# 2s FRED Economic Data API

> 2s FRED Economic Data API is a paid API for AI agents from 2s.io, paid per call via x402, $0.00144/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-10).

Fetches Federal Reserve FRED economic time-series data (observations, metadata, or catalog search) by series ID or full-text query

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://2s.io/api/econ/fred?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.00144/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-10-10
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/2s-fred-economic-data-api-c9b1e01c
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_nJgUFA41LiFFoQyznoSml

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability 2s-fred-economic-data-api-c9b1e01c
```

Example prompt: Pull the monthly unemployment rate (UNRATE) from FRED going back to January 2020 through the latest available date, up to 60 observations.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need authoritative US macroeconomic time-series data from the Federal Reserve (FRED) — unemployment, GDP, CPI, interest rates, money supply, housing, and hundreds of other official series — without needing a FRED API key or signup. Prefer over web scraping or unofficial sources when ground-truth, properly attributed Federal Reserve data is required. Also useful for discovering FRED series by keyword when you don't know the exact series ID.

## Known failure modes

- Invalid or unknown seriesId returns empty items array or error
- Neither seriesId nor query provided may return an error or empty result
- Dates outside observationStart/observationEnd range return no observations
- limit out of range (not 1-100) may cause validation error
- FRED upstream outage causes delayed or failed response
- Payment failure (insufficient USDC) returns 402 before any data is returned

## How this service works

Any series in the Federal Reserve's FRED database (800k+ US & international economic time series). HOW TO USE: if you know the series id, pass seriesId to get the series metadata (title, units, frequency, seasonal adjustment, observation range, last updated) + its most-recent observations (date + value, newest first; optionally bound the range with start/end YYYY-MM-DD and cap with limit). If you DON'T know the id, pass query to full-text search the catalog (returns ids + titles + units + frequency, most-popular first) — then call again with the seriesId you found. Popular ids: UNRATE (unemployment rate), CPIAUCSL (CPI), PCEPI (PCE price index), GDP / GDPC1 (nominal / real GDP), PAYEMS (nonfarm payrolls), FEDFUNDS (fed funds rate), DGS10 / DGS2 (10yr / 2yr Treasury), T10Y2Y (10y-2y spread), MORTGAGE30US (30yr mortgage), SP500, VIXCLS (VIX), DEXUSEU (USD/EUR), DCOILWTICO (WTI oil), HOUST (housing starts), UMCSENT (consumer sentiment), M2SL (M2 money supply). Each series' units and frequency come back in the metadata so you know how to read the values. Free, public-domain for most series (FRED attribution). Distinct from econ.indicator (a small curated headline set) — this is the FULL catalog. Companion endpoints: econ.fred-releases (when reports are published — the data calendar) and econ.fred-vintage (point-in-time / revised values for honest backtesting).

## Output

Returns an array of matched FRED series objects, each containing the series ID, title, units, frequency, seasonal adjustment method, observation start/end dates, last updated timestamp, and an array of date-value observation pairs. Also includes total count and source attribution (FRED license info).

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method",
    "queryParams"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "const": "GET"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "properties": {
      "end": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Latest observation date YYYY-MM-DD (seriesId mode)."
      },
      "limit": {
       "type": "integer",
       "description": "Max observations or search results (1-100, default 12)."
      },
      "query": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Full-text search the FRED catalog (alternative to seriesId)."
      },
      "start": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Earliest observation date YYYY-MM-DD (seriesId mode)."
      },
      "seriesId": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "FRED series id, e.g. UNRATE, CPIAUCSL, GDP, DGS10."
      }
     }
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/2s-fred-economic-data-api-c9b1e01c/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from 2s.io](https://www.zero.xyz/host/2s.io/llms.txt)