FRED

FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data)

This connector reads FRED, the economic database of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (https://api.stlouisfed.org/fred): about 800,000 US and international time series from more than 100 sources (BEA, BLS, the Federal Reserve Board, the Census Bureau, OECD, IMF, Eurostat and others), with their categories, releases, sources, tags and revision history (ALFRED vintages). Everything is read-only.

Setup (2 minutes, free)

1. Sign in or create a free account at https://fredaccount.stlouisfed.org.
2. Open API Keys (https://fredaccount.stlouisfed.org/apikeys), request a key and describe the use in one sentence. The key is a 32-character lower-case string and is issued at once.
3. Paste it into FRED_API_KEY. It is sent as the api_key query parameter, together with file_type=json.

Workflow

• Find a series: fred_search_series with words (search_text), sorted by relevance; order_by popularity brings the main headline series first. Well known ids: GDP, GDPC1 (real GDP), UNRATE, PAYEMS (payrolls), CPIAUCSL, CPILFESL (core CPI), PCEPI, FEDFUNDS, DFF, DGS2, DGS10, T10Y2Y, MORTGAGE30US, SP500, VIXCLS, DCOILWTICO, DEXUSEU (USD per EUR), M2SL.
• Read the values: fred_get_observations. It returns the latest 1000 observations, newest first; set limit 1 for the latest value, observation_start/observation_end for a period, units pc1 for year-over-year percent change, frequency m/q/a with aggregation_method to aggregate daily data. A value of "." means no observation (e.g. a holiday).
• Understand the series: fred_get_series (units, frequency, seasonal adjustment, notes, last update), fred_get_series_categories, fred_get_series_release and fred_get_series_tags.
• Browse by topic: fred_get_category and fred_list_category_children from the root category 0, then fred_list_category_series.
• Releases and calendar: fred_list_releases, fred_get_release, fred_list_release_series; fred_get_release_dates for one release and fred_list_release_dates for all of them (set include_release_dates_with_no_data true for upcoming dates).
• Sources: fred_list_sources, fred_get_source, fred_list_source_releases.
• Tags: fred_search_tags (e.g. geography or concept tags) and fred_list_tag_series to find series having all given tags, e.g. gdp;germany.
• Revisions: fred_list_vintage_dates lists when a series was published or revised; fred_get_observations with realtime_start = realtime_end = a vintage date shows the data as known on that day.
• What changed: fred_list_series_updates lists recently updated series.

Reading the data: values are strings in the series units (check units and seasonal adjustment in fred_get_series before comparing). Dates are YYYY-MM-DD and mark the start of the period (2026-04-01 for the second quarter of 2026). Monthly and quarterly series are published with a lag; quote the date of the latest observation, not today. Cite FRED and the original source from the series notes; some series are copyrighted by their source and the notes say so.

Limits and errors: up to 120 requests per minute per key. FRED answers HTTP 400 with an error_message that names the problem: a wrong or missing key ("api_key is not registered"), an unknown series id ("The series does not exist") or an invalid parameter (e.g. a frequency higher than the series' own). 429 means the rate limit was hit: wait a minute.

Out of scope: GeoFRED maps and regional shapes, the bulk FRED v2 release download and series groups are not part of this connector.