Head to head · Market data · October 2026 research run

Codex vs FRED API

Codex scores 75.4 (BB) on agent readiness against FRED API's 42.8 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do market data.

Best data provider APIs for AI agents · All 52 data comparisons

Which one, for what

Codex BB

Best for On-chain token prices, charts, holders, wallet PnL, launchpad streams and Polymarket and Kalshi data for trading agents and crypto apps.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 85 against 38
  • Schema & documentation, 91 against 43
  • Agent ergonomics, 79 against 68
  • Security & auth, 49 against 35
  • Payments & pricing, 80 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 15
  • Transparency & trust, 59 against 54

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for

The free plan needs a one-time $1 activation fee by card or 1 USDC

FRED API E

Best for Looking up US and international macroeconomic series, their metadata and their revision history in a live session.

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

The FRED Services Terms of Use forbid using the API to develop or train any AI or machine-learning system, and forbid storing, caching or archiving FRED content

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Maintenance & community Codex +65

Codex 80

Closed service. Newest changelog entry 2 November 2026 (30). Weekly entries from 3 August to 2 November, and SDK releases 2.5.10 to 2.5.20 between 28 October and 5 November (20). Public changelog, a Discord, a support address and a status page with a report link; GitHub issue replies were not sampled (10 of 15). Current official TypeScript SDK, no other languages (12 of 15). The SDK repository runs lint and test on pull requests and a release workflow (8 of 10). 30+20+10+12+8 = 80.

FRED API 15

The last dated API change found is the version 2 launch on 4 November 2025, 339 days before the check (0 of 30). The FRED News feed carries eight posts in the last 90 days, four of them data additions and none an API change, so half credit (10 of 20). A public news feed and a contact form, with no developer forum or issue tracker found (5 of 15). No official SDK (0 of 15). No package to judge (0 of 10). The official MCP connector is recent but its launch date was not found, so it earns nothing here. Total 15.

Schema & documentation Codex +48

Codex 91

The full GraphQL schema, 18,159 lines, is in the MIT SDK repository at src/resources/schema.graphql, updated on 5 November 2026, and introspection is free (25). llms.txt, llms-full.txt and a Markdown twin of every page (10). Reference pages give a one-line purpose per operation, and the API reference intro, the queries-versus-subscriptions page and llms.txt say which operation to use for which job and to batch rather than loop (13 of 20). GraphQL types with enums, input objects and non-null markers, and documented maxima per argument (14 of 15). Examples on every recipe and reference page, and an error table with code, HTTP status, meaning and retry advice (14 of 15). Weekly dated changelog from 26 August 2024 to 2 November 2026 with RSS and dated deprecations (15). 25+10+13+14+14+15 = 91.

FRED API 43

No OpenAPI or other machine-readable contract was found in the docs (0). fred.stlouisfed.org/llms.txt returns 404 (0). Each of the 31 version 1 requests has a description and a parameter list, and real-time periods have their own page, with little on when to choose one request over another (12 of 20). Parameters state type, range, default and allowed values in prose, such as nine units values and limit between 1 and 100,000 (12 of 15). Each page shows example requests and responses in XML and JSON, and the errors pages list status codes with sample bodies (12 of 15). Version 2 has its own path and a dated launch note, version 1 has no version in its path, and there is no API changelog (7 of 15). Total 43.

Reliability Codex +47

Codex 85

Hosted lines. Status page at status.codex.io (incident.io) with API, Dashboard and 25 network components and a history page (20). The history from 8 August to 6 November lists an elevated-latency incident on 11 August (balances queries, 42 minutes, labelled degraded performance), a 5xx spike the same day, degraded filterTokens on 12 August, and network delays on Robinhood, BNB, Cronos, Fogo and Solana pricing in late August and September, with none in October or November. All read as partial or degraded, so minor only (20). Per-plan rate limits (5 a second free, 300 on Growth with a 500 burst) and per-request maxima are published (15). 429 TOO_MANY_REQUESTS carries retryAfterSeconds and Retry-After, OVER_CAPACITY says to wait 30 seconds, and the errors page says which codes to retry; writes are limited to webhook and token mutations (15). The pricing page shows '99.9% Uptime SLA' as a headline figure and custom SLAs on Enterprise, with no SLA document found (5 of 10). The API is generally available (10). 20+20+15+15+5+10 = 85.

FRED API 38

Graded as a hosted API. No status page was found in the API docs, the FRED footer or the help pages (0), so there is no incident history to read (5). Rate limits are published, 120 requests a minute on version 1 and two a second on version 2 (15). The errors pages document 429 and warn of a temporary block, with no Retry-After header or backoff guidance. Every request is a read (8 of 15). No SLA, and the terms disclaim availability (0). Both versions are published without a beta label (10). 0 + 5 + 15 + 8 + 0 + 10 = 38.

Payments & pricing Codex +40

Codex 80

MPP (Machine Payments Protocol) on every query endpoint, paid in USDC on Tempo; subscriptions and webhooks are not covered, and it is not x402 (35 of 40). $0.001 a query through MPP, compute-unit costs per operation, and Growth at $120 per million compute units, all public (20). The Almost free plan's 10,000 compute units need a one-time $1 activation fee by card or 1 USDC, which the terms say confirms a payment method (5 of 20). An agent can pay per query with no account or key (20). 35+20+5+20 = 80.

FRED API 40

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Free, stated publicly, with nothing to buy (20). No card (20). A person has to create a FRED account and request the key in a browser (0). Total 40.

