specification: API Commons Plans
specificationVersion: '0.1'
schema: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/interface-research/main/schema/api-commons.yml#/$defs/Plans

provider: FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data)
providerId: fred

created: '2026-05-28'
modified: '2026-05-28'
reconciled: true

tags:
  - Finance
  - Government
  - Economic Data
  - Free Public API
  - Open Data

description: >-
  The FRED API is a free public service operated by the Research Division of
  the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. There is a single self-service tier —
  no paid plans, no enterprise SKUs. Access is gated only by a free 32-character
  API key. Use is constrained by a single published rate limit (120 requests
  per minute per key) and the FRED Terms of Use. Commercial redistribution of
  series sourced from third parties (e.g. S&P / Case-Shiller, NAHB) carries
  additional licensing obligations imposed by those sources, but FRED itself
  does not bill or meter consumers.

sources:
  - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/docs/api/api_key.html
  - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/docs/api/fred/overview.html
  - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/legal/

plans:
  - id: fred-free
    name: Free Public Access
    type: freemium
    description: >-
      The only FRED API tier. Free access for any non-abusive use case —
      research, dashboards, mobile apps, AI agents. Requires a free API key.
    elements:
      - name: All FRED API endpoints (Categories, Releases, Series, Sources, Tags, Observations)
      - name: All GeoFRED Maps API endpoints (Shapes, Series Group, Series Data, Regional Data)
      - name: ALFRED real-time vintage support (realtime_start / realtime_end)
      - name: Frequency aggregation (avg, sum, end-of-period)
      - name: Unit transformations (lin, chg, ch1, pch, pc1, pca, cch, cca, log)
      - name: XML, JSON, CSV, and XLSX response formats
      - name: 800,000+ time series from 100+ data sources
      - name: Free 32-character API key (instant, self-service)
    entries:
      - label: API requests
        name: api_requests
        type: metered
        metric: request
        limit: -1
        timeFrame: usage
        geo: global
        unit: 1
        price: '0'
        userMultiplied: false
      - label: Per-key throttle
        name: rate_limit_per_minute
        type: quota
        metric: request
        limit: 120
        timeFrame: minute
        geo: global
        unit: 1
        price: '0'
        userMultiplied: false