FRED MCP Server 📊

U.S. and global economic data for Claude Desktop and any MCP-compatible client, powered by FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data). Search and pull from 800,000+ economic time series — GDP, inflation, unemployment, interest rates, and more — all from natural language.

npm package: fred-economic-mcp  ·  GitHub repo: danishashko/fred-economic-mcp.

🎯 What You Get

• 🔎 Search 800k+ economic series by keyword
• 📈 Observations with built-in transforms (levels, % change, year-over-year) and frequency aggregation (daily → monthly/quarterly/annual)
• 🧾 Series metadata — units, frequency, seasonal adjustment, coverage, notes
• 🇺🇸 Economic snapshot — key U.S. indicators in one call
• 🗂️ Category browsing to discover data by topic
• 🗓️ Releases tracked by FRED

Every tool returns human-readable markdown by default, or structured JSON on request (response_format: "json"). The server is lightweight (Python standard library + mcp only), applies FRED's transformations server-side so the AI gets clean numbers, and retries automatically when FRED rate-limits.

🔑 Get a Free API Key (required)

FRED requires a free API key. It takes about a minute:

1. Create an account at fredaccount.stlouisfed.org and request a key at fredaccount.stlouisfed.org/apikeys.
2. Provide it to the server via the FRED_API_KEY environment variable (see config below).

🚀 Quick Start

Add this to your Claude Desktop config and restart Claude:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fred": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "fred-economic-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "FRED_API_KEY": "your_free_fred_api_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

On first launch the npx wrapper creates an isolated Python environment and installs the dependencies for you (a one-time step that can take a minute). You only need Python 3.10+ and Node.js 16+ on your machine.

Prefer a global install?

npm install -g fred-economic-mcp

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fred": {
      "command": "fred-economic-mcp",
      "env": { "FRED_API_KEY": "your_free_fred_api_key_here" }
    }
  }
}

🔧 Available Tools

Tool	What it returns	Parameters
search_series	Series matching a keyword, ranked by popularity (ID, title, units, frequency)	query, limit
get_series_observations	The actual data values, with transforms and frequency aggregation	series_id, observation_start, observation_end, units, frequency, sort_order, limit
get_series_info	Metadata for a series (units, frequency, seasonal adjustment, coverage, notes)	series_id
get_economic_snapshot	Latest value of key U.S. indicators in one dashboard	(none)
browse_category	Child categories and popular series within a FRED category	category_id
get_releases	Economic data releases FRED tracks	limit

Every tool also accepts response_format ("markdown", the default, or "json").

get_series_observations transforms (units): lin levels · chg change · ch1 change from year ago · pch percent change · pc1 percent change from year ago · pca compounded annual rate · log natural log.

Frequency aggregation (frequency): empty (native) · d daily · w weekly · m monthly · q quarterly · a annual.

Popular series IDs

You don't need to memorize IDs — search_series finds them — but these come up often:

Series ID	Indicator
GDPC1	Real Gross Domestic Product
UNRATE	Unemployment Rate
CPIAUCSL	Consumer Price Index (CPI)
PCEPI	PCE Price Index (the Fed's preferred inflation gauge)
FEDFUNDS	Federal Funds Rate
DGS10	10-Year Treasury Yield
T10Y2Y	10-Year minus 2-Year Treasury Spread
PAYEMS	Nonfarm Payrolls
MORTGAGE30US	30-Year Fixed Mortgage Rate
UMCSENT	Consumer Sentiment (University of Michigan)

💬 Example Prompts

Once the server is connected, just ask Claude:

• "How's the U.S. economy doing right now?"
• "What's the current unemployment rate?"
• "Show me year-over-year CPI inflation for the last 12 months."
• "What's the 10-year Treasury yield, and how has it moved this year?"
• "Find FRED series about consumer credit."
• "What's the 10Y-2Y yield spread? Is the yield curve inverted?"
• "Compare real GDP growth over the last 8 quarters."
• "What does the PCEPI series measure, and how often is it updated?"

Example output

Asking "What's year-over-year CPI inflation for the last few months?" runs get_series_observations with series_id=CPIAUCSL, units=pc1:

# Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items (CPIAUCSL)

**Units:** Percent change from year ago · **Frequency:** m
**Total observations:** 940

**Latest:** 3.39 (2026-04-01)

| Date       | Value |
|------------|-------|
| 2026-04-01 | 3.39  |
| 2026-03-01 | 3.29  |
| 2026-02-01 | 2.43  |

🐛 Troubleshooting

"No FRED API key configured" Set FRED_API_KEY in your MCP client config (see Quick Start) to a free key from fredaccount.stlouisfed.org/apikeys, then restart the client.

"Command not found" / "Python not found" Make sure Python 3.10+ and Node.js 16+ are installed and on your PATH. On macOS/Linux, try python3.

"FRED is rate-limiting requests" FRED allows 120 requests/minute per key. The server retries automatically; if you still hit it, wait a minute.

Tools not showing up in Claude

1. Confirm the config file is valid JSON (no trailing commas).
2. Fully quit and reopen Claude Desktop.
3. Check that FRED_API_KEY is set in the server's env block.

"FRED rejected the request" The series ID is probably wrong. Use search_series to find the correct ID, or get_series_info to confirm a series exists.

Using a different model or provider (LiteLLM, OpenRouter, NVIDIA NIM, a local model) This server never talks to a model. Your client starts it as a local process and speaks JSON-RPC over stdin/stdout, so changing ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL or swapping the model behind your client has no effect on it. If tools stop firing after a switch like that, check two things: the model has to support function calling, and a proxy configured to drop unsupported parameters can silently strip your tool definitions, which produces no error at all. Run /mcp in your client (or claude mcp list) to confirm the server is connected before suspecting the server.

🛠️ Manual Installation (Alternative)

If you would rather run the Python file directly instead of via npx:

1. Download the server and install the dependency

Save fred_mcp.py somewhere on your machine, then:

pip install mcp

(or pip3 on macOS/Linux)

2. Point Claude Desktop at it

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fred": {
      "command": "python3",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/fred_mcp.py"],
      "env": { "FRED_API_KEY": "your_key_here" }
    }
  }
}

On Windows use "command": "python" and a path like "C:\\path\\to\\fred_mcp.py" (double backslashes or forward slashes).

3. Restart Claude Desktop.

🔒 Privacy & Rate Limits

• Uses the official FRED API with your own free API key.
• Requests go straight from your machine to FRED. Nothing is stored or proxied.
• FRED rate-limits 120 requests/minute per key; the server retries with backoff on 429.
• Intended for personal, educational, and research use.

📝 Notes

• Series IDs are case-insensitive here (they're upper-cased for you), e.g. unrate works.
• FRED marks missing observations with .; those are shown as N/A.
• The units transforms (e.g. pc1 for year-over-year %) are computed by FRED, so the values are authoritative — no client-side math.
• Data coverage and frequency vary by series; use get_series_info to check before pulling a range.

📋 Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for the full version history.

📚 Resources

• Model Context Protocol
• FRED API documentation
• Get a FRED API key

⚖️ Legal Disclaimer

This tool uses the FRED® API but is not endorsed or certified by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. FRED® is a registered trademark of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Use of the FRED API is subject to its Terms of Use.

👤 Author

Daniel Shashko

• GitHub: @danishashko
• LinkedIn: daniel-shashko
• npm: danielshashko

📄 License

MIT © Daniel Shashko