Fred (Fred v0.5.0)

Elixir client for the FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) API.

The FRED API provides access to thousands of economic data series from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Setup

In order to use this FRED API client library, you'll need to have an account with FRED so that you can use the API. You can create an account for free from the FRED website

After you have created an account, you can configure this library via your config file like so:

# config/runtime.exs
import Config

config :fred,
  api_key: System.fetch_env!("FRED_API_KEY")

With your API key configured, you can now make calls to the FRED API to fetch economic data.

Run Your First Query

With your API key configured, you can make calls to the FRED API like so:

iex(1)> Fred.Series.get("GDP")
{:ok,
 %{
   "realtime_end" => "2026-02-20",
   "realtime_start" => "2026-02-20",
   "seriess" => [
     %{
       "frequency" => "Quarterly",
       "frequency_short" => "Q",
       "id" => "GDP",
       ...
     }
   ]
 }}

API Coverage

This library provides coverage for the whole FRED v1 API including Maps:

• Fred.Categories - Browse and explore the category tree
• Fred.Series - Fetch series metadata, observations, search, and tags
• Fred.Releases - Get information about data releases
• Fred.Sources - Get information about data sources
• Fred.Tags - Browse and search tags assigned to series
• Fred.Maps - GeoFRED geographic/regional data and shape files

Telemetry

So that you have the ability to hook into requests being made to FRED, this library emits telemetry events whenever an API call is made. The following telemetry events are emitted:

• [:fred, :request, :init, :start] - When an API request is initiated
• [:fred, :request, :init, :stop] - When an API call completes
• [:fred, :request, :init, :exception] - When an exception occurs during the API call

For more details on the measurements and metadata provided in each event, be sure to take a look at the Fred.Telemetry module docs.

Default Logger

For your convenience, this library provides a default Logger that leverages the aforementioned telemetry events. You can set up the default Logger by running the following in your Application.start/2 callback:

Fred.Telemetry.Logger.attach()

Configuration Options

Aside from your FRED API key, you can also configure the timeout for each request to the API:

config :fred,
  api_key: System.fetch_env!("FRED_API_KEY"), # Required. Your FRED API key
  timeout: 30_000                             # Optional. Request timeout in ms (default 30s)