FRED API

What it covers

Official programmatic access to FRED economic series, observations, releases, sources, and metadata. The profile stays deliberately concise: use the linked official reference for endpoint schemas and current commercial terms.

Integration notes

Authenticate exactly as the provider documents, keep credentials out of client bundles, and retain upstream request identifiers when available. Pagination, retries, caching, and webhook verification should be implemented per product rather than inferred from another API.

Key endpoints

Endpoint	Description
GET /fred/series/observations	Series observations (data points)
GET /fred/series	Series metadata
GET /fred/series/search	Search series
GET /fred/series/categories	Series categories
GET /fred/category	Category details
GET /fred/category/children	Child categories
GET /fred/releases	Economic releases
GET /fred/release/dates	Release dates

Decision notes

Best suited to u.s. macroeconomic time series and economic metadata and release calendars. Before production, verify observation revisions are normal. preserve units, frequency and seasonal adjustment metadata. Mutable limits, prices, and versions were checked on 2026-09-13 and should be rechecked at purchase or deployment time.

Python example: fetching an economic series

import httpx
from decimal import Decimal
from datetime import date

API_KEY = "your_fred_api_key"
BASE = "https://api.stlouisfed.org/fred"

def get_observations(series_id: str, start: str, end: str | None = None) -> list[dict]:
    """Fetch observations for a FRED series. Values come back as strings."""
    params = {
        "series_id": series_id,
        "api_key": API_KEY,
        "file_type": "json",
        "observation_start": start,
    }
    if end:
        params["observation_end"] = end
    resp = httpx.get(f"{BASE}/series/observations", params=params, timeout=30)
    resp.raise_for_status()
    rows = []
    for obs in resp.json().get("observations", []):
        if obs["value"] == ".":  # FRED uses "." for missing values
            continue
        rows.append({"date": date.fromisoformat(obs["date"]), "value": Decimal(obs["value"])})
    return rows

# 10-year Treasury yield, 2024
for obs in get_observations("DGS10", "2024-01-01", "2024-12-31")[:3]:
    print(obs["date"], obs["value"])

Notes:

• API key goes in the api_key query parameter; file_type=json avoids XML
• Missing values are the string "." — filter before converting to Decimal
• Popular series: DGS10 (10Y Treasury), FEDFUNDS, CPIAUCSL, UNRATE, GDP
• Rate limit is generous (120 req/min); no auth needed for the website, key required for API