Data download from Quandl.com

Quandl.com is a portal of different kinds of financial data, and a subset of these data is provided for free. Using Quandl.com’s standard interface can be a great help if it is used wisely.

Step 1: login / registration

Data is available for registered users only, so as the 1st step you have to register, or log in to Quandl.com. Registration is free, you only have to pay in case of using premium data (which is always marked properly).

Step 2: searching for data

Home page of Quandl.com after login, highlighting the search field, the explore link and the bookmarks link.
Home page of Quandl.com after login, highlighting the search field, the explore link and the bookmarks link.

There are multiple ways to find the desired data:

If you have navigated to a page with a Download button (see Step 3.), that’s already a page of a data series. Before proceeding with the next step, consider if you want to use this data again. If yes, it is recommended to bookmark it.

Searching on mobile devices

Searching data on mobile devices is a bit different. On small screen devices, “Explore” link is missing (but links in the home page’s bottom section may substitue it to some extent – however, you can not filter to free data), and you can not filter the search results, too.

But bookmarks are still available (by clicking ≡ on the top right corner), so the easiest way is to search data on desktop, bookmark them, and recall them on a mobile device.

Step 3: using data

The page of a data series, highlighting the bookmark, the download and the API URL options.
The page of a data series, highlighting the bookmark, the download and the API URL options.

You have 2 options to use data from the desired data series’ page

  • Download to file
    1. Click “Download”
    2. Click “CSV”
    3. Save file
    4. Click “Load file” button (File button) in Chartoasis Chili.
    5. Load the file (you just saved) in the window, that appears.
  • Use it with a URL (this is simpler on mobile devices)
    1. On the right, below “Export data”, click CSV (see the image above!)
    2. Copy the full URL in the upcoming window (eg.: ctrl+C). It is important to include the API key, too – this is different for each user, that’s why it is hidden on the example below.
    3. Click “Load from URL” button (URL button) in Chartoasis Chili.
    4. Paste this URL to the URL field.
The API URL to copy (hiding the API key).
The API URL to copy (hiding the API key).

Note: you can get many different kinds of data from Quandl.com, and Chartoasis Chili may not recognize them all. If you load such file or URL, the automatically excuted Importing wizard will help you to load the data.