FXMacroData vs Federal Reserve H.15 and Data Download Program: US Rates Data for FX Traders

This comparison is for FX traders, quant developers, and rates analysts who already pull US interest rates straight from the source: the Federal Reserve Board's H.15 Selected Interest Rates release, its Data Download Program (DDP) CSV and XML files, or the New York Fed's Markets Data API for the effective federal funds rate (EFFR) and SOFR. The question is whether those free official feeds are enough for a currency workflow, or whether a release-timed FX macro API should sit alongside them.

The core finding is that the official sources and FXMacroData answer different questions. H.15 and the New York Fed API are the authoritative, free record of what US money-market rates and Treasury yields were on each business day. FXMacroData is built for the moment those numbers move a currency: it records each Federal Reserve decision as a row with a second-level announcement timestamp, puts US rates in the same schema as 21 other currencies, and makes releases available typically within seconds of official publication. FXMacroData also builds on these sources: it reads the New York Fed reference rates and the FOMC statements directly, and adds timing, cross-currency context, and AI-ready access on top.

Pricing And Access

Both Federal Reserve sources are free. The Board states that, unless otherwise indicated, information on its website is in the public domain and may be copied and distributed without permission, with attribution requested. The New York Fed Markets Data API needs no account or key; its reference rates are free to use, including commercially, under the New York Fed Terms of Use, which require a specific attribution and non-endorsement notice when you republish them.

FXMacroData publishes self-serve pricing. The Always Free tier needs no key and covers USD data only, with 100 requests per day and USD announcements delayed 15 minutes. Individual is $50/month or $500/year with a 14-day trial and 1,000,000 requests per month (bursts of 300 per minute, 5,000 per hour, 20 concurrent). Business is $250/month or $2,500/year for teams of up to 10 people with the same allowance and priority support. Enterprise is by custom agreement, and a self-serve Commercial Redistribution add-on costs $10/month per block of up to 100 measured users or 1,000 public-feed followers. Full details are on the pricing page.

Side-By-Side Comparison

* Official-source pricing and access terms retrieved from the Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve Bank of New York public pages in October 2026.

What H.15 And The NY Fed API Publish

H.15 is the Board's daily table of selected interest rates. It carries the effective federal funds rate, commercial paper rates, the bank prime loan rate, the discount window primary credit rate, Treasury bill yields, and Treasury constant maturities from one month to 30 years, both nominal and inflation-indexed. The release notes are precise about origins: the fed funds figure is a volume-weighted median of transactions reported on the FR 2420 survey, and the Treasury yields come from the US Treasury, based on quotations gathered by the New York Fed. In other words, H.15 is a compilation table, and each line has an upstream publisher.

The New York Fed is that upstream publisher for the overnight reference rates. Its Markets Data API is a documented REST interface with semantic URLs such as a "last 30 observations" endpoint for EFFR or SOFR, and it returns each row with volume, percentiles, and the target range in force that day. For a developer, it is a clean, keyless source. The chart below was built from it.

The Data Download Program is the Board's bulk route. For H.15 it offers preformatted CSV packages (all Treasury constant maturity observations, weekly averages, monthly averages), a "Build Your Package" tool for custom series selections, and the entire release as one SDMX XML ZIP. One change matters for anyone automating these downloads: in a July 2026 announcement the Board said it plans to remove the Build Your Package option the week of 9 November, in preparation for the eventual retirement of the DDP, and pointed users to FRED or the XML files now on the release pages. Scripts that call custom-package output URLs should be reviewed before then. Our FXMacroData vs FRED comparison covers that alternative in detail.

Release Timing And Timestamps

The Fed sources publish on a known daily clock, and they are punctual. What they publish, though, is a date-indexed value. The H.15 row for 16 September says nothing about the 2:00 p.m. statement that changed the target range, and EFFR for the first day under the new range only appears the following morning. That is correct for a statistical record and limiting for an event study.

FXMacroData treats the decision as the event. The Fed policy rate series stores upper bound, lower bound, and midpoint as separate series, each row carrying announcement_datetime in epoch seconds and a link back to the Fed press release. Releases are typically available within seconds of official publication; the measured record by source, including every release that took longer than a second, is on the release-speed page. Daily EFFR, SOFR, OBFR, TGCR, and BGCR are also in the catalogue, read from the New York Fed's own publication, so the archive and the event can live in one schema.

