📊 FRED Scraper

🚀 Collect economic data from the Federal Reserve (FRED) in minutes. Search by keyword or category. Filter by frequency, units, and seasonal adjustment. Export time series with observations. No coding, no FRED API key required.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-04-16 · 📊 20+ fields per series · 🔍 6 filters · 📈 Time series observations · 🚫 No auth required

The FRED Scraper collects economic data series from the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) database, returning 20+ fields per series: series ID, title, frequency, units, seasonal adjustment, observation start/end dates, popularity, and optionally full time series observations (date + value pairs). Runs support up to 1,000,000 series on a paid plan.

FRED hosts over 800,000 economic time series from 100+ sources. The Actor supports keyword search with category, frequency, units, seasonal adjustment, and sort filters.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Economists, data scientists, financial analysts, policy researchers, journalists, BI teams	Economic research, financial modeling, trend analysis, policy research, data journalism

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📋 What the FRED Scraper does

Keyword search with 6 filters:

• 🔍 Keyword search. Free-text search across series titles and descriptions.
• 📂 Category filter. Browse by FRED category ID.
• 📅 Frequency filter. Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual.
• 📊 Units filter. Levels, change, percent change, etc.
• 🌡️ Seasonal adjustment. Seasonally adjusted or not.
• 📈 Observations toggle. Optionally fetch full time series data points.

Each series record includes ID, title, frequency, units, seasonal adjustment, observation dates, popularity, and (when enabled) array of date-value observation pairs.

💡 Why it matters: downloading FRED data manually means clicking through the website series by series. This Actor exports structured economic data at scale, ready for your financial models, research databases, or BI dashboards.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded dataset.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Max series. Free: limited. Paid: up to 1,000,000.
searchText	string	""	Keyword search across series.
categoryId	string	""	FRED category ID.
frequency	string	""	Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual.
units	string	""	Levels, change, percent change.
seasonalAdjustment	string	""	Seasonally adjusted or not.
includeObservations	boolean	false	Fetch full time series observations.
sortOrder	string	""	Sort by popularity, title, or date.

Example: GDP data with observations.

{
    "searchText": "GDP",
    "frequency": "quarterly",
    "includeObservations": true,
    "maxItems": 10
}

Example: monthly unemployment rate series.

{
    "searchText": "unemployment rate",
    "frequency": "monthly",
    "seasonalAdjustment": "sa",
    "maxItems": 20
}

⚠️ Good to Know: FRED is maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and hosts data from 100+ government and international sources. Enabling includeObservations adds full time series data but increases processing time.

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📊 Output

Each series record contains 20+ fields. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
🆔 seriesId	string	"GDP"
📝 title	string	"Gross Domestic Product"
📅 frequency	string	"Quarterly"
📊 units	string	"Billions of Dollars"
🌡️ seasonalAdjustment	string	"Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate"
📅 observationStart	string	"1947-01-01"
📅 observationEnd	string	"2026-01-01"
⭐ popularity	number	95
📝 notes	string	"BEA Account Code: A191RC"
📈 observations	array | null	[{ "date": "2025-10-01", "value": 28900.5 }]
🔗 fredUrl	string	"https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP"
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-04-16T00:00:00.000Z"

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
📊	800,000+ series. Full FRED database from 100+ sources.
🔍	6 filters. Keyword, category, frequency, units, seasonal adjustment, sort.
📈	Time series observations. Optional full date-value pairs per series.
📅	Frequency control. Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual.
⭐	Popularity ranking. Sort by how popular each series is on FRED.
⚡	Scalable. From single series lookups to full category sweeps.
🚫	No authentication. No FRED API key needed.

📊 FRED is the most widely used source of economic data in the world. Structured access powers every financial model, policy analysis, and economic research workflow.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Observations	Setup
⭐ FRED Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	Full FRED	Live per run	Optional per series	⚡ 2 min
FRED API (direct)	Free with rate limits	Full	Real-time	Yes	⏳ Hours (API key + client)
Manual FRED website	Free	One series at a time	Manual	Manual CSV export	🕒 Hours
Paid economic data platforms	$500-50,000/year	Multi-source	Varies	Yes	🐢 Weeks

Pick this Actor when you want FRED data on demand, with category and frequency filters, without writing API client code.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the FRED Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Enter a keyword, pick frequency and units, toggle observations.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor collect your data.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to downloaded dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

📊 Financial Modeling Pull GDP, CPI, and interest rate series Build macro indicator dashboards Track Fed policy metrics in real time Power quantitative models with fresh data	📈 Economic Research Analyze employment trends over decades Compare regional economic indicators Study monetary policy impact Build longitudinal datasets
📰 Data Journalism Track inflation and cost-of-living metrics Visualize housing market trends Report on labor market changes Build interactive economic charts	🏢 Business Intelligence Monitor consumer confidence and spending Track industry-specific indicators Build automated economic briefings Feed dashboards with fresh macro data

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🔌 Automating FRED Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval. Weekly pulls keep your economic data pipeline in sync.

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

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🔌 Integrate with any app

FRED Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications
• Airbyte - Pipe economic data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes. Push fresh economic data into your models, or alert your team in Slack.

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🔗 Recommended Actors

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• 🏦 FDIC Bank Scraper - Bank financial data
• 🏦 FINRA BrokerCheck Scraper - Broker regulatory data
• 📋 GSA eLibrary Scraper - Government contract data

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more financial and government data scrapers.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis or the Federal Reserve System. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available FRED data is collected.