Central Bank Interest Rates Dataset: Fed, ECB, BoE, BoJ and More Since 2008

Every interest rate decision of ten central banks since 2008, as free CSV and JSON: the Federal Reserve (fed funds rate), the European Central Bank (ECB deposit rate), the Bank of England (Bank Rate), the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Canada, the Reserve Bank of Australia (cash rate), the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (OCR), the Swiss National Bank, Norges Bank and Sveriges Riksbank. Updated automatically within hours of every decision.

Charts, meeting calendars, rate cut odds and what each decision did to the currency: InterestRateDecision.com.

Contents

• Download
• Banks and rates
• Columns
• Use it in Python, R, Excel, Google Sheets or JavaScript
• Notes on the data
• Licence and citation

Download

File	What it holds	Live address
data/decisions.csv	Every decision since 2008: bank, time, rate, change in basis points	https://interestratedecision.com/data/decisions.csv
data/rates.json	Each bank’s policy rate today, its last change and its next decision	https://interestratedecision.com/data/rates.json
data/next.json	The upcoming central bank meetings, with times in UTC	https://interestratedecision.com/data/next.json

This repository copies the live files every six hours (sync.yml), so its commit history is a dated record of every change. The releases are snapshots.

Banks and rates

Central bank	Code	Policy rate	History on the web
Federal Reserve (FOMC)	fed	Federal funds rate, target range (the file gives the top)	Fed funds rate history
European Central Bank	ecb	Deposit facility rate	ECB interest rate history
Bank of England (MPC)	boe	Bank Rate	Bank of England rate history
Bank of Japan	boj	Short-term policy interest rate	Bank of Japan rate history
Bank of Canada	boc	Overnight rate target	Bank of Canada rate history
Reserve Bank of Australia	rba	Cash rate target	RBA cash rate history
Reserve Bank of New Zealand	rbnz	Official cash rate (OCR)	RBNZ OCR history
Swiss National Bank	snb	SNB policy rate	SNB rate history
Norges Bank	norges	Policy rate	Norges Bank rate history
Sveriges Riksbank	riksbank	Policy rate	Riksbank rate history

Columns

data/decisions.csv, one row per decision, oldest first within each bank:

Column	Type	Meaning
bank	text	The bank’s code above
bank_name	text	The bank’s name
time_utc	ISO 8601	The announcement, UTC
date	date	The announcement’s date, UTC
rate	number	The policy rate after the decision, in per cent
change_bp	integer	The change against the decision before, in basis points (100 bp = 1 percentage point)

A machine-readable description is in datapackage.json (Frictionless Data).

Use it in Python, R, Excel, Google Sheets or JavaScript

Python (pandas)

import pandas as pd
url = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Interest-Rate-Decision/central-bank-interest-rates/main/data/decisions.csv"
df = pd.read_csv(url, parse_dates=["time_utc"])
fed = df[df.bank == "fed"].set_index("time_utc")
fed.rate.plot(drawstyle="steps-post", title="Fed funds rate (top of range)")

Or pip install interest-rate-decisions (client).

R

d <- read.csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Interest-Rate-Decision/central-bank-interest-rates/main/data/decisions.csv")
subset(d, bank == "ecb")

Google Sheets

=IMPORTDATA("https://interestratedecision.com/data/decisions.csv")

Excel: Data → From Web → https://interestratedecision.com/data/decisions.csv

JavaScript

const { rates } = await (await fetch("https://interestratedecision.com/data/rates.json")).json();

Or npm install interest-rate-decisions (client).

On a website: the central bank widgets show the same data, live.

Notes on the data

• Times are the announcement in UTC. The Bank of Japan sets no fixed hour; its times are the calendar’s estimate.
• A few meetings are missing from the source calendar. Where a missed one changed the rate, the next row’s change_bp is against the last row listed, so one row can carry two decisions’ change.
• Before March 2015 the source calendar gives the ECB’s deposit rate only on the day a change took effect, so the ECB’s rate is blank on those rows and change_bp is the change in its main refinancing rate.
• Economists’ consensus forecasts are not in these files: they belong to the calendar they come from. Each decision’s page on the site shows them.
• Errors of fact are listed at interestratedecision.com/corrections/. Found one? Open an issue.

Licence and citation

Free to use in anything, including commercial work, with a visible link to InterestRateDecision.com. Rates and dates are public facts; the compilation is InterestRateDecision.com’s. Full terms: LICENSE.md.

Cite as: InterestRateDecision.com, “Central bank interest rates since 2008”, https://interestratedecision.com/central-bank-data/ (CITATION.cff; GitHub’s “Cite this repository” gives APA and BibTeX).

---

Related: Central bank rates today · Central bank meeting calendar · Rate cut odds · How often do central banks surprise?