Data Providers: Built-In Sources for Market Data

Alphacast ships built-in connectors for 30+ external sources — FRED, BLS, World Bank, OECD, IMF, BIS, ECB, Eurostat, Banxico, BCRA, and many more. Browse, search, and pull series through a single unified REST API.

Alphacast ships with built-in connectors for a curated set of 30+ data providers, covering central banks, national statistics offices, market data sources, and international organizations from around the world. You can browse a provider’s catalog hierarchically, search it by keyword, or fetch a specific series by ID — all through the same REST API.

Browse the live provider catalog →

The authoritative list of providers — with their popular series, parameters, and key requirements — lives at alphacast.io/explore/apis.

Available providers

Slug	Provider	Category
a3	A3 Mercados (Matba/Rofex)	Markets
abs	Australian Bureau of Statistics	Statistics
banrep	Banco de la República (Colombia)	Central bank
banxico	Banxico — Banco de México	Central bank
bcch	Banco Central de Chile (BDE)	Central bank
bcb-opendata	BCB — Banco Central do Brasil	Markets
bcra	BCRA — Banco Central de la República Argentina	Central bank
bcrp	BCRP — Banco Central de Reserva del Perú	Central bank
bea	U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis	U.S. federal
bis	BIS — Bank for International Settlements	Markets
bls	U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics	Statistics
boc	Bank of Canada (Valet)	Central bank
boe	Bank of England	Central bank
boi	Bank of Israel	Central bank
cepalstat	CEPALSTAT (ECLAC)	Curated
coingecko	CoinGecko	Markets
ecb	European Central Bank	Central bank
eia	U.S. Energy Information Administration	U.S. federal
eurostat	Eurostat	Statistics
faostat	FAO FAOSTAT	Statistics
fred	Federal Reserve Economic Data (St. Louis Fed)	U.S. federal
hkma	Hong Kong Monetary Authority	Central bank
ilo	International Labour Organization	International
imf	International Monetary Fund	International
inegi	INEGI (Mexico)	Statistics
insee	INSEE (France)	Statistics
mae	MAE — Mercado Abierto Electrónico (Argentina)	Markets
norges	Norges Bank	Central bank
oecd	OECD Statistics	Statistics
opendosm	OpenDOSM (Malaysia)	Statistics
owid	Our World in Data	Curated
scb	Statistics Sweden	Statistics
sidra	IBGE SIDRA (Brazil)	Statistics
ssb	Statistics Norway	Statistics
taiwan-cbc	Central Bank of Taiwan (CBC DataAPI)	Central bank
unicef	UNICEF Data Warehouse	International
unsd	UN Statistics Division	Statistics
worldbank	World Bank Open Data	International

Not all providers support all three capability modes. Check the capabilities array in GET /providers/{slug} to know which modes are available for a given provider.

Provider capabilities

• hierarchical — Browse the provider’s catalog as a tree of categories. Use GET /providers/{slug}/browse to navigate.
• search — Search across the provider’s catalog by keyword. Use GET /providers/{slug}/search?q=your+query.
• direct — Fetch a specific series if you already know its ID. Use GET /providers/{slug}/series/{seriesId}.

API endpoints

The base URL for all provider operations is https://api.alphacast.io.

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/providers	List all available providers
GET	/providers/{slug}	Get a single provider’s details and capabilities
GET	/providers/{slug}/browse	Browse the provider’s catalog hierarchically
GET	/providers/{slug}/search	Search a provider’s catalog
GET	/providers/{slug}/series/{seriesId}	Preview the last 24 data points for a series
POST	/providers/{slug}/series/{seriesId}/data	Fetch the full series data
PUT	/user-keys/{slug}	Store your personal API key for a provider

Listing all providers

curl https://api.alphacast.io/providers \
  -u YOUR_API_KEY:

[
  {
    "slug": "fred",
    "name": "FRED Economic Data",
    "provider": "Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis",
    "description": "Hundreds of thousands of economic time series from dozens of national, international, public, and private sources.",
    "capabilities": ["search", "hierarchical", "direct"],
    "license": "Public Domain (mostly)"
  }
]

Browsing hierarchically

For providers with the hierarchical capability, you can navigate the catalog tree using the path parameter. Start at the root and drill down by appending path segments.

# Browse the root of the FRED catalog
curl "https://api.alphacast.io/providers/fred/browse" \
  -u YOUR_API_KEY:

# Browse a subcategory
curl "https://api.alphacast.io/providers/fred/browse?path=National%20Accounts" \
  -u YOUR_API_KEY:

Searching a provider

curl "https://api.alphacast.io/providers/fred/search?q=unemployment+rate" \
  -u YOUR_API_KEY:

Fetching a FRED series

Once you know a series ID, fetch a preview (last 24 data points) with a GET request, or the full dataset with a POST.

Preview (last 24 points)

curl "https://api.alphacast.io/providers/fred/series/UNRATE" \
  -u YOUR_API_KEY:

{
  "series_id": "UNRATE",
  "label": "Unemployment Rate",
  "metadata": {
    "frequency": "Monthly",
    "units": "Percent",
    "seasonal_adjustment": "Seasonally Adjusted"
  },
  "data": [
    { "date": "2024-10-01", "value": 4.1 },
    { "date": "2024-11-01", "value": 4.2 }
  ],
  "is_preview": false
}

Storing a provider API key

Some providers — including FRED and BLS — require their own API key to access higher rate limits or restricted data. You can store your key in Alphacast so it is used automatically whenever you fetch from that provider.

curl -X PUT https://api.alphacast.io/user-keys/fred \
  -u YOUR_API_KEY: \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"api_key": "YOUR_FRED_API_KEY"}'

{ "slug": "fred", "has_key": true }

To remove a stored key, send null or an empty string as the api_key value.

To get a free FRED API key, register at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/docs/api/api_key.html. Without a key, FRED requests may be rate-limited.