Federal Reserve Economic Data MCP Server

[!NOTE] This open-source project is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the Federal Reserve or the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. "FRED" is a registered trademark of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, used here for descriptive purposes only.

A production-grade Model Context Protocol server for FRED® economic data. Covers all 31 endpoints exposed by fred-py-api.

Features

• Full FRED API v1 coverage: series, categories, releases, sources, and tags
• FastMCP 3.x with structured tool output and proper ToolError handling
• Dual-mode credentials: environment variable (stdio) or per-client HTTP header (remote BYOK)
• Transports: stdio, streamable-http, and sse
• Docker image published to GHCR

Installation

pip install fred-mcp

Requires Python 3.10+.

Get a free FRED API key at fredaccount.stlouisfed.org/apikey.

Setup

Remote hosted server (recommended)

Use the public hosted server with bring your own key (BYOK): no install and no shared server-side API key. Each client sends its own FRED API key in the X-FRED-API-Key header.

Transport: streamable HTTP. Endpoint: https://fred-mcp-prod.fly.dev/mcp.

Add this to your MCP client's configuration file and restart the client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fred-mcp": {
      "url": "https://fred-mcp-prod.fly.dev/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "X-FRED-API-Key": "<your fred api key>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Programmatic example with the FastMCP client:

from fastmcp import Client
from fastmcp.client.transports import StreamableHttpTransport

transport = StreamableHttpTransport(
    "https://fred-mcp-prod.fly.dev/mcp",
    headers={"X-FRED-API-Key": "your_fred_api_key"},
)
async with Client(transport=transport) as client:
    await client.ping()

Local (stdio)

For clients that spawn a local process, install fred-mcp and use:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fred-mcp": {
      "command": "fred-mcp",
      "env": {
        "FRED_API_KEY": "<your fred api key>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or run directly from the terminal:

export FRED_API_KEY=your_api_key
fred-mcp

Self-hosted HTTP

Deploy your own instance and use the same url + headers configuration, substituting your host for the endpoint above. No shared server-side key is required when clients send X-FRED-API-Key.

For public internet deployment, terminate TLS at a reverse proxy (nginx, Caddy, Cloudflare). Do not expose plain HTTP with API keys.

Docker

Run the server:

docker run -d -p 8000:8000 \
  --name fred-mcp-server \
  ghcr.io/zachspar/fred-mcp/fred-mcp-server:latest

Connect with your FRED API key in the X-FRED-API-Key header (same JSON shape as the remote hosted example, with url set to your deployment).

For stdio via Docker:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fred-mcp": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run", "-i", "--rm",
        "-e", "MCP_SERVER_TRANSPORT=stdio",
        "-e", "FRED_API_KEY=<your fred api key>",
        "ghcr.io/zachspar/fred-mcp/fred-mcp-server:latest"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Optional server-side fallback key

Set FRED_API_KEY on the server for clients that cannot send custom headers. Header takes precedence when both are present.

Variable	Default	Description
FRED_API_KEY	—	FRED API key (required for stdio; optional HTTP fallback)
FRED_API_KEY_HEADER	X-FRED-API-Key	HTTP header name for BYOK
MCP_SERVER_TRANSPORT	stdio	stdio, streamable-http, or sse
MCP_SERVER_HOST	localhost	Bind host for HTTP transports
MCP_SERVER_PORT	8000	Bind port for HTTP transports

Tools (31)

Series

Tool	Description
get_series	Series metadata
get_series_categories	Categories for a series
get_series_observations	Data values / observations
get_series_release	Release that publishes a series
search_series	Search series by text or ID
search_series_tags	Tags for a series search
search_series_related_tags	Related tags for a series search
get_series_tags	Tags on a series
get_series_updates	Recently updated series
get_series_vintage_dates	Vintage / revision dates

Categories

Tool	Description
get_category	Category metadata
get_category_children	Child categories
get_category_related	Related categories
get_category_series	Series in a category
get_category_tags	Tags in a category
get_category_related_tags	Related tags in a category

Releases

Tool	Description
list_releases	All releases
list_release_dates	Release dates across releases
get_release	Release metadata
get_release_dates	Dates for one release
get_release_series	Series in a release
get_release_sources	Sources for a release
get_release_tags	Tags for a release
get_release_related_tags	Related tags for a release
get_release_tables	Release tables

Sources

Tool	Description
list_sources	All data sources
get_source	Source metadata
get_source_releases	Releases from a source

Tags

Tool	Description
list_tags	Search / list tags
get_related_tags	Related tags
get_tags_series	Series matching tags

Migration from 0.x

Version 1.0.0 renames tools to snake_case and upgrades to FastMCP 3.x.

Old name (0.x)	New name (1.0)
FREDSeries	get_series
FREDSeriesCategories	get_series_categories
FREDSeriesObservations	get_series_observations
FREDSeriesRelease	get_series_release
FREDSeriesSearch	search_series
FREDSeriesSearchTags	search_series_tags
FREDSeriesSearchRelatedTags	search_series_related_tags
FREDSeriesTags	get_series_tags
FREDSeriesUpdates	get_series_updates
FREDSeriesVintageDates	get_series_vintage_dates

21 additional tools were added for categories, releases, sources, and tags.

Error responses now use MCP ToolError (isError: true) instead of {"error": ...} payloads.

Development

python3.13 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest
ruff check src tests

License

MIT