FRED API Guide

Overview

FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) is a database maintained by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It contains over 800,000 economic time series from dozens of national and international sources, covering macroeconomic indicators, financial markets, employment, trade, monetary policy, and more.

The FRED API provides programmatic access to this extensive economic data repository. Researchers can retrieve time series observations, search for data series by keyword or category, explore release schedules, and access vintage (real-time) data for historical analysis. The data spans decades and in some cases centuries, making it invaluable for longitudinal economic research.

Economists, financial analysts, policy researchers, data scientists, and academic institutions rely on the FRED API for econometric modeling, macroeconomic forecasting, policy analysis, and teaching. It is one of the most widely used economic data APIs in academic research and is cited in thousands of peer-reviewed publications.

Authentication

Authentication requires a free API key from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

1. Register for an account at https://fredaccount.stlouisfed.org/login/secure/
2. Request an API key at https://fredaccount.stlouisfed.org/apikeys
3. Include the key as the api_key query parameter in all requests