FRED Has a Free API — 800,000+ US Economic Time Series at Your Fingertips

Every economist, data scientist, and financial analyst I know eventually discovers the same thing: the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis gives away 800,000+ economic time series for free. GDP. Unemployment. Inflation. Interest rates. Housing prices. Consumer sentiment. All updated automatically, going back decades. It's called FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data), and its API is one of the best-kept secrets in data science. What You Get Dataset Data Points History GDP (quarterly) 300+ observations Since 1947 Unemployment rate 900+ monthly Since 1948 CPI (inflation) 900+ monthly Since 1947 Federal funds rate 800+ monthly Since 1954 S&P 500 1,500+ monthly Since 1871 Housing prices 400+ monthly Since 1987 Consumer sentiment 600+ monthly Since 1952 Total: 816,000+ time series. All free. All via API. Getting Started (2 Minutes) Step 1: Get a free API key at fred.stlouisfed.org/docs/api/api_key.html Step 2: Make your first request: import requests API_KEY = " your_api_key_here " # Get US GDP