Of the economic calendar APIs people ask about, only a few have a free tier that actually includes the calendar: Finance Calendar (free with attribution, no key needed), Financial Modeling Prep (250 calls a day, calendar inclusion unconfirmed) and Alpha Vantage (25 requests a day, historical indicator values rather than release dates). Trading Economics, Finnhub and EODHD put the calendar behind paid plans, and Forex Factory and Investing.com have no public API at all.
Each row was checked against the vendor’s own pricing or terms page on 19 October 2026, linked in the table; prices change, so the links are the authority. We build Finance Calendar, so read our row with that in mind. We have tried to be plain about what we lack.
The comparison
| Provider | Free tier | Calendar on the free tier? | Paid from | Licence on free tier | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finance Calendar | 2,000 requests a day per IP, no key; 10,000 with a free key | Yes, every endpoint | $29 a month (Pro, opening soon) | Any use, commercial included, with a visible link | financecalendar.com/api |
| Trading Economics | No free tier; 1-week trial at $49, limited to 100,000 data points and 100 requests | Trial only | $199 a month (Standard, 500 requests a month) | Paid plan terms | tradingeconomics.com/api/pricing.aspx |
| Finnhub | $0, 60 API calls a minute, personal use | No, the economic calendar endpoint is marked “Premium Access Required” | $3,500 a month (All-In-One) | Personal use | finnhub.io/pricing, docs |
| Financial Modeling Prep | Basic, $0, 250 calls a day, 500 MB a month | Not stated on the pricing page | $29 a month (Starter, 300 calls a minute) | Display or redistribution needs a separate licensing agreement | financialmodelingprep.com/pricing-plans |
| EODHD | £0, 20 API calls a day | No, economic data is excluded from the free package | £59.99 a month (Fundamentals, includes economic data) | Paid plan terms | eodhd.com/pricing |
| Alpha Vantage | Free key, 25 requests a day | Historical indicator values (CPI, nonfarm payroll, Fed funds rate); no release-date calendar found | $49.99 a month (75 requests a minute) | Terms of service | alphavantage.co/support, premium |
| Nasdaq Data Link | Free datasets with a free account and API key; premium feeds priced individually | Time series, not a release calendar | Per feed | Per dataset | data.nasdaq.com |
| Forex Factory | No API | No; terms prohibit copying or redistributing calendar schedules without consent | None | Not licensed for reuse | forexfactory.com terms |
| Investing.com | No public API | No; terms prohibit reproducing or distributing site data without written permission | None | Not licensed for reuse | investing.com terms |
Trading Economics
Trading Economics is the broadest commercial source in this list, with a live calendar, forecasts and streaming updates across a very large catalogue of countries and series. Its pricing page lists a Standard plan at $199 a month billed monthly (15% off quarterly, 25% off yearly) with 500 API requests a month and economic calendar access, a Professional plan at $399 a month with 5,000 requests a month, and an Enterprise plan on request with up to 1 million requests a month. There is no free tier: the entry point is a 1-week trial for $49, and “trial users are limited to 100000 data points and 100 requests for data”. The trial fee is not refundable and converts to a paid plan unless cancelled.
For 40 or more countries or long historical series it is the serious option; for the next 92 days of major releases it is a lot of money for a small request allowance.
Finnhub
Finnhub’s free plan is $0 at 60 API calls a minute for personal use, and its All-In-One plan is $3,500 a month billed annually. The free plan is good for US stock prices and company news. The economic calendar is not part of it: in the API documentation, the /calendar/economic endpoint carries the label “Premium Access Required”. Finnhub is a strong choice if you are already paying for its market data; it is not a free calendar.
Financial Modeling Prep
FMP’s pricing page lists a Basic plan at $0 a month with 250 calls a day, Starter at $29 (300 calls a minute), Premium at $69 (750 calls a minute) and Ultimate at $139 (3,000 calls a minute), with trailing-30-day bandwidth limits of 500 MB on the free plan. FMP has an economic calendar endpoint, and its documentation page promotes “Free Plan Access”, but neither the pricing page nor the endpoint page we read says which plan the economic calendar sits on, so we have marked that as unconfirmed. Two things to note from the same page: “Displaying or redistributing data sourced from FMP requires a specific Data Display and Licensing Agreement with FMP”, and the free plan is end-of-day data. If your use is internal analysis and 250 calls a day is enough, it may do; test the endpoint with a free key before you build on it.
EODHD
EODHD’s pricing page lists a free package at £0 with “20 free API calls per day”, and the page’s feature list excludes economic data from it. Economic data (39 indicators) and the corporate calendar come with the Fundamentals Data Feed at £59.99 a month or the All-In-One package at £99.99 a month, both at 100,000 calls a day; annual billing lowers these to £49.99 and £83.33. EODHD’s own blog describes its economic events API as part of the Fundamental API. It is a good all-round data vendor for equities with economic data as an add-on rather than a free calendar.
