IEX Cloud Shut Down: FXMacroData as an Economic Data Alternative

This guide is for developers, quant analysts, and FX traders who built on IEX Cloud's economic and Treasury endpoints and still need a home for that part of their stack. IEX Group told clients on 31 May 2024 that it would retire all IEX Cloud products, and the platform shut down on 31 August 2024. Most migration guides since then have focused on stock quotes and fundamentals. The macro endpoints are easy to overlook, and they cannot simply be repointed.

The short version: no single vendor replaces everything IEX Cloud bundled. Equity data belongs with a market-data vendor. Free, slow-moving US series such as money-fund balances or recession probabilities are best taken straight from FRED. If your code used IEX Cloud's CPI, payrolls, Fed funds, unemployment, and Treasury series to trade or model currencies, FXMacroData covers those releases with second-level announcement timestamps, the same schema across 22 currencies, and a release calendar. It also adds the FX-specific data IEX Cloud never had.

Decision snapshot

Stock quotes and fundamentals

Move to an equity market-data vendor. FXMacroData does not sell stock quotes, corporate actions, or company fundamentals.

Niche US series at no cost

Use FRED directly for vehicle sales, money-fund balances, CD and credit-card rates, and recession probabilities. Many of IEX Cloud's economic keys were FRED series IDs.

Macro for FX workflows

Use FXMacroData for CPI, payrolls, policy rates, unemployment, and Treasury yields with release timestamps, plus 21 more currencies, COT, and FX rates.

Takeaway: Split the migration by job. A single replacement for all of IEX Cloud usually ends up as a compromise for the macro part.

What Happened To IEX Cloud

IEX Cloud launched in 2019 as IEX Group's cloud data marketplace, separate from its stock exchange. It combined IEX's own US equities data with third-party datasets behind one token-based REST API. On 31 May 2024 IEX Group told customers to find other suppliers, and all IEX Cloud products were retired on 31 August 2024. Industry coverage reported that the unit accounted for less than 2% of IEX Group revenue and had run at a loss since it started. IEX said it wanted to concentrate on its exchange business.

Days before the shutdown, former IEX Cloud executives Tim Baker and Pedro Aguayo bought the platform's assets with a silent partner. They launched Blue Sky Data in September 2024 with APIs modelled on the original IEX Cloud specification, and the business now presents itself as viaNexus. Teams that only need an IEX-shaped equities API should look at that path. It does not change the macro question this article covers: what should supply the economic series and release timing an FX or rates workflow depends on?

IEX Cloud timeline

2019

IEX Cloud operates as IEX Group's data marketplace: equities, reference data, FX, and FRED-keyed economic series.

31 May 2024

IEX Group tells clients it will retire every IEX Cloud product, giving three months' notice.

31 August 2024

The platform shuts down. API tokens stop working and integrations need a new supplier.

September 2024 onward

Former executives relaunch the assets as Blue Sky Data, now viaNexus. Vendors publish migration guides, mostly for equities.

Takeaway: The shutdown is final for the original service. Any code still calling IEX Cloud's economic or Treasury keys has to be rewritten against a new source.

Pricing And Access After The Shutdown

IEX Cloud can no longer be bought, so there is no live price to compare. The useful question is what the economic part of the workflow costs now. FRED is free with an API key from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. FXMacroData has an Always Free tier with no key: USD data only, 100 requests/day, and USD announcements delayed 15 minutes. The Individual plan costs $50/month or $500/year, includes a 14-day trial, and allows 1,000,000 requests/month with bursts of 300/minute, 5,000/hour, and 20 concurrent requests. Business costs $250/month or $2,500/year for companies and teams of up to 10 people, with the same allowance and priority support. Enterprise terms are by custom agreement. A self-serve Commercial Redistribution add-on costs $10/month per block of up to 100 measured users, or 1,000 public-feed followers.

IEX Cloud

Discontinued*

All products retired on 31 August 2024. No plan can be purchased.

FRED API

Free*

Requires a free API key. Some series carry third-party copyright and need the owner's permission beyond personal use.

FXMacroData

$0 / $50 per month

The free USD tier needs no key. Individual gives all 22 currencies, 1,000,000 requests/month, and a 14-day trial.

Takeaway: For US-only research, FRED costs nothing. Paying for FXMacroData makes sense when you need release timing, other currencies, or FX context in the same API.

