FRED Economic Data API
Official Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis API with 800,000+ US and international economic time-series datasets.
🔴 Offline · 1075 ms
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Unlimited, free key, no credit card
API key
Free alternatives (live ranking)
- European Central Bank Rates — 🟢 Online · Unlimited, no key, no credit card
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Compare FRED Economic Data API with…
- FRED Economic Data API vs European Central Bank Rates — Unlimited, no key, no credit card
- FRED Economic Data API vs Twelve Data — 800 calls/day, free key, no credit card
- FRED Economic Data API vs Fixer.io — 100 calls/month, EUR base only, free key, no CC
Frequently Asked Questions
Does FRED Economic Data API require an API key?
Yes, FRED Economic Data API requires a free API key. You can sign up via https://fred.stlouisfed.org/docs/api/fred/.
What is FRED Economic Data API's free tier?
Unlimited, free key, no credit card
Is FRED Economic Data API currently online?
We check FRED Economic Data API every hour. The current status is shown at the top of this page. You can also see the 30-day uptime history in the chart above.
Implementation notes
When to use FRED Economic Data API
FRED is the definitive source for US macroeconomic time-series data: GDP, inflation (CPI, PCE), unemployment, interest rates (Fed Funds, 10Y Treasury), and 800,000+ additional series. Free tier is unlimited — there is no call cap, only a registered free key requirement. Use it for any economic analysis or forecasting tool.
Common pitfalls
- FRED API keys must be registered at research.stlouisfed.org. The key is free and activates immediately, but requests without a valid key return a 400 error even for public data. There is no keyless access unlike some government APIs.
- The default response format is XML. Pass `file_type=json` to every request or your parser will need to handle XML. This parameter is easy to omit when using example URLs copied from the documentation.
- Series IDs are case-sensitive and opaque (e.g., `GDP`, `CPIAUCSL`, `UNRATE`). There is no autocomplete — use the FRED website search or the `/fred/search` endpoint to find the correct series ID before building queries.
- Observation data is paginated at 100,000 rows by default. Most series have fewer than 1,000 observations, but long high-frequency series (daily rates going back 50+ years) can exceed this. Use `limit` and `offset` parameters or the `observation_start`/`observation_end` parameters to scope your requests.
Quick start (bash)
curl "https://api.stlouisfed.org/fred/series/observations?series_id=UNRATE&api_key=YOUR_KEY&file_type=json&sort_order=desc&limit=12"Embed this badge
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