Get Data Using The FRED Python API

Learn what FRED is and how to use the FRED Python API to access 816,000 US and international timeseries datasets.

You can download the code at the Analyzing Alpha GitHub Repo.

What Is FRED?

FRED, an abbreviation of Federal Reserve Economic Data, is a database consisting of 816,000+ economic datasets from private and public sources. FRED began in the 90s to help people better understand the Fed’s policy decisions. It grew organically and is maintained by The Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Get Data From The Federal Reserve (FRED)

Install FRED API

!pip install fredapi

Import Packages & Modules

import fredapi as fa
import pandas as pd
from local_settings import fred as settings
fred = fa.Fred(settings['api_key'])

If you don’t want to use a local_settings.py file, you can enter your api_key directly.

fred = fa.Fred(api_key='api_key')
gdp = fred.get_series('GDP')
gdp.name = 'gdp'
gdp.tail()
2020-07-01    21138.574
2020-10-01    21477.597
2021-01-01    22038.226
2021-04-01    22740.959
2021-07-01    23173.496
Name: gdp, dtype: float64
wcurcir = fred.get_series('WCURCIR')
wcurcir.name = 'wcurcir'
df = pd.merge(gdp, wcurcir, left_index=True, right_index=True)
df
                           gdp                 wcurcir
1986-01-01        4507.894        197.252
1986-10-01        4657.627        200.310
1987-04-01        4806.160        207.376
1987-07-01        4884.555        214.574
1992-01-01        6363.102        307.620
1992-04-01        6470.763        302.935
1992-07-01        6566.641        310.268
1997-01-01        8362.655        449.867
1997-10-01        8765.907        457.144
1998-04-01        8969.699        473.740
1998-07-01        9121.097        482.139
2003-01-01        11174.129        686.685
2003-10-01        11772.234        696.782
2008-10-01        14608.208        836.296
2009-04-01        14381.236        902.604
2009-07-01        14448.882        907.936
2014-01-01        17144.281        1240.461
2014-10-01        17852.540        1289.118
2015-04-01        18193.707        1357.822
2015-07-01        18306.960        1366.614
2020-01-01        21481.367        1805.880
2020-04-01        19477.444        1876.839
2020-07-01        21138.574        1967.076

The Bottom Line

The FRED API allows developers to retrieve economic data from the FRED database. You now know how to get a FRED API key, install and import the FRED modules, and query and retrieve economic data for financial analysis.

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