FRED Federal Reserve Economic Data Scraper

Extract US economic data from FRED. Access 800,000+ time series - GDP, unemployment, CPI, interest rates. Search series, get historical observations, or retrieve series metadata. Free API key from fred.stlouisfed.org required.

Use cases

• Pull GDP, CPI, or unemployment series into a macro dashboard
• Backtest a model against historical US economic indicators
• Automate monthly economic reporting
• Discover the right FRED series ID by keyword search
• Correlate business metrics with macro conditions

Input

You need your own free FRED key. Get one at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/docs/api/api_key.html — it takes a minute and costs nothing. Without it the Actor cannot fetch data.

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
mode	string	No	"getObservations"	Operation mode: search series, get observations, or get series metadata Allowed: searchSeries, getObservations, getSeriesInfo.
apiKey	string	No	—	FRED API key (free from api.stlouisfed.org/api_key_registration.html)
query	string	No	"GDP"	Search text for series search (used in searchSeries mode)
seriesId	string	No	"GDP"	FRED series ID (e.g., GDP, UNRATE, CPIAUCSL) — required for getObservations and getSeriesInfo modes
maxResults	integer	No	100	Maximum number of results to return (1–100000)

Example input

{
  "mode": "getObservations",
  "query": "GDP",
  "seriesId": "GDP",
  "maxResults": 10,
  "apiKey": "YOUR_API_KEY"
}

Output

Each dataset item has the following shape (fields vary by mode):

Field	Type
date	string — observation date (getObservations mode)
value	string — observation value (getObservations mode)
id	string — series ID (searchSeries / getSeriesInfo modes)
title	string — series title (searchSeries / getSeriesInfo modes)
frequency	string — e.g. Quarterly, Monthly
units	string — e.g. Billions of Dollars
seasonal_adjustment	string
last_updated	string
realtime_start	string
realtime_end	string

Results are exportable from Apify Console or the API as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML.

How to run it

In Apify Console — open the Actor, fill in the input form, click Start, then download the results from the Dataset tab.

With the JavaScript client

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('cloud9_ai/fred-scraper').call({
  "mode": "getObservations",
  "query": "GDP",
  "seriesId": "GDP",
  "maxResults": 10,
  "apiKey": "YOUR_API_KEY"
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

With the Python client

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN')

run = client.actor('cloud9_ai/fred-scraper').call(run_input={
  "mode": "getObservations",
  "query": "GDP",
  "seriesId": "GDP",
  "maxResults": 10,
  "apiKey": "YOUR_API_KEY"
})

for item in client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).iterate_items():
    print(item)

With the API — POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/cloud9_ai~fred-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN with the input JSON as the body.

Notes and limits

• Bring your own FRED key (free — https://fred.stlouisfed.org/docs/api/api_key.html). It is a secret input, so it is not written to the dataset or the log.
• maxResults caps how much a single run collects, which is also what caps the run's cost.
• Requests are paced and failed requests are retried automatically, so runs stay inside the source's rate limits.
• Only publicly available data is collected. How you use the output is your responsibility, including the source's terms of use and any applicable data-protection law.

Support

Found a bug, or need a field that isn't in the output? Open an issue on the Issues tab of this Actor in Apify Console. Issues there are read and answered.

License

Apache-2.0