Data Download Program and Federal Reserve Economic Data Partnership
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis's Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) program are working together to expand options for finding, accessing, and visualizing data from the Board's Data Download Program (DDP) in FRED.
New Version of Application Programming Interface for All FRED and DDP Series Available
November 4, 2025
FRED has launched a new version of its application programming interface (API). An API enables users to write programs and build applications that retrieve economic data from FRED.
- FRED’s API Version 2 allows account holders to retrieve observations for all FRED and DDP series in any release in bulk and obtain the entire history in JSON or XML format.
- Users interested in using this new feature to make data requests will need an API key, which can be requested via a FRED user account.
Improved Charting Feature on Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) Website
October 31, 2025
On December 18, the “View chart” feature on the Board’s Data Download Program (DDP) pages will be retired. Users seeking interactive charts for DDP data releases can access expanded functionality for customizing, sharing, and accessing charts through the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED).
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.
Added Resources for Creating Board Charts in FRED
April 11, 2025
New links in the Board's DDP will help users find and chart Board data in FRED, including
- On the Board Data landing page to Board data in FRED
- On all Board DDP release pages to the release in FRED
- Adjacent to DDP "View Chart" to help users create similar charts in FRED
Tutorials available on FRED help users customize and share FRED charts using Board data.
In addition, the Board published a crosswalk that helps users translate Board series IDs to FRED series IDs. The crosswalk is a comprehensive file mapping of all DDP data series and their FRED counterparts. This file will periodically add new series and update mapping.
DDP-FRED Data Series Crosswalk (CSV) | Data definitions (PDF) (Updated: April 21, 2025)
Data Download Program and Federal Reserve Economic Data Partnership
March 26, 2024
New capabilities this partnership brings to DDP users include
- a new Board DDP data landing page in FRED
- keyword search functionality to find DDP and related data
- graphs and maps that can be tailored by units, frequency, and color
- personalized dashboards that can be used to update and share graphs
- access to vintage versions of economic data
- application programming interface for programmers wanting to build applications sourcing data from FRED
- Microsoft Excel add-in for instant data updates
- applications available for iOS and Android devices
All releases available through the DDP are now accessible within the FRED database. Going forward, the Board and Reserve Bank of St. Louis will be working to expedite the availability of DDP releases in FRED. DDP users will still be able to access the existing DDP service, including the ability to download preformatted release packages or customized subsets of releases.
FRED offers more than 300 macroeconomic-related data releases from a variety of source providers, including Board data currently offered through the DDP. FRED launched in 1991 and continues to expand its data offerings to researchers, students, business professionals, and others with an interest in economic data.
For questions on Board data, please continue to use the Contact Us page and select the data source in the Economic Data drop-down menu.
For questions on FRED functionality, please contact FRED.