FRED Series — U.S. Economic Time Series

FRED Series — U.S. Economic Time Series MCP Connector for Claude

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Search and retrieve data from 816,000+ official U.S. economic time series: GDP, inflation, unemployment, interest rates, money supply — with built-in transformations, frequency aggregation, and vintage analysis.

5 tools Official Updated Jun 28, 2026 Official Vinkius Partner

Connect your AI agent to the most powerful economic data engine in the world. FRED Series gives you direct access to the Federal Reserve's complete time series database.

What you can do

  • Search 816,000+ Series — Find any economic indicator by keyword. GDP, CPI, unemployment rate, federal funds rate, housing starts, and hundreds of thousands more
  • Retrieve Observations — Get actual date/value pairs with built-in unit transformations (percent change, log, year-over-year) and frequency aggregation (daily → monthly → quarterly → annual)
  • Series Metadata — Full details: title, units, frequency, seasonal adjustment, observation range, source, and notes
  • Recent Updates — Monitor which series were just updated — essential for tracking economic releases
  • Vintage Analysis — Access ALFRED-style historical revisions to understand how data was revised over time

Popular Series IDs

GDP · UNRATE · CPIAUCSL · FEDFUNDS · DGS10 · SP500 · M2SL · MORTGAGE30US · DEXUSEU · T10YIE

Who is this for?

Quantitative analysts, economists, financial advisors, portfolio managers, data journalists, academic researchers, and anyone building AI agents that need authoritative U.S. economic data.

time-serieseconomic-indicatorsdata-transformationmacroeconomicsfinancial-analysisstatistical-data

5 tools expose this connector's capabilities to your AI agent.

search_series

Returns matching series with title, frequency, units, popularity. Use order_by=popularity to find the most-used series. Examples: "GDP", "unemployment rate", "inflation CPI". Search 816,000+ economic time series by keyword

get_series

Use well-known IDs like GDP, UNRATE, CPIAUCSL, FEDFUNDS, DGS10, SP500, M2SL. Get metadata for a specific FRED series

get_observations

Supports date filtering, unit transformations (percent change, log, etc.), and frequency aggregation. This is the primary tool for retrieving economic data. Get actual data values for a FRED time series

get_series_updates

Useful for monitoring new data releases. Filter by macro (large/popular series) or regional. Get recently updated FRED series

get_vintage_dates

Essential for ALFRED-style vintage analysis and understanding data revisions. Get historical revision dates for a series

See how to talk to your AI agent using FRED Series — U.S. Economic Time Series.

What is the current U.S. unemployment rate?

📊 **U.S. Unemployment Rate (UNRATE)** Latest: 3.7% (January 2025) Previous: 3.7% (December 2024) Frequency: Monthly, seasonally adjusted 12-month trend: Stable around 3.5-3.9% Historical low: 2.5% (May 1953) Pandemic peak: 14.7% (April 2020) The labor market remains tight by historical standards.

Show me U.S. GDP growth rate over the last 5 years

📈 **U.S. GDP — Percent Change from Previous Quarter (Annualized)** | Year | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | |------|-----|-----|-----|-----| | 2024 | 1.4% | 3.0% | 2.8% | 2.3% | | 2023 | 2.0% | 2.1% | 4.9% | 3.4% | | 2022 | -1.6% | -0.6% | 3.2% | 2.6% | Using series GDP with units=pch (percent change) and frequency=q (quarterly).

Compare the federal funds rate with 10-year Treasury yield

🏦 **FEDFUNDS vs DGS10 — Rate Comparison** Federal Funds Rate (FEDFUNDS): 5.33% 10-Year Treasury (DGS10): 4.15% Yield curve inversion: -118 bps This inversion has persisted for 18+ months, historically signaling recession risk. Both series retrieved from FRED with daily frequency.

Free and instant! Go to fredaccount.stlouisfed.org/apikeys, create a free account (no credit card), click 'Request API Key', and copy the 32-character key. Takes under 60 seconds.

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