Security & auth Codex +14

Codex 49

Secret API keys in a header, never in the URL. Short-lived tokens from createApiTokens with an expiry and a request limit, per-key compute-unit limits and key deactivation. No scopes (22 of 30). The surface is mostly reads; mutations create webhooks and short-lived tokens. No read-only key (12 of 20). Token names, symbols, social links and community notes come from token deployers and other sources, and the docs warn tokens may be scams, with no prompt-injection guidance (5 of 15). The dashboard usage page breaks compute units down by operation, apiUsage reports the period's use and usageData the cost of each request (10 of 15). security.txt returns 404, and no disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification was found on the site or docs (0 of 20). 22+12+5+10+0 = 49.

FRED API 35

One 32-character key for each application, with no scopes. Version 1 documents the api_key query parameter as its only method, so the secret travels in the URL, and version 2 moves it to a bearer header. Key deletion or rotation sits behind the account login and was not seen (20 less 10, 10 of 30). The API is read-only (15 of 20). Responses are curated statistics with series notes written by FRED or its sources (10 of 15). No request log or usage view was found (0 of 15). security.txt returns 404 on fred.stlouisfed.org and api.stlouisfed.org, and no disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification was found (0 of 20). Total 35.

Agent ergonomics Codex +11

Codex 79

GraphQL field selection, so a response holds only the fields asked for, and usageData reports the cost of a request (23 of 25). limit on filter queries up to 200, rankings and 100+ filter signals on filterTokens; some list arguments drop extra inputs silently rather than failing (18 of 20). Coded errors an agent can branch on, but most arrive as HTTP 200 in an errors array, and an inline input type mismatch returns only a message (16 of 20). Queries are reads and identical requests cost the same; errors are not billed except NOT_FOUND. No idempotency key on the webhook and token mutations (14 of 20). Few required arguments beyond networkId. One official SDK, TypeScript (8 of 15). 23+18+16+14+8 = 79.

FRED API 68

limit, observation_start, observation_end, frequency aggregation and units size an observations response, with no field selection and defaults of 100,000 and 500,000 observations (15 of 25). limit and offset, cursor paging on version 2, order_by, filter_variable and tag filters (18 of 20). Errors carry a status code and a message naming the failing variable, in a short list of codes (13 of 20). All requests are GETs and safe to retry (15 of 20). An observations call needs only series_id and the key, but version 1 answers in XML unless file_type=json is set, and no official SDK was found (7 of 15). Total 68.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCodexFRED APIEdge
Reliability16%208538Codex +47
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29143Codex +48
Agent ergonomics13%16.27968Codex +11
Security & auth14%17.54935Codex +14
Payments & pricing10%12.58040Codex +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88015Codex +65
Transparency & trust7%8.85954Codex +5
Negative events≤1500
TotalBB 75.4/100E 42.8/100

Facts side by side

FactCodexFRED API
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorCodex Data Inc.Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Hosted endpointhttps://graph.codex.io/graphqlhttps://api.stlouisfed.org
TransportsHTTP, websocketHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Codex Data Inc.'s terms of service. The TypeScript SDK is MITProprietary service under the FRED Services Terms of Use. Some data series are third-party copyright
Tools exposed0none
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-11-022025-11-04
Terms last updated2026-10-29no date given
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-29no date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity75k npm/wknone
Agent reviewsnone3.8/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Codex

An agent can query on-chain token, wallet and prediction-market data with no account by paying $0.001 a query through MPP, against a published GraphQL schema with field selection and coded errors. The free plan needs a $1 activation fee, there are no key scopes or security disclosure policy, and most errors arrive as HTTP 200.

FRED API

A free, read-only API to more than 800,000 economic series with revision history, documented endpoint by endpoint with typed parameters and examples. The terms forbid storing or caching FRED content and using the API to develop or train AI systems, version 1 carries the key in the URL, and no status page or OpenAPI file was found.

Before you call either

Codex

  1. Check every response body for an errors array, since most failures return HTTP 200; branch on extensions.code, not the message
  2. Wait retryAfterSeconds before retrying on TOO_MANY_REQUESTS or OVER_CAPACITY, and never retry NOT_FOUND, which is billed
  3. Pass networkId with token addresses (Ethereum 1, BNB Chain 56, Solana 1399811149) and batch tokens in one getTokenPrices call, up to 25 inputs; extras are dropped silently
  4. Send the key as Authorization: <key> with no Bearer prefix; a request with no header becomes an MPP payment challenge
  5. Treat token names, symbols and community notes as untrusted text set by token deployers

FRED API

  1. Add file_type=json to every version 1 request. The default is XML
  2. Find a series with fred/series/search?search_text=, then read it with fred/series/observations?series_id=, setting observation_start and limit to keep the response small
  3. Treat the value . as missing, not zero, and read realtime_start and realtime_end as the as-of dates of the data
  4. Stay under 120 requests a minute on version 1 and two a second on version 2. Repeated 429s can bring a temporary block
  5. Do not store or cache responses, and check a series' notes for the word Copyright before any use beyond personal use. The terms forbid the first and require the second

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Codex or FRED API?

Codex scores 75.4 (BB) on agent readiness against FRED API's 42.8 (E), and leads in every scored category.

Do Codex and FRED API need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Codex and FRED API without installing anything?

Yes. Codex has a hosted endpoint at https://graph.codex.io/graphql and FRED API at https://api.stlouisfed.org.

Other comparisons with Codex or FRED API

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