What IEX Cloud's Economic Data Covered

IEX Cloud's macro data sat inside its time-series and data-points system rather than in a separate product. Client libraries written against the API, such as pyEX, list the keys. An ECONOMIC time series held effective Fed funds (FEDFUNDS), real GDP (A191RL1Q225SBEA), CPI for all urban consumers (CPIAUCSL), nonfarm payrolls (PAYEMS), the unemployment rate (UNRATE), housing starts (HOUST), industrial production (INDPRO), vehicle sales (TOTALSA), initial claims (IC4WSA), retail and institutional money funds, and US recession probabilities. A TREASURY series held constant-maturity yields from 1 month to 30 years (DGS1MO to DGS30), and a RATES series held credit-card and CD rates. Separate FX endpoints served latest rates, conversion, and daily history.

Those identifiers are FRED series IDs, which matters for the migration. Each one already has a free, direct source, so the only real decision is whether a dated monthly observation is enough or whether you need release-level data: when the number was published, what it replaced, and how it compares with other currencies.

Migration Mapping Table

The table maps each IEX Cloud economic key to its FRED equivalent and to the matching FXMacroData endpoint where one exists. Where FXMacroData has no direct equivalent, it says so.

Takeaway: The headline US releases behind most FX and rates models map directly to FXMacroData. The long tail of niche US series is better served by FRED.

Side-By-Side Comparison

* Competitor pricing and status retrieved from public announcements, industry coverage, and the FRED API terms of use in October 2026.

Release Timing And Timestamps

IEX Cloud's economic series, like FRED's, returned observations dated by reference period: the CPI row for August carried an August date, not the moment the Bureau of Labor Statistics published it. That is fine for monthly charts. It is not enough for an event study, a post-release alert, or a backtest that has to know what a model could have seen at 12:30:00 UTC on release day.

FXMacroData treats the release itself as the record. Every announcement row carries a second-level announcement_datetime, and releases are typically available within seconds of official publication. The target is one second from publication, and the measured record is public on the release-speed page, broken down by source, with every release that took longer listed. FXMacroData reads the same official BLS, BEA, Census, Treasury, and Federal Reserve releases that FRED republishes, then adds the release timestamp, prior value, and change fields a trading system needs.

Coverage Beyond US Series

IEX Cloud's economic keys were US-only. For an FX desk that is half of every pair. FXMacroData covers 22 currencies (USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, AUD, CAD, CHF, NZD, BRL, CNH, CNY, DKK, HUF, ILS, KRW, MYR, NGN, NOK, PEN, SEK, THB, and TWD) with one schema. A model that reads US CPI can read euro-area inflation or the ECB deposit rate by changing the currency code. The same key also gives you the release calendar, CFTC COT positioning for the major currency futures, commodities, central-bank press releases from the Federal Reserve, ECB, Bank of Japan, and Bank of England, and FX session context.

Migration workflow: split the old IEX Cloud token by job

1. Inventory calls

Search the codebase for stock/, time-series/ECONOMIC, TREASURY, RATES, and fx/ paths.

2. Equities out

Quotes, bars, fundamentals, and corporate actions go to an equity market-data vendor.

3. Long-tail US to FRED

Keep the FRED IDs. Point INDPRO, TOTALSA, money funds, and recession probability at the FRED API.

4. Release macro to FXMacroData

CPI, payrolls, unemployment, policy rates, Treasuries, and FX move to timestamped rows across 22 currencies.

5. Re-key on release time

Join macro rows to prices on announcement_datetime instead of the period date.

Takeaway: Step 5 is where the migration improves on IEX Cloud rather than just replacing it. Joining on release time removes look-ahead bias from macro backtests.

API Example

FXMacroData sends the key in a header rather than a query string, so it stays out of logs and shared URLs. The payrolls call that replaces time-series/ECONOMIC/PAYEMS looks like this:

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

Example response (abridged, illustrative values):

{
  "currency": "USD",
  "indicator": "non_farm_payrolls",
  "data": [
    {
      "date": "2026-08-31",
      "val": 159420,
      "prior": 159330,
      "pct_change": 0.06,
      "announcement_datetime": 1788525000
    }
  ]
}

New compared with IEX Cloud

• announcement_datetime: epoch seconds of the official publication.
• prior and pct_change: no second call to compute the change.
• The same shape for every currency and indicator.

