# IMF Data Free, keyless SDMX access to IMF macro statistics — WEO included, forecasts and all. *https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/imf-data · Stock Market Data APIs* ## Facts ### At a glance | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Vendor | IMF | | Category | Stock Market Data APIs | | Job | macro | | Website | https://data.imf.org | | Pricing model | free | | Free tier | true | | Open source | false | | Licence | none | | Self-hosted | false | | Tested hands-on | false | | Last updated | 2026-09-14 | ### Pricing | Tier | USD | Period | | --- | --- | --- | | Public API | 0 USD | month | ### Coverage | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Asset classes | forex, commodities, indices | | Markets | global | | Works outside the US | true | | Data latency | none | | Platforms | web | | AI features | none | ### Interfaces | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | API | true | | Webhooks | false | | Scripting | none | | Python | false | | Spreadsheet add-in | false | | MCP server | false | | Export | csv, json | ### Capabilities Yes: none No: charting, screening, scanning, backtesting, automation, live_trading, paper_trading, portfolio_tracking, broker_import, tax_reporting, alerts, news, options_analysis *Verified: pricing 2026-09-14; capabilities 2026-09-14; coverage 2026-09-14.* ## What it is The statistical output of the International Monetary Fund, published as a public SDMX API and a browsable portal at data.imf.org. It is country-level macroeconomics — GDP, inflation, reserves, trade balances, government debt, exchange rates — and not a market data feed. There are no tickers, no securities and no prices for anything you can buy — the closest it comes is a national share price index, monthly at best. Read this before writing code, because the endpoint in older tutorials no longer exists. The IMF retired its legacy data portal on **5 November 2025** as part of its iData modernisation, and the retirement was thorough: on 14 September 2026 the old `dataservices.imf.org` host — home of the `SDMX_JSON.svc` and `CompactData` calls most published examples use — returned **NXDOMAIN** from both the Cloudflare and Google public resolvers. The DNS record is gone, so old code fails at resolution rather than with an HTTP status, which is why "retry on 404" logic never surfaces it. The replacement is `api.imf.org/external/sdmx/`, in SDMX 2.1 and SDMX 3.0 flavours. Both answered HTTP 200 with no key on 14 September 2026, returning SDMX-ML, SDMX-JSON or SDMX-CSV depending on the `Accept` header. ## Pricing Free the way government statistics are free rather than the way a vendor's free tier is: no account, no key, no quota page, no upgrade path. The structure endpoint returned a 445 KB catalogue on an unauthenticated request. The IMF publishes no rate limit, which is not the same as there being none — treat it as undocumented rather than unlimited and cache aggressively. The only thing behind a login is the interactive Swagger console, which gates the documentation browser and not the data. ## Data & coverage The catalogue held **222 dataflows** on 14 September 2026: 103 current databases plus 119 dated vintage snapshots that freeze a publication round so a result stays reproducible. Named databases include World Economic Outlook, Balance of Payments and International Investment Position, Government Finance Statistics, Monetary and Financial Statistics, Financial Soundness Indicators, Consumer and Producer Price Indices, Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves, the Global Debt Database, the Financial Access Survey and the Primary Commodity Price System. What is *not* there will catch out anyone porting old code. **International Financial Statistics is gone as a dataflow**, along with Direction of Trade, CPIS and CDIS. IFS was split into thematic flows — exchange rates, international liquidity, monetary and financial statistics, national accounts, prices, labour — while DOT became trade in goods by partner country, CPIS became portfolio investment positions and CDIS direct investment positions. The dataset names in an old query string are not aliases; they resolve to nothing. Frequencies are annual, quarterly and monthly. Nothing is daily: a series-key query against Exchange Rates returned thousands of annual, quarterly and monthly series and not one daily or weekly series, the latest monthly observation August 2026 when checked in mid-September. The one flow that touches market prices at all is Monetary and Financial Statistics: Financial Market Prices, which carries equity share price indices for about 70 countries — monthly, indexed, and still not a quote. Terms of use are the IMF copyright page effective 11 October 2024, whose section on the use of IMF data permits downloading, copying, derivative works, publication and distribution with attribution. No Creative Commons licence is named. Two clauses matter more than the permissions do for anyone building on this: the IMF prohibits bulk download by automated technology without explicit permission, and it does not permit use of its content for training large language models without explicit permission. The October 2024 revision is also narrower than the version it replaced, which said users may "publish, distribute, and sell" data "including for commercial purposes" — the word sell is gone. ## Integrations No official SDK in any language — the interface is plain HTTP and SDMX. Be careful which package you install, because the obvious name is not the IMF's: `imf` on PyPI is an unrelated stranger's 0.0.1a0 stub that describes itself as unofficial. The maintained third-party clients are `imfp` from Promptly Technologies, which targets the SDMX 3.0 API, and the generic `sdmx1`, which treats the IMF as one statistical agency among several. Both are other people's code. ## Limitations **The WEO database is substantially forecast, and which version you call decides whether you can tell.