Connector

A Python connector for the BCRA (Banco Central de la República Argentina) APIs, covering Principal Variables/Monetary Statistics, Cheques, Exchange Rate Statistics, and Central de Deudores (Debtor Registry).

Features

• Comprehensive Data Access: Fetch Principal Variables, Monetary Statistics, Checks information, Exchange Rates, and Debtor Registry data.
• Central de Deudores: Query current and historical debts and rejected checks by CUIT/CUIL. Current debts carry what explains each classification: normal since, days in arrears, refinancings and legal situation (concurso, quiebra).
• DataFrame Support: Convert API responses to pandas DataFrames with to_dataframe() methods.
• Historical Data: Easily retrieve and analyze historical time series for any variable.
• Robustness: Built-in retries with exponential backoff that honour Retry-After on 429/503, a client-side rate limiter, and typed exceptions (BCRANotFoundError, BCRARateLimitError, BCRAServerError).
• Privacy: CUIT/CUIL numbers are masked (30********2) in the connector's logs and in the messages of the exceptions it raises, so they are safe to log or send to an error tracker.
• Developer Friendly:
  • Full Type Hinting for better IDE support.
  • Bilingual context (Spanish API / English Wrapper).
  • Detailed debug logging.
• Configurable: Options for SSL verification (or a CA bundle), retries, rate limiting, timeouts and a custom requests.Session.

Documentation

Full documentation, including installation instructions, usage examples, and API reference, is available at:

• Read the Docs Documentation
• Quick Start Guide
• API Reference

Installation

pip install bcra-connector

# With pandas support for DataFrame conversion
pip install "bcra-connector[pandas]"

For detailed installation instructions and requirements, see our Installation Guide.

Quick Start

Get up and running in seconds:

from bcra_connector import BCRAConnector

connector = BCRAConnector()

# 1. Catalog of monetary series, with each one's latest value
variables = connector.monetarias.list()
print(f"Found {len(variables)} series")

# 2. Latest value of a series, by ID (1 = Reservas internacionales)
latest = connector.monetarias.latest(1)
print(f"Reserves: {latest.valor} on {latest.fecha}")

# 3. Last 30 days of a series, by name (newest first, as the API returns it)
history = connector.monetarias.history("Reservas internacionales", days=30)
for point in history[:5]:
    print(point.fecha, point.valor)

# 4. Official exchange rate: pesos per dollar
usd_ars = connector.cambiarias.pair("USD", "ARS", days=7)
print(f"USD/ARS on {usd_ars[-1]['fecha']}: {usd_ars[-1]['tasa']}")

Rate Limits

The BCRA doesn't publish rate limits, but it does enforce them: the Central de Deudores has answered 429 Too Many Requests at about 5 requests per second. The connector throttles itself to 2 requests per second by default, a conservative guess rather than an official limit, and on a 429 or 503 waits what the server's Retry-After asks (up to 30 seconds).

RateLimitConfig(calls, period) is a sustained rate: once the first calls requests have gone out back to back, the rest are spaced period / calls seconds apart. With the default, a long loop sends one request every half second.

The limiter lives in each connector instance: several processes or workers don't coordinate with each other, so if they share the API, splitting the budget is up to your application. See Configuration to change the limit (rate_limit=) or the cap (max_retry_after=).

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read our:

• Contributing Guidelines
• Code of Conduct

Security

For vulnerability reports, please review our Security Policy.

Change Log

See CHANGELOG.md for a list of changes and version updates.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Disclaimer

This project is not officially affiliated with or endorsed by the Banco Central de la República Argentina. Use at your own risk.