FXMacroData vs Israel CBS API: Israeli CPI and Macro Data for ILS Traders

This comparison is for FX traders, quant developers, and research analysts who trade or model the Israeli shekel and have found the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) APIs. The CBS is Israel's official statistics agency and publishes the consumer price index, producer prices, national accounts, and trade data through free, keyless web APIs. The question is whether those official APIs are enough for a USD/ILS workflow, or whether a release-timed FX macro API should sit alongside them.

The core finding is that the two do different jobs. The CBS APIs are the stronger choice for authoritative Israeli statistics at full detail: every CPI component, every base period, and long history, free and with a licence that permits commercial use with attribution. FXMacroData is the stronger choice when the job is reacting to the evening CPI print and other Israeli releases as they happen, alongside 21 other currencies in one JSON shape. FXMacroData reads the same official CBS releases for Israeli CPI, producer prices, GDP, and trade, and adds a second-level announcement timestamp, a release calendar, pair context, and MCP access.

Decision snapshot

Choose the CBS APIs when

You need official Israeli statistics at full granularity: CPI sub-indices, alternative base periods, producer and housing price indices, national accounts, and trade series, free and citable.

Choose FXMacroData when

You need Israeli CPI, the policy rate, GDP, and labour data the moment they are published, with announcement timestamps, a calendar, USD/ILS context, and the same schema as USD, EUR, or JPY data.

Quick answer

CBS is free, official, and deep on Israel alone. FXMacroData is $50/month for an individual, release-timed, and built for multi-currency FX automation. Many ILS desks use CBS for detail and FXMacroData for the live event layer.

Takeaway: the decision is not about data quality, since both rest on the same official release. It is about whether you need the full Israeli statistical catalogue or a timed, cross-currency event feed.

Pricing And Access

There is no commercial price to compare on the CBS side. The CBS API pages describe the price-index, time-series databank, SDMX, and dictionary services without any registration, API key, or paid tier, and a data request succeeds without credentials. The one technical requirement the CBS states is that every query must send a User-Agent header.

FXMacroData is a paid workflow product with a free entry point. The Always Free tier needs no key, covers USD data only, allows 100 requests per day, and delivers USD announcements on a 15-minute delay, so Israeli data needs a paid plan. The Individual plan is $50/month or $500/year with a 14-day trial and 1,000,000 requests per month. The Business plan is $250/month or $2,500/year for companies and teams of up to 10 people, with the same monthly allowance and priority support. Enterprise terms are available 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.

Israel CBS APIs

Free, no API key*

Price-index API, time-series databank API, SDMX service, and dictionaries. XML, JSON, CSV, and XLS output. User-Agent header required.

FXMacroData Individual

$50/month

Or $500/year, 14-day trial. ILS plus 21 other currencies, 1,000,000 requests/month, dashboards, exports, and MCP.

FXMacroData Business

$250/month

Or $2,500/year for teams of up to 10, company checkout, priority support. Always Free tier covers USD only.

Takeaway: CBS wins on cost for Israeli statistics. The FXMacroData price buys release timing, cross-currency coverage, and FX workflow packaging that a national statistics agency does not set out to provide.

* Competitor access terms retrieved from the CBS API documentation pages in October 2026. CBS publishes no paid tier.

Side-By-Side Comparison

* Competitor access, formats, and licence terms retrieved from the CBS API documentation and end-user licence pages in October 2026; CBS publishes no paid tier.

What The CBS APIs Cover For ILS Work

The CBS runs four public API services. The price-index API serves the consumer price index and the rest of the CBS price family, with catalogue endpoints for browsing chapters and subjects and data endpoints for a single index or the main indices across base periods. The time-series databank API serves the wider statistical catalogue, including national accounts and foreign trade, addressed by numeric series code or by catalogue path. An SDMX service and a dictionaries service round out the set.

For a shekel trader, the price-index API does most of the work. One request for the general CPI returns each month's index level on its current base, the monthly change, and the annual change, which is the headline number the Bank of Israel measures against its 1-3% target range. The chart below uses exactly that field from the official API.

Israeli CPI, annual % change, September 2025 to August 2026

General Consumer Price Index, percent change over the same month a year earlier, as published by CBS.

Takeaway: annual inflation eased from 2.5% to 1.5% over the year, moving into the lower half of the target range. That level is free and authoritative from CBS; what the API does not record is the moment each print became public.

