VOL. XCIV, NO. 247
A CURATED DIRECTORY OF FINANCIAL TOOLS AND RESOURCES
FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) Review, Pricing, and Features
FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data)
FRED is the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis' free macroeconomic database. Use its series, charts, release calendar, Excel tools, mobile apps, and REST API for inflation, rates, GDP, employment, FX, credit, and market indicators. It is macro context, not equity fundamentals or brokerage infrastructure; API access needs a free key.
Best for
- Analysts, builders, and investors needing free official macroeconomic time series, release calendars, charts, Excel access, and API access from the St. Louis Fed.
- Researchers working with a primary macro data source with free account and API-key access.
- Workflows that need rates, inflation, GDP, employment, exchange-rate, and other economic series to contextualize market decisions.
Watch out
- All FRED web service requests require an API key, and requesting or viewing keys requires a free FRED account.
- Some series have source-specific restrictions, and FRED terms restrict scraping and certain uses.
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Pricing
Free
Free
Free access (subject to Terms of Use). API requests require an API key; some saved features require a (free) FRED account.
Key features
- Search across and chart hundreds of thousands of economic and financial data series from many official and third-party sources.
- Research coverage for macro topics such as GDP, inflation, prices, employment, exchange rates, interest rates, credit, monetary data, and market indicators.
- Browsing access to by categories, releases, sources, and tags, with series metadata for units, frequency, last update, and next release where available.
- FRED charts for visualization, sharing, embedded graphs, graph images, and saved graph workflows with a free account.
- Monitor the economic release calendar for scheduled release dates and times, while accounting for provider timing and availability caveats.
- Email notifications, dashboards, data lists, saved graphs, saved maps, and API-key management through a free FRED account.
- Query access for FRED and ALFRED through the REST API over HTTPS with XML or JSON responses and endpoints for categories, releases, series observations, sources, tags, maps, and bulk release data.
- The Excel add-in for one-click downloads, spreadsheet refreshes when new data is released, frequency conversion, and growth-rate calculations.
- The iOS and Android apps for mobile access, saved favorites, graphs, and data lists.
- Respect API-key, rate-limit, terms-of-use, scraping, and copyrighted-series constraints before building production data products.
- FRED is official macro data infrastructure, not a stock screener, broker, portfolio tracker, or investment recommendation engine.
FAQ
Is FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) free?
FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) is free to use. Visit the vendor site for the latest limits and onboarding details.
Who is FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) best for?
FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) is built for Students/Researchers, Analysts, and Quants/Developers. It suits beginner, intermediate, and advanced users.
What platforms and connections does FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) support?
You can use FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) on Web and Mobile. FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) offers an API (REST) with APIKey authentication. Integrations include Microsoft Excel (FRED Add-in).
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I'm Jera Value, and I write every record here myself. I'm an independent investor who likes code and value investing, and I keep these notes because I use the tools for my own research. When a page is wrong, I fix it and say so.
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Details change. Pricing, features, and availability may be incomplete or out of date. Treat listings as a starting point and verify on the provider’s site before making decisions. If you spot an error or a gap, send a quick note and I’ll adjust.