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FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) is the free economic-data database run by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. If you landed here searching for the St. Louis Fed’s FRED database, this page explains what it holds, the routes to get data out of it, and the one feature researchers most often miss: ALFRED, which keeps earlier vintages of a series so an analysis can be reproduced. It was checked against the official FRED, ALFRED and API pages on 2026-11-07.
What FRED is
FRED describes itself as “your trusted source for economic data since 1991.” The St. Louis Fed’s own news release says it began that year as a dial-up bulletin board carrying 30 series, and by September 2017 it had passed 500,000 series from 87 sources. It is a data aggregator: most series are produced by other agencies and organisations and republished with FRED’s search, graphing and download tools. Its help menu summarises the purpose as “tools and resources to find and use economic data worldwide.”
Who runs it and what it covers
FRED is run by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; the FRED API documentation names the bank’s Economic Research Division as the operator of the web service. Coverage is organised by category, release and source. Because the official pages read do not state a current series count, this page does not either; the practical way to see scope is Browse by Source, which lists each originating organisation.
Related St. Louis Fed products such as FRED-MD, FRED-QD and FRED-SD appear alongside FRED in search results; they are separate St. Louis Fed datasets, not part of the standard FRED series search.
How to search and use it
The FRED help section uses these interface terms:
- Find a series: use the Search Bar, or browse by categories, by release, by source or by tags.
- Open the series page to see the graph and the observations.
- Change the time range of the graph.
- Edit the data series: the editing options are Units, Frequency and Frequency Aggregation.
- Format the graph: line settings, adding or removing a data series, and adding a user-defined straight line are documented in help.
- Download: the help topic “Downloading Data from FRED” covers downloads; an Excel add-in is documented separately.
- Save a data list: help covers creating a list, adding and removing series, downloading it and publishing it. The account sign-in is the “My Account” link in the site navigation.
Access routes compared
| Route | What the official pages say |
|---|---|
| Website | Search, browse, graph and download through the help-documented tools. |
| Excel add-in | Listed in the site navigation as “FRED Add-in for Excel”; help has a “Use the Excel Add-in” topic. |
| FRED API | A web service for querying FRED and ALFRED by source, release, category or series. REST over HTTPS, with XML or JSON responses (the series observations method also lists csv and xlsx file types). |
| Other tools | Mobile apps, an embeddable widget and a “FRED MCP Connector” are linked from the home page. |
“All web service requests require an API key.” You request one after signing in to your FRED account; the key is passed as the api_key parameter and is 32 lowercase alphanumeric characters. The documentation asks for a separate key per application and for each user of an application to use their own key. Terms of use are on FRED’s legal page.
ALFRED and reproducible research
Economic series are revised. ALFRED (Archival FRED) “allows you to retrieve each economic data release (vintage) that was available on a specific date in history” and has offered this since 2006. The API exposes the same idea through realtime_start and realtime_end parameters, or vintage_dates, which return data as it existed on given dates.
For work that must be reproducible, this changes what to record. A figure pulled today may differ from the same series pulled last year. Record the access date and, where a result depends on a particular release, the vintage date. This is editorial guidance, not a FRED rule.
Citing FRED data
Because most series originate with another organisation, a careful citation names both the originating source shown on the series page and FRED as the access point, with the access date. Follow your style guide’s dataset format. The open data entry explains how openly reusable data is described; reuse terms for a series are set by its originating source.
Strengths and limits
- Strength: one interface for series from many sources, with units and frequency transformations in the browser.
- Strength: several export routes (download, Excel add-in, API) and archived vintages through ALFRED.
- Limit: FRED republishes other organisations’ data, so definitions and revisions are set by the originating source.
- Limit: API use needs a registered key, and the key page states no request-rate figures.
- Limit: it is a numeric time-series database, not a literature index; for articles use a bibliographic database.
Alternatives
| Source | What its official page shows |
|---|---|
| BEA (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis) | Data grouped by topic, by place and by economic account, with an interactive data application and an API. |
| World Bank Open Data | The World Bank’s open data portal at data.worldbank.org. |
Both are primary producers or portals in their own right; FRED often republishes series that originate with agencies like these.
FAQ
Is FRED a database or a website?
Both: it is a database of economic time series reached through a website, an Excel add-in and an API.
Can I download FRED data?
Yes. The help section documents downloading from FRED and using the Excel add-in, and the API returns data programmatically.
Where do I find unemployment data?
Use the Search Bar or browse by category or source, then open the series and check its stated source and units.
Do I need an API key?
For the FRED API, yes: all web service requests require one.
How do I make a FRED chart?
Open a series page, then use the graph options described in help: time range, units, frequency and line formatting.