The same response also shows how much context CBS packages. Each row carries the index value on the current base (average 2024 = 100 for recent months), the monthly percent change, and the base description. Analysts who need the CPI components and related price indices can reach them through the catalogue endpoints. FXMacroData does not try to replicate that full component tree; its Israeli coverage centres on the headline Israeli CPI, monthly CPI change, inflation expectations, and the indicators that move rate expectations.

Release Timing And The Evening CPI Print

Israel's CPI timing is unusual among the 22 currencies FXMacroData covers. The CBS release calendar states that publications go out at 13:00 Israel time, but price indices are published on the 15th of the month at 18:30, with an earlier slot when the 15th falls on a Friday, holiday eve, or rest day. An 18:30 release lands in the Israeli evening, during the US morning, so the first USD/ILS reaction happens outside local business hours and is easy to misplace in a dataset keyed only by date.

The CBS APIs are not designed to record that moment. Price-index rows identify the reference month and year; databank rows add an update date, such as 16 September 2026 for the latest quarterly GDP series. Neither carries a second-level publication time. For a monthly macro model that is fine. For an event study on the USD/ILS reaction to a CPI surprise, it means the timestamp has to come from somewhere else.

One CPI evening, two data paths

1. Scheduled

The CPI date and time appear in advance on the release calendar, so a desk can size risk before 18:30 Israel time.

2. CBS publishes

The press release goes out and the price-index API returns the new month with index level, monthly, and annual change.

3. FXMacroData row

The same official value, typically available within seconds, stamped with a second-level announcement_datetime and the prior reading.

4. Research use

Both sources agree on the value. Only the timed record says exactly when USD/ILS could have reacted to it.

FXMacroData targets one second from official publication and publishes its measured record at /release-speed, including the share of releases available within one second by source and every release that took longer. That record is the place to check delivery for any publisher, rather than taking a vendor's word for it.

API Format And Developer Experience

The CBS APIs are straightforward REST query URLs. A request for the general CPI names the index code, the format, and the language, and the response is a nested JSON object with a month array, the index name, and a list of dated observations with percent, percentYear, and currBase fields. Parameters such as startPeriod, endPeriod, and last narrow the window, and paging allows up to 1,000 objects per page. The practical friction is elsewhere: the price-index and databank services use different hosts, response shapes, and code systems; responses default to Hebrew unless lang=en is set; and a pipeline that also handles US or euro-area data has to normalise each source separately.

FXMacroData uses one REST JSON shape across indicators and currencies. Paid plans send a key in a header:

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

Example response (abridged and illustrative):

{
  "currency": "ILS",
  "indicator": "inflation",
  "data": [
    {
      "date": "2026-08-01",
      "val": 1.5,
      "announcement_datetime": 1789486200,
      "source": "Central Bureau of Statistics"
    }
  ]
}

FXMacroData row

• announcement_datetime: epoch seconds, here 15 September 2026, 18:30 Israel time.
• val: the annual CPI change, ready for surprise logic.
• Same shape as US, euro-area, or Japanese CPI.

CBS price-index row

• year and month: reference period, not publication time.
• percent, percentYear: monthly and annual change.
• currBase: index level and base description.

Takeaway: the CBS row is the richer official record for a month; the FXMacroData row adds when the market could know it and drops into the same code path as every other currency.

Beyond REST, FXMacroData offers SSE streaming for release events, GraphQL, Python and JavaScript SDKs, an official MCP server, and integration guides for MetaTrader, TradingView, and NinjaTrader. See the API reference for the full surface.

Licence And Commercial Use

The CBS end-user licence is generous for a free source. It allows commercial and non-commercial use of CBS information, provided the source is attributed in the form the licence sets out, naming the Central Bureau of Statistics, the file, the date, and a link. It prohibits knowingly altering the data to present it inaccurately and implying CBS or State endorsement, and it supplies the information as-is, with representations and warranties excluded. The API pages do not publish a numeric rate limit or a service commitment.

For research and internal models that is a reasonable trade. For a production trading or client-facing system, the absence of a published service commitment is the main operational consideration. FXMacroData publishes its plan allowances, separates personal, company, and redistribution use by plan, and offers redistribution through a self-serve add-on.

