FRED API Client

0.5.2 · active · verified Sat Apr 11

fredapi is a Python API for Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) from the St. Louis Fed, and also provides methods for analyzing point-in-time data from ALFRED. It leverages pandas for data output, returning data as Series or DataFrames. The current version is 0.5.2, with a release cadence of a few updates per year, primarily addressing Python and dependency compatibility.

Warnings

gotcha An API key is mandatory for all requests. You can obtain one for free from the FRED website. Ensure it's set as the 'FRED_API_KEY' environment variable or passed directly to the `Fred` constructor.
Fix: Apply for a FRED API key at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/docs/api/api_key.html and configure it as an environment variable (`export FRED_API_KEY='your_key'`) or pass it directly: `fred = Fred(api_key='your_key')`.
breaking Older versions of fredapi (<0.5.1) used `DataFrame.append`, which is deprecated in newer pandas versions. Using such old fredapi versions with modern pandas will lead to `FutureWarning`s or errors.
Fix: Upgrade fredapi to version 0.5.1 or newer: `pip install --upgrade fredapi`. This version replaced `DataFrame.append` with `pd.concat`.
breaking Versions of fredapi prior to 0.3.7 used HTTP for API calls. FRED's API primarily uses HTTPS. Using very old versions might result in connection errors if FRED no longer supports HTTP for certain endpoints.
Fix: Upgrade fredapi to version 0.3.7 or newer: `pip install --upgrade fredapi`. This version switched to using HTTPS for all FRED API calls.

Install

pip install fredapi Install fredapi

Imports

Fred
```
from fredapi import Fred
```

Quickstart

Initialize the Fred client with your API key, then fetch or search for economic data series. Data is returned as a pandas Series or DataFrame.

import os
from fredapi import Fred

# Get a FRED API key from https://fred.stlouisfed.org/docs/api/api_key.html
# Set it as an environment variable or pass directly.
api_key = os.environ.get('FRED_API_KEY', 'YOUR_FRED_API_KEY')

if not api_key or api_key == 'YOUR_FRED_API_KEY':
    print("Warning: FRED_API_KEY environment variable not set or placeholder used. Get a key from fred.stlouisfed.org.")
    # Using a dummy key to allow the example to run without immediate error,
    # but API calls will fail without a valid key.
    api_key = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123456'

fred = Fred(api_key=api_key)

# Fetch a specific economic data series (e.g., S&P 500)
data = fred.get_series('SP500')

print("Fetched S&P 500 data (last 5 entries):")
print(data.tail())

# Search for data series
search_results = fred.search('unemployment rate')
print("\nSearch results for 'unemployment rate' (first 3):")
print(search_results[['id', 'title']].head(3))

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