7di vs Trading Economics: macro indicators without the API bill

Trading Economics aggregates economic indicators from 196 countries: GDP, inflation, interest rates, trade balance, unemployment, and hundreds more. It is a comprehensive macro data repository used by researchers, economists, and analysts. Accessing that data programmatically requires an API subscription starting at $199/month. For someone who just wants to watch a handful of indicators and get notified when they change, that is a high bar.

Feature comparison

What Trading Economics is built for

Trading Economics is a macro data aggregator. It collects official government and central bank releases across 196 countries and provides access to more than 20 million indicators: GDP growth, CPI, interest rate decisions, trade deficits, unemployment rates, retail sales, industrial production, housing starts, and hundreds more. Data goes back decades for most series.

The website is free to browse and includes interactive charts for individual indicators. The API tier is aimed at developers and analysts who want to pull data programmatically, build models, or integrate indicators into their own tools. Trading Economics also provides forecasts for many series based on AI models and analyst consensus.

Trading Economics pricing (2026)

Quarterly billing saves 15% and annual billing saves 25%. A 1-week trial is available: $4.99 for Basic, $49 for Standard. API access requires a key obtained from the developer portal.

What 7di covers for macro tracking

The Live lookup widget in 7di uses web search to fetch current values in plain English. Instead of learning Trading Economics API ticker codes or writing API requests, you write a question. The AI searches the web and returns the current reading on a schedule. Most major economic indicators are publicly available on government sites, central bank pages, and financial news, which the AI can search and parse.

Examples of macro indicators you can track with Live lookup:

• Current US CPI year-over-year rate
• US 10-year Treasury yield right now
• Federal Reserve target interest rate
• Eurozone inflation rate (HICP)
• US unemployment rate latest reading
• Germany 10-year Bund yield
• Current gold price per ounce
• WTI crude oil spot price
• Current EUR/USD exchange rate
• US housing starts latest monthly figure

The Smart alert evaluates a condition when it runs and notifies you if it is true. "US 10-year yield has crossed above 4.5%." "Eurozone CPI is above 3%." "The Fed has changed its rate target." No API integration required.

7di pricing in the same unit

Tracking 10 macro indicators at 1-hour intervals costs 20 credits per hour (2 cr each), or 14,400 credits per month. That fits within the Power plan at $39/mo, a fraction of Trading Economics Standard at $199/mo. See Credits for the full cost breakdown.

Where Trading Economics is the right choice

Trading Economics is the right tool if you need programmatic access to historical time series across hundreds of countries, want to build quantitative models from official government releases, or need forecasts for economic indicators. Its data depth and breadth are unmatched for macro research.

If you are building a trading model that ingests GDP revisions, trade balance surprises, and central bank minutes across 20 countries, you need a data API. 7di is not that. Trading Economics at $199/mo is justified for that use case.

7di is the right choice if you want to watch a set of indicators on a dashboard, chart them over time, and get notified when a condition changes, without writing API code or paying for institutional data access.