Connect to External Data Providers

Pull series from central banks, statistical agencies, market data sources, and international organizations through a single unified Alphacast API. Browse the live catalog at alphacast.io/explore/apis.

Alphacast connects you to a curated catalog of 30+ external data providers — central banks, national statistics offices, market data sources, and international organizations — through a single unified interface. Every provider follows the same REST conventions: browse, search, preview, then fetch. You do not need to learn each provider’s native API.

Browse the live catalog →

The authoritative list of providers, their capabilities, popular series, and any API-key requirements lives at alphacast.io/explore/apis. That page is always the source of truth — this documentation only describes how to use the API surface.

Currently supported providers

The catalog is grouped below by provider type. All slugs are case-insensitive — FRED, fred, and Fred resolve to the same provider. Use them in the API paths described later on this page.

Central banks

Slug	Provider	API key
banrep	Banco de la República (Colombia)	—
banxico	Banxico — Banco de México	Required
bcch	Banco Central de Chile (BDE)	Required
bcra	BCRA — Banco Central de la República Argentina	—
bcrp	BCRP — Banco Central de Reserva del Perú	—
boc	Bank of Canada (Valet)	—
boe	Bank of England	—
boi	Bank of Israel	—
ecb	European Central Bank	—
hkma	Hong Kong Monetary Authority	—
norges	Norges Bank	—
taiwan-cbc	Central Bank of Taiwan (CBC DataAPI)	—

National statistics offices

Slug	Provider	API key
abs	Australian Bureau of Statistics	—
bls	U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics	Optional
eurostat	Eurostat	—
faostat	FAO FAOSTAT	—
inegi	INEGI — Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (Mexico)	Required
insee	INSEE (France)	—
oecd	OECD Statistics	—
opendosm	OpenDOSM (Malaysia)	—
scb	Statistics Sweden	—
sidra	IBGE SIDRA (Brazil)	—
ssb	Statistics Norway	—
unsd	UN Statistics Division	—

Markets and finance

Slug	Provider	API key
a3	A3 Mercados (Matba/Rofex, Argentina)	—
bcb-opendata	BCB — Banco Central do Brasil (Open Data)	—
bis	BIS — Bank for International Settlements	—
coingecko	CoinGecko	Optional
mae	MAE — Mercado Abierto Electrónico (Argentina)	—

U.S. federal agencies

Slug	Provider	API key
bea	U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis	Required
eia	U.S. Energy Information Administration	Required
fred	Federal Reserve Economic Data (St. Louis Fed)	Required

International organizations

Slug	Provider	API key
ilo	International Labour Organization	—
imf	International Monetary Fund	—
unicef	UNICEF Data Warehouse	—
worldbank	World Bank Open Data	—

Curated and other

Slug	Provider	API key
cepalstat	CEPALSTAT (ECLAC)	—
owid	Our World in Data	—

To see capabilities (hierarchical, search, direct), parameters, and popular series for any provider, call GET /providers/{slug} or open it in the live catalog.

API endpoints

All provider endpoints are available under https://api.alphacast.io. Authentication uses your Alphacast API key over HTTP Basic Auth — see the authentication guide.

List and discover providers

# List all enabled providers with their slugs, capabilities, and license
GET /providers

# Get full detail for a single provider: capabilities, parameters, popular series
GET /providers/{slug}

Browse, search, and fetch series

# Browse hierarchically (topics, categories, surveys)
GET /providers/{slug}/browse?path=

# Full-text search for series within a provider
GET /providers/{slug}/search?q={query}

# Preview the last 24 data points for a series
GET /providers/{slug}/series/{series_id}

# Fetch the full series history
POST /providers/{slug}/series/{series_id}/data

Manage your API keys

# List which providers you have API keys stored for
GET /user-keys

# Save (or update) your API key for a provider
PUT /user-keys/{slug}

For providers that require a key (FRED, BLS, INEGI, Banxico, BEA, EIA, BCCH), save your key once using PUT /user-keys/{slug}. Alphacast stores it securely and passes it automatically on every subsequent request. You never need to include it in individual calls.

Capability types

Each provider declares which access patterns it supports.

Capability	Description
hierarchical	Browse a tree of topics, categories, or surveys to discover series
search	Full-text search for series by name or keyword
direct	Fetch a series directly if you already know its ID

You can check a provider’s capabilities with GET /providers/{slug} before deciding how to query it.

Complete example: list, search, and fetch

The walkthrough below shows the full flow from discovering providers to downloading data.

1. List all providers

   Retrieve the catalog to see slugs and capabilities.

   curl https://api.alphacast.io/providers
   

   Each entry in the response includes slug, name, capabilities, and license.

2. Inspect a provider

   Fetch provider detail including its parameters and popular series IDs.

   curl https://api.alphacast.io/providers/fred
   

   The response includes popular_series (a list of well-known series IDs), parameters (optional request modifiers), and browse_root_label.

3. Search for a series

   Find a series by keyword. Only providers with the search capability support this endpoint.

   curl "https://api.alphacast.io/providers/fred/search?q=consumer+price+index"
   

   Each result contains series_id and label. Use the series_id in the next step.

4. Preview the series

   Retrieve the last 24 data points to confirm you have the right series.

   curl https://api.alphacast.io/providers/fred/series/CPIAUCSL
   

   The response includes label, metadata (frequency, units, date range), and a data array limited to 24 observations. The is_preview: true field indicates this is a truncated response.

5. Fetch the full series

   Issue a POST to retrieve all historical data. Pass optional parameters in the request body.

   Full history

   curl -X POST https://api.alphacast.io/providers/fred/series/CPIAUCSL/data \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{}'
   

   curl -X POST https://api.alphacast.io/providers/fred/series/CPIAUCSL/data \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"params": {"units": "pc1", "frequency": "m"}}'
   

   The response contains the same structure as the preview but with is_preview: false and the full data array.

6. Save an API key (if required)

   For providers like FRED, BLS, INEGI, or Banxico that enforce rate limits or require authentication, save your key once.

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

   After saving, Alphacast uses your key automatically on all subsequent requests to that provider.

Not sure which provider has the data you need? Use the provider match endpoint with a free-text description: GET /providers/match?q=argentina+exchange+rate. It returns the top matching providers based on your query.