How FXMacroData Builds On CBS Data

FXMacroData is not a replacement for the CBS. It draws on official sources, and for Israel the CBS is the publisher of record for CPI, producer prices, GDP, and foreign trade; FXMacroData reads the same official releases and labels each row with its source. The Israeli release schedule in the FXMacroData calendar is also built from the CBS release calendar. The Bank of Israel policy rate comes from the central bank itself, whose own data portal and decision process are covered in the separate Bank of Israel guide linked above.

What FXMacroData adds is the layer around those official numbers: release-timed announcements, prior values, a calendar, consistent JSON across 22 currencies, and pair context. An ILS desk can line up Israeli GDP and unemployment against US CPI and the Fed path in the same call pattern, and check bond yields, commodities, and FX sessions on the same platform.

Where The CBS APIs Are Genuinely Stronger

A fair comparison should be clear about what the CBS does better:

• Cost and openness. Every service is free, keyless, and returns XML, JSON, CSV, or XLS.
• Depth on Israel. CPI components, alternative base periods, producer, housing, and construction price indices, and a large databank of series that no FX API carries.
• Authority. The CBS is the publisher of record; for a research note, policy paper, or audit trail, citing it directly carries weight.
• Commercial-friendly licence. Commercial use is permitted with attribution, without a negotiation.
• Long history. The general CPI runs monthly for decades with base-period linkage, which matters for real-rate and purchasing-power work.

If the task is a detailed study of Israeli inflation drivers, a housing-price model, or a sector-level trade analysis, start with the CBS.

Where FXMacroData Is Stronger For FX Teams

FXMacroData is stronger once the question becomes what happened at a specific release and how ILS priced it, or when Israel is one currency among several in a model.

FXMacroData strengths

• Second-level announcement timestamps and a public release-speed record.
• One JSON shape for ILS and 21 other currencies.
• Calendar, USD/ILS dashboard, yields, SSE, MCP, and SDKs.

FXMacroData tradeoffs

• Israeli data needs a paid plan; the free tier is USD only.
• No CPI component tree or niche CBS series.
• Not the original publisher of CBS-sourced values.

CBS strengths

• Free, keyless, commercial use with attribution.
• Full Israeli price and national-accounts detail.
• Publisher of record with long linked history.

CBS tradeoffs

• Reference periods only, no publication timestamps.
• Separate services with different shapes; Hebrew default.
• Israel only; no calendar API, FX context, or MCP.

Takeaway: CBS is the statistical archive for Israel; FXMacroData is the event desk for ILS within a multi-currency book. The strengths barely overlap, which is why the two combine well.

Decision Matrix

Recommendation

Use the CBS APIs when the work is about Israel in depth: CPI components, price-index families, national accounts, or trade detail, at zero cost and with a licence that allows commercial use with attribution. It is a high-quality official source, and FXMacroData relies on it too.

Use FXMacroData when the work is about releases as they happen and about the shekel as part of a wider FX book: positioning around the 18:30 CPI print, measuring the USD/ILS reaction, running alerts, or giving an AI assistant current, source-labelled macro context across 22 currencies. Compare the plans, read the API reference, and check the measured release-speed record before deciding. AI-focused teams can also start from the AI trading guides.

Bottom line: the CBS APIs are the right free source for authoritative, detailed Israeli statistics. FXMacroData is the right paid layer for FX teams that need Israeli CPI and other releases timestamped, available typically within seconds of publication, and delivered in the same format as every other currency they trade. Most serious ILS research stacks benefit from both.

Sources Checked

The CBS claims in this article come from the official CBS pages and API responses listed below, checked in October 2026.

CBS API interface

The four API services and the User-Agent requirement.

View source

Price-index API

Catalogue and data endpoints, formats, periods, paging.

View docs

Time-series databank API

Series by code or path, parameters, page size.

View docs · SDMX

Release calendar and licence

Publication times and end-user licence terms.

Calendar · Licence

FXMacroData plans and docs

Plans, allowances, API reference, and release-speed record.

View plans

Takeaway: every CBS figure here, from the 18:30 CPI slot to the twelve annual CPI readings in the chart, can be reproduced from the free CBS pages and API.

Related Reading

• FXMacroData vs BIS Data Portal for another free official source compared with a release-timed FX layer.
• FXMacroData vs ECB Data Portal API for the euro-area official-statistics equivalent.
• Israel (ILS) forex outlook for the shekel's policy rate, inflation, GDP, and USD/ILS setup.
• Best macroeconomic data APIs in 2026 for the wider landscape.