Alpha Vantage
Alpha Vantage’s support page says the free service covers “the majority of our datasets for up to 25 API requests per day”, with unlimited requests for verified open-source or educational projects. Premium runs from $49.99 a month at 75 requests a minute to $249.99 a month at 1,200 requests a minute. The documentation has an Economic Indicators section (Real GDP, Treasury Yield, Federal Funds Rate, CPI, Inflation, Retail Sales, Durable Goods, Unemployment Rate, Nonfarm Payroll). These return historical values of each series, which is useful for charts. We could not find a release-date calendar, that is, an endpoint that tells you when the next print is due, so it answers a different question from the other providers here.
Nasdaq Data Link
Nasdaq Data Link (formerly Quandl) is a catalogue of datasets, some free and some premium, accessed with a free account and API key; its search filters to free datasets, and premium feeds are priced individually. Like Alpha Vantage it is a time-series store rather than a calendar; we did not find a product that lists upcoming release dates with consensus. Its old documentation site carried a notice that it would be retired on 31 August 2026, so check the current pages before you depend on specific limits.
Forex Factory
Forex Factory’s calendar is the one most retail forex traders look at, and there is no official API for it. Scrapers for it are sold on Apify and published on GitHub, each describing itself as unofficial. The site’s terms say: “The copying, republication, or redistribution of FEI’s copyrighted content – including but not limited to, forum posts, calendar schedules and specs, news mix, news comments, trader lists, and account data – is explicitly prohibited without prior written consent.” Scraping it for an app is therefore against the terms, and the HTML changes without notice. If you want Forex Factory’s style of calendar in a program, you need a licensed source; see Forex economic calendar API for how ours maps to it.
Investing.com
Investing.com offers widgets but no public API for its calendar, and its terms state: “It is prohibited to use, store, reproduce, display, modify, transmit or distribute the data contained in this website without the explicit prior written permission of Fusion Media and/or the data provider.” As with Forex Factory, the third-party scrapers you will find are not licensed by the site.
Finance Calendar
Our API is free for any use, commercial included, with one condition: a visible link to financecalendar.com wherever the data appears. There is no key to get; keyless calls are limited to 2,000 a day per IP address and a free key raises that to 10,000. Every endpoint is on the free tier: a date-range calendar with country, impact and series filters, next-event lookup, per-series history with consensus, prior and actual, a 30-day change log, holidays and live open/closed status for 12 exchanges, CSV and ICS output, an MCP server and a widget. Every row links to the official calendar it was checked against, and the whole dataset is downloadable as one JSON file refreshed hourly.
What we lack, so you can decide quickly:
- Earnings dates. Not included, because of upstream licensing. Finnhub and FMP have them.
- Country coverage. 14 countries (US, UK, euro area, Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia, China, Switzerland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, India, Hong Kong) and the major releases in each. Trading Economics covers far more.
- Intraday market data. No prices, ticks or quotes. This is a calendar, not a market data feed.
- Long history on the free tier. The snapshot holds 12 months back; verified long-run datasets exist for a few series such as the Fed and US CPI. Alpha Vantage and Nasdaq Data Link go back decades.
- Request volume. 10,000 a day free; the paid tiers that lift this are opening soon.
Which one should you use?
- You need upcoming release dates, times and consensus for the major economies, for free, in a product: Finance Calendar.
- You need 40 or more countries, deep history and streaming: Trading Economics, and budget for it.
- You already pay Finnhub or FMP for equities and want a calendar in the same key: check the endpoint’s tier first; for Finnhub it is premium.
- You need historical values of US indicators for a chart and make fewer than 25 calls a day: Alpha Vantage.
- You were going to scrape Forex Factory or Investing.com: do not. Both prohibit it.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a completely free economic calendar API with no limits?
No. Every free tier has a daily or per-minute cap. Finance Calendar’s 2,000 a day keyless (10,000 with a key) is the highest daily allowance among the free tiers here that include a release calendar, and the hourly dataset download is one file rather than many requests.
Which free API includes consensus forecasts?
Finance Calendar includes consensus, prior and actual on the free tier. Trading Economics includes forecasts on paid plans. We could not confirm consensus fields on the free tiers of the others.
Can I redistribute data from a free tier?
Finance Calendar: yes, with attribution. FMP: only with a separate licensing agreement. Finnhub free: personal use only. Forex Factory and Investing.com: no.
Attribution
Data from the Finance Calendar API is free for any use, commercial included, on one condition: a visible link to https://www.financecalendar.com near where the data appears, or on your credits page. Earnings dates are not included.