Fetch API Explorer Data

Import series from any connected external data provider — central banks, statistics offices and international organizations.

The Fetch API Explorer Data step imports series directly from an external data provider, without going through an Alphacast dataset first. It covers the same 30+ connectors documented in Data providers — central banks, national statistics offices, market data sources and international organizations.

Configuration

Field	Description
Provider	The external provider to pull from. One provider per step.
Series	The series to fetch from that provider. Each entry carries the provider’s own series identifier.
Output format	Wide gives one column per series. Long stacks them with Provider and Series columns alongside the provider’s own entity dimensions.

Wide vs long

In long format the output carries Date, Provider, Series, any entity dimensions the provider returns, and Value. This is the better choice when you are fetching many series from one provider and want to filter or group them downstream.

In wide format each series becomes its own column, joined on date.

Some providers require an API key. Keys are stored per user, not per pipeline — see Data providers for how to save one, and Provider tools for managing them through an agent.

The step fails if no provider or no series is configured, if a series returns no data, or if a configured series is missing its identifier.

To find the right provider and series identifier before building the step, browse the catalog through the API or ask an agent using the provider tools.

Next steps

Data providers

The full catalog of connected providers.

Publish to Dataset

Turn the fetched series into an auto-updating dataset.