** A request for US real GDP growth on 14 September 2026 returned values for 2027 through 2031 — years that have not happened — formatted identically to the 1980 observation beside them, and no observation carries a per-value estimate-or-projection flag in either version. SDMX 2.1 at least ships the series attribute `LATEST_ACTUAL_ANNUAL_DATA`, which read 2025 and marks the boundary; the SDMX 3.0 CSV drops it, returning 31 columns against 2.1's 68. Pull WEO over 3.0 without reading the structure separately and nothing but the calendar tells a consumer that the number they just charted is an IMF staff projection. **Vintage history is one round deep.** The live WEO flow served the April 2026 round on 14 September 2026 — publication date 14 April 2026, latest actual year 2025, projections to 2031 — and the only archived WEO vintage flow published was `WEO_2025_OCT_VINTAGE`, the October 2025 round, which stops at 2030 and still treats 2025 as a projection. Current plus one predecessor is the whole of it, so reproducing a chart built on an older round means having kept the file yourself. **Everything lags reality.** Annual at best, quarterly or monthly for some series, published weeks to months after the period closes. Wrong tool for anything that must be current this week, hopeless for anything intraday. **Redistribution is permitted but not cleanly.** The terms grant the right to publish and distribute with attribution, then the same page asks commercial reusers to email for permission, bars bulk download by automated technology without permission, and bars training language models on the content without permission. The 2020 version of the page said users may sell the data, including for commercial purposes; the October 2024 revision dropped that word. If you are building something you intend to sell, or to train on, read the clauses rather than the summary. **It is not market data.** No equities, no options, no order books. ## Alternatives In this catalogue, [Nasdaq Data Link](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/nasdaq-data-link) once carried a broad open macroeconomic long tail, though almost all of it has since been delisted, and [OpenBB](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/openbb) wraps several public statistical sources behind one interface rather than being a source itself. Outside it, the other large official macro publishers overlap the IMF heavily on headline indicators and differ on coverage depth and vintage; the IMF's distinctive holdings are balance of payments, government finance, reserve composition and the WEO projections. For anything security-level, see the rest of [the market data APIs category](https://stockmarketstack.com/categories/market-data-apis). ## FAQ ### Does the old IMF API still work? No, and it does not merely 404 — the host is gone. The legacy data portal was retired on 5 November 2025, and on 14 September 2026 dataservices.imf.org returned NXDOMAIN from both Cloudflare and Google public resolvers. Any code calling SDMX_JSON.svc or CompactData fails at DNS resolution, not at the HTTP layer, which is why it often surfaces as a connection error rather than a clean 404. ### Do I need an API key for IMF data? No. The SDMX 2.1 and SDMX 3.0 data and structure endpoints answered with no key, no account and no Authorization header when checked on 14 September 2026. A beta portal account is needed only to browse the interactive Swagger console, not to query the data. ### Where did International Financial Statistics go? IFS no longer exists as a dataflow. Its contents were split across thematic databases — exchange rates, international liquidity, monetary and financial statistics, national accounts, prices and labour each became their own flow. The same happened to Direction of Trade, which is now international trade in goods by partner country. IMF's own copyright page still names IFS and DOT, so the legal text lags the API. ### Is IMF WEO data actual or forecast? Both, and no individual observation is flagged. A request for US real GDP growth on 14 September 2026 returned values through 2031 in exactly the same shape as the 1980 observation. The SDMX 2.1 CSV does carry a series attribute, LATEST_ACTUAL_ANNUAL_DATA, which read 2025 — every year after it is an IMF staff projection. The SDMX 3.0 CSV omits that column, so over 3.0 you either read the structure separately or filter by year. ### Can I redistribute IMF data in a commercial product? Mostly yes, with care. The special terms for statistical data let you copy, create derivative works, publish and distribute with attribution to the IMF; if you sell the data as a standalone product you must tell buyers it is free from the IMF, and material transformations must be disclosed. The same page then asks commercial reusers to email copyright@imf.org for permission, so the two clauses do not fully settle each other. ## Also worth comparing - [FRED](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/fred.md) — The Fed's macro database — 851,100 series, a free key and 120 requests a minute. - [BLS Public Data API](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/bls-api.md) — CPI, payrolls and PPI from the agency that computes them. Free, 500 calls a day. - [DBnomics](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/dbnomics.md) — Macro series from 93 statistics offices and central banks behind one open API. - [ECB Data Portal API](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/ecb-data-portal.md) — Euro reference rates, yield curves and €STR over keyless SDMX — with vintages. - [EconDB](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/econdb.md) — 5,170 macro series and container-shipping data behind one API and one subscription. - [Eurostat API](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/eurostat.md) — EU statistics, keyless and free — 8,877 datasets, and the codes move under you.