FRED
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.
Real signal across most facets with visible, nameable gaps — the contract exists but is thin, or the portal is good while governance and commercial terms are absent.
API Evangelist profiles FRED the way a machine reads it — 85 machine-readable artifacts across 10 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — FRED scores 57.3/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 55/100 (agent ready). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile FRED
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for FRED. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 10
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
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.
Scroll within the panel for all 10 ·
Open Collections 2
Open, tool-agnostic collections carry the same runnable value as Postman without locking you to one client — the portable, forkable form of the same exercise.
Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).
FRED Maps API (GeoFRED)
OPEN COLLECTIONFRED API
OPEN COLLECTIONPricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Fred Plans Pricing
PLANSRate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Fred Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSSemantic Vocabularies 3
JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
Spectral Rules 2
Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.
FRED API Rules
SPECTRALFRED API Rules
SPECTRALJSON Schema 21
Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.
Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.
CategoryList
JSON SCHEMACategory
JSON SCHEMAObservationList
JSON SCHEMAObservation
JSON SCHEMAReleaseDateList
JSON SCHEMAReleaseDate
JSON SCHEMAReleaseList
JSON SCHEMARelease
JSON SCHEMAReleaseTable
JSON SCHEMASeriesList
JSON SCHEMASeries
JSON SCHEMASourceList
JSON SCHEMASource
JSON SCHEMATagList
JSON SCHEMATag
JSON SCHEMAVintageDateList
JSON SCHEMARegionalDataResult
JSON SCHEMARegionalDatum
JSON SCHEMASeriesGroup
JSON SCHEMAShapeCollection
JSON SCHEMAShape
JSON SCHEMAScroll within the panel for all 21 ·
JSON Structure 21
JSON Structure captures the data shapes in a form built for tooling — a complement to JSON Schema that keeps the model machine-legible.
JSON Structure definitions describing this provider's data shapes.
Api Category List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREApi Category Structure
JSON STRUCTUREApi Observation List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREApi Observation Structure
JSON STRUCTUREApi Release Date List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREApi Release Date Structure
JSON STRUCTUREApi Release List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREApi Release Structure
JSON STRUCTUREApi Release Table Structure
JSON STRUCTUREApi Series List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREApi Series Structure
JSON STRUCTUREApi Source List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREApi Source Structure
JSON STRUCTUREApi Tag List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREApi Tag Structure
JSON STRUCTUREApi Vintage Date List Structure
JSON STRUCTUREGeofred Api Regional Data Result Structure
JSON STRUCTUREGeofred Api Regional Datum Structure
JSON STRUCTUREGeofred Api Series Group Structure
JSON STRUCTUREGeofred Api Shape Collection Structure
JSON STRUCTUREGeofred Api Shape Structure
JSON STRUCTUREScroll within the panel for all 21 ·
Examples 21
Real request and response payloads are what turn a spec from abstract into obvious — and they're one of the twelve things an agent needs to call an API correctly on the first try.
Example request and response payloads for these APIs.
Api Category Example
EXAMPLEApi Category List Example
EXAMPLEApi Observation Example
EXAMPLEApi Observation List Example
EXAMPLEApi Release Date Example
EXAMPLEApi Release Example
EXAMPLEApi Release List Example
EXAMPLEApi Release Table Example
EXAMPLEApi Series Example
EXAMPLEApi Series List Example
EXAMPLEApi Source Example
EXAMPLEApi Source List Example
EXAMPLEApi Tag Example
EXAMPLEApi Tag List Example
EXAMPLEGeofred Api Shape Example
EXAMPLEScroll within the panel for all 21 ·
Security Posture 2
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Resources
Every other property we hold for FRED — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Documentation 2
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Design & Contract 6
Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events
Build 19
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Scroll within the panel for all 19 ·
Access & Security 3
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 1
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 3
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
Company 3
The organization behind the API
Other 1
Properties that don't map to a standard resource type
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