Mapping from the old shape

• The observation value maps to val.
• The period date maps to date.
• The token query parameter becomes the X-API-Key header.

Takeaway: Porting code is mostly a field rename. The added release timestamp is what makes the new data usable for event-driven FX work.

Where IEX Cloud And FRED Are Genuinely Stronger

IEX Cloud's real strength was bundling. One token covered US stock quotes, fundamentals, reference data, a basic FX feed, and a starter set of macro series. For an equity-first app that needed a CPI chart beside a stock chart, that convenience was worth something. FXMacroData does not try to reproduce it: it carries no equity quotes or company data.

FRED is stronger on breadth of US series, cost, and vintage history. It is free, it holds the long tail of series IEX Cloud exposed (and far more), and ALFRED keeps past vintages for real-time research. If your workload is US-only, low-frequency, and does not depend on release time, FRED is the sensible replacement and costs nothing. See the full FXMacroData vs FRED comparison for that trade-off in detail.

Where FXMacroData Is Stronger

FXMacroData is the better fit when macro data drives currency decisions rather than serving as background context. It adds release timestamps, 21 non-US currencies in one schema, a calendar of upcoming releases, COT positioning, yield curves, FX rates, commodities, and central-bank communications. Access options include SSE streaming for release events and an MCP server that lets AI assistants query the data directly. Pair dashboards such as EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD, and AUD/USD show both sides of each pair together.

FXMacroData pros

• Second-level release timestamps with a public speed record.
• 22 currencies, one schema, calendar, COT, and FX rates.
• Free USD tier; $50/month Individual with a 14-day trial.

FXMacroData tradeoffs

• No stock quotes or company fundamentals.
• No direct equivalent for some niche US series IEX Cloud carried.
• Paid plan needed for non-USD currencies and real-time USD.

FRED pros

• Free, with the same series IDs IEX Cloud used.
• Very broad US catalogue and long histories.
• Vintage data through ALFRED.

FRED tradeoffs

• Period-dated observations, with no release-second stamp.
• Mostly US; other countries' coverage varies by series.
• Copyrighted series need the owner's permission beyond personal use.

Takeaway: FRED is the no-cost home for IEX Cloud's long-tail US keys. FXMacroData is the upgrade for the release-driven series FX models trade on.

Decision Matrix

Recommendation

Do not try to replace IEX Cloud with one vendor. Move equities to a market-data provider, keep the FRED series IDs for the long tail of US series, and move the release-driven macro that touches currencies to FXMacroData. That covers CPI, payrolls, unemployment, Fed policy, and Treasuries, and the same call pattern works for 21 more currencies.

Start on the free USD tier to port the code without a key, check the field mapping against the API reference, and look at the measured timing on release speed. When the workflow needs other currencies or real-time USD, the Individual plan includes a 14-day trial. Teams building agents can connect through MCP or read about AI trading workflows.

Bottom line: IEX Cloud is gone, and its economic keys were FRED series in a different package. Use FRED when a free, period-dated US series is enough. Use FXMacroData when your code needs to know exactly when a release was published and how it fits into a currency pair.

Sources Checked

The claims above are based on public sources checked in October 2026. IEX Cloud's own documentation is offline, so its endpoint keys are taken from open-source client libraries written against the API.

Shutdown coverage

Shutdown date, reason, and the asset purchase by former executives.

WatersTechnology · Integrity Research · Alpha Vantage analysis

IEX Cloud endpoint keys

Economic, Treasury, rates, and FX keys as implemented in the pyEX client.

Economic · Treasuries · FX

FRED API

API key requirement, commercial-use terms, and copyrighted series.

API docs · Terms of use

FXMacroData

Plans, limits, endpoint reference, and the measured release-speed record.

Pricing · API reference · Release speed

Takeaway: Every IEX Cloud fact here comes from contemporaneous reporting or code written against the live API, not from memory of the old documentation.

Related Reading

• FXMacroData vs FRED: Free Macro Library vs FX Release-Time API
• FXMacroData vs Massive (Polygon.io)
• FXMacroData vs Alpha Vantage: Which API Is Better for FX Macro Workflows?
• Best Macroeconomic Data APIs for FX Traders in 2026