API Format And Developer Experience

The New York Fed API is pleasant to use and needs no key. DDP is a download service rather than an API: output URLs carry an opaque series hash and return CSV with several header rows (description, unit, multiplier, unique identifier) before the data starts, so a parser has to skip and map them. The SDMX XML route is structured but heavyweight for a daily job; the full H.15 file is about 67.5 MB zipped.

FXMacroData uses one shape for every currency and indicator. The same call pattern returns the Fed target range, the Bank of Japan policy rate, or US CPI:

curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" "https://api.fxmacrodata.com/v1/announcements/usd/policy_rate"

{
  "currency": "USD",
  "indicator": "policy_rate",
  "source": "Federal Reserve",
  "data": [
    {
      "date": "2026-09-16",
      "val": 4.0,
      "announcement_datetime": 1789581600,
      "previous_value": 3.75,
      "change_from_previous": 0.25,
      "source_url": "https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20260916a.htm"
    }
  ]
}

Beyond the policy rate, the same API serves the US Treasury curve (read from the US Treasury's daily par yield curve, the publisher H.15 cites for its constant maturities) on the bond yields dashboard, and computes policy-rate differentials between any two covered currencies. Endpoint details are in the API reference linked below.

Licence And Commercial Use

The official sources are generous. Board material is public domain unless otherwise indicated, with attribution requested. New York Fed reference rates may be used commercially, even named in a product, provided you carry the prescribed notice that the New York Fed does not endorse the republication and you do not imply endorsement. If you display EFFR or SOFR in a client-facing app, budget for that notice in the UI.

FXMacroData paid plans cover internal and programmatic use. Showing FXMacroData data to external users is handled by the self-serve Commercial Redistribution add-on, priced per audience block, so a small team can license a client dashboard without a sales cycle.

How FXMacroData Builds On Federal Reserve Data

FXMacroData does not replace the Fed as the source of truth; it reads the same official publications. US policy decisions come from FOMC statements, overnight reference rates come from the New York Fed, and Treasury yields come from the US Treasury. What FXMacroData adds is the layer an FX workflow needs: second-level release timestamps, one schema shared with 21 other currencies, a release calendar with upcoming FOMC dates, policy-rate differentials, pair dashboards, Fed press releases, and access through REST, SSE, GraphQL, SDKs, and MCP.

Where H.15 And The NY Fed API Are Genuinely Stronger

• Authority. The New York Fed is the administrator of EFFR and SOFR; its publication is the rate, not a copy of it. For legal, valuation, or contract work, cite the administrator.
• Price. Free, with no key, no quota disclosed, and public-domain Board material.
• Depth on US money markets. Volume, percentile distributions, SOFR averages and index, repo and reverse repo operations, securities lending, and primary dealer statistics go well beyond what an FX API needs.
• Breadth of H.15. Commercial paper, prime, discount rate, bills, and inflation-indexed constant maturities in one daily table with long history.
• Revision discipline. A published same-day revision window and threshold for reference rates.

If your work is US rates research, money-market analysis, or a reference archive, these sources are the right foundation.

Where FXMacroData Is Stronger For FX Teams

The multi-currency point is the practical one. A USD/JPY or EUR/USD model needs the other side of the pair, and every central bank publishes differently. Rebuilding that normalisation for the ECB, BoJ, BoE, RBA, and others is the work FXMacroData has already done, while keeping the official source attached to every row.

Decision Matrix

Recommendation

Keep H.15 and the New York Fed API if your job is the US rate record itself. They are free, authoritative, and detailed, and nothing here argues against citing them. If you automate DDP downloads, plan for the Build Your Package removal now.

Add FXMacroData when US rates are an input to a currency decision. The value is the timestamped decision row, the same structure for every other central bank, differentials and yields alongside the policy rate, and access from code or an AI assistant. Start with the free USD tier to inspect the rows, compare the plans, check the release-speed record, and read the API reference before you start a 14-day trial.

Sources Checked

Related Reading

• FXMacroData vs BIS Data Portal for cross-country policy rates.
• FXMacroData vs ECB Data Portal API for the euro side of EUR/USD.
• Best macroeconomic data APIs in 2026 for the wider market.