FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) vs USAspending comparison

FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) focuses on Inflation Rates, Unemployment Rates, and GDP while USAspending specializes in Data APIs, APIs & SDKs, and Data Visualizations. They overlap in 3 categories, so choose based on your preferred workflow and pricing.

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

FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) has a mobile app so you can check your research on the go. USAspending 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 FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) if you need 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.. Go with USAspending if Advanced Search & profiles across awards, recipients, agencies, federal accounts; filters include date, place of performance, NAICS/PSC, Assistance Listing (formerly CFDA), DEFC for COVID/infrastructure., and Spending Explorer and Agency/Federal Account profiles for top‑down views of obligations/outlays and drill‑downs by budget hierarchy. better fits how you invest.

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