Narwhal organizes official national indicators across 36 countries, including CPI for 34, through REST and MCP. DBnomics aggregates millions of series from 94 providers without changing numerical values. Choose Narwhal for country normalization, or DBnomics for a broader provider catalogue.
Choose Narwhal for normalized country indicators through REST and MCP alongside FX and calendars. Choose DBnomics for broader provider discovery and focused queries using the original provider structures.
Narwhal normalizes selected official national indicators; DBnomics retains each provider's structures. Narwhal API is owned and operated by Nusantara Ventures, LLC.
| Requirement | Narwhal API | DBnomics |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | ✓ 5,000 requests/month | ✓ Free; no key |
| Cheapest paid plan | Basic: $59/month; $590/year available | Not published |
| Update speed | Dataset schedule; timestamps retained | Daily pipeline; freshness varies by provider fetcher |
| History | Free: 12 months; Basic: 5 years; available records only | Not stated |
| Coverage | Economics, FX, holidays and published commodities | 94 providers; millions of series |
| Interfaces | REST and MCP; WebSocket not published | Web API; no official MCP found |
| SDKs | ✓ Official Python and TypeScript SDKs | Not stated |
| Commercial use on free tier | ✓ Commercial apps; resale needs Enterprise | Not stated |
DBnomics is free and sponsorship-funded; its Web API is for focused queries, not large downloads.
| Requests per month | Narwhal API | DBnomics |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | Free: $0/month | Public API: $0 |
| 10,000 | Basic: $59/month | Public API: $0 |
| 100,000 | Basic: $59/month | Public API: $0 |
Read US consumer prices
# Change: URL
url="https://api.db.nomics.world"
url="$url/v22/series/BLS/cu/CUUR0000SA0"
curl --get \
"$url" \
--data-urlencode "observations=1"# Change: URL and key
curl \
"https://api.narwhalapi.com/v1/economics/USA/cpi" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"Narwhal Free includes 5,000 successful requests each month and permits commercial apps. Use that allowance for a dashboard, scheduled data fetches or an agent integration. Move to Basic for 100,000 monthly requests as usage grows, with the same account and authentication.
REST and hosted MCP reach the same data through one account. Your application can fetch JSON while an agent uses the hosted tools, with every successful call counted once against the shared allowance. One quota makes the combined workload straightforward to budget.
Narwhal's economics catalogue spans 36 countries, with a coverage table for each indicator. Country and indicator paths organize requests around the data your application uses. Combine observations with FX, public holidays and release dates to build country dashboards through the same account.
DBnomics suits research and applications needing a broad, free catalogue across 94 providers, including national publishers and international institutions. It offers millions of series without an API key and never modifies numerical values. Provider codes and structures remain intact, which helps when working within an existing publisher's dataset. Its daily pipeline fetches updates, though freshness depends on each provider's fetcher. The Web API serves focused queries rather than large downloads, without cross-country normalization.
Yes. Narwhal Free includes 5,000 successful requests per month, commercial app use and both REST and hosted MCP access. Free includes the last 12 months of history; Basic includes five years and Pro provides full history.
No. DBnomics keeps provider codes and structures and never modifies numerical values. Callers must handle differences between datasets themselves. Narwhal organizes official national series by country and indicator, with CPI for 34 countries. Its history shows the current accepted series rather than revision vintages; immutable publication versions can be requested.
Replace the request URL and authentication, then map the JSON response into your application's fields. The examples use standard fetch in JavaScript and requests in Python, so integration fits an ordinary HTTP client. Keep your key on the server and carry the response's units, dates and missing values into your display or calculations.
The shared cap applies to successful REST and MCP requests together. There are no automatic overage charges. Basic includes 100,000 monthly requests; quotas reset each month even when you pay yearly.
The comparison uses Narwhal's current public contract and the following first-party competitor pages.
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