BIS Data Portal vs FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) comparison

BIS Data Portal focuses on Data APIs, Data Visualizations, and Calendar while FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) specializes in Inflation Rates, Unemployment Rates, and GDP. They overlap in 5 categories, so choose based on your preferred workflow and pricing.

Good news—both BIS Data Portal and FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) offer free plans. You can try each platform without commitment and only pay when you need premium features.

FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) is more beginner-friendly with an approachable interface. Both can work for intermediate users.

FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) has a mobile app so you can check your research on the go. BIS Data Portal is web-only, so you'll need a browser to access it from mobile devices.

Yes, both platforms offer API access for developers and quants who want to build custom integrations or automate their workflows.

Choose BIS Data Portal if you need Global BIS macro‑financial time series across topics such as international banking, debt securities, credit, global liquidity, derivatives, property prices, consumer prices, exchange rates, central bank statistics and payment statistics., and Search time series across all topics, refine with filters, and explore data sets by country/topic/key characteristics.. Go with FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) if 800,000+ economic data series from 100+ sources, covering topics such as GDP, prices/inflation, employment, exchange rates, and interest rates., and Browse and track data via categories, releases, sources, and tags; series pages show metadata like units/frequency and “last updated / next release” fields. better fits how you invest.

Both cover Other. BIS Data Portal also includes Currencies, Bonds, Real Estate, Options, and Futures.

Both platforms let you export data to spreadsheets (Excel, JSON, and XML). This is useful for custom analysis or record-keeping.