# FRED

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/fred/  
**Website:** https://fred.stlouisfed.org  
**APIs profiled:** 10

The Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) API is a public web service operated by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It provides programmatic access to more than 800,000 economic time series drawn from 100+ data sources (BLS, BEA, OECD, World Bank, Census, Treasury, Eurostat, Federal Reserve Board, and others). The API exposes five primary endpoint families — Categories, Releases, Series, Sources, and Tags — plus an Observations endpoint that returns the underlying data values for any series, with optional frequency aggregation, unit transformations, and real-time / ALFRED vintage support. A companion Maps (GeoFRED) API surfaces regional data and GeoJSON shape files. All endpoints are HTTPS, return XML or JSON (CSV / Excel for observations), and require a free API key.

## Kin Score — 38.4 / 100 (thin)

Scored 2026-08-20 under rubric 0.12.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 38.4).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 81.5 |
| Contract Quality | 21.7 |
| Governance | 25.0 |
| Contract Governance | 25.0 |
| Operational Transparency | 36.8 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 40.5 |
| Commercial Clarity | 31.6 |
| Access Clarity | 31.6 |

Regulatory layer — **Government & Public Sector**: 38.9 (matched via tags).

## Agent readiness — 41.8 (agent-ready)

| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Spec Presence | yes |
| Agentic Access | derived |
| Reversibility Documented | na |
| MCP Server | no |
| Auth Clarity | yes |
| Idempotency | na |
| Error Semantics | no |
| OpenAPI Examples | verified |
| Rate Limit Signal | documented |
| Event Surface Described | no |
| Agent Skills | no |
| Well Known Catalog | no |
| Consent Identity | no |
| Agent Card | no |
| Dry Run Mode | na |

## Access

Free · Self-serve signup — onboarding: self-serve, pricing: free, trial: no (confidence: high).

## APIs (10)

- **FRED Categories API** — Category hierarchy navigation — children, related, series, and tags within a category.
- **FRED Observations API** — The underlying time-series data values, with frequency aggregation and unit transformations.
- **FRED Regional Data API** — Regional data values for a series group across a geography.
- **FRED Releases API** — Economic data releases — schedules, member series, sources, and tags per release.
- **FRED Series API** — Economic data series metadata, search, categorization, release linkage, tags, updates, and vintages.
- **FRED Series Data API** — Regional data values attached to a specific FRED series.
- **FRED Series Group API** — Series-group metadata — the regional identifier and supported region types for a series.
- **FRED Shapes API** — GeoJSON shape files for state, county, MSA, country, and census-tract geographies.
- **FRED Sources API** — Originating institutions for FRED series (BLS, BEA, OECD, etc.) and the releases they publish.
- **FRED Tags API** — Faceted classification across FRED — tag listings, related tags, and tag-matched series.

## Agentic access (1)

- **Fred Agentic Access** — 35 operations

## Security (2)

- **Fred Authentication** — apiKey · 1 scheme
- **Fred Domain Security** — TLSv1.3 · DMARC

## Plans (1)

- **Fred Plans Pricing**

## Tags

Finance, Government, Economic Data, Federal Reserve, Time Series, Open Data, Public APIs

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Profiled by [API Evangelist](https://apievangelist.com) and published on [APIs.io](https://apis.io/providers/fred/). Scores are computed from the provider's own public artifacts under a published rubric.