Economic Data freely available online

Here are some links that you may find useful for accessing statistics and other information. Datasets that require you to pay or register are on a separate page along with pointers. (Note that some free datasets that require registration are also listed below.)

Printing this page
If you print out this page, the URLs will appear alongside each individual link.

A. UK sites for data

The following sites are the main ones for accessing free data (mainly macroeconomic) on the UK economy. The sites also contain some international data.

1. Office for National Statistics

The ONS is the UK’s recognised national statistical institute and is the largest independent producer of official statistics for the country. It is responsible for collecting and publishing statistics related to the UK economy, population and society at national, regional and local levels. It also conducts the census in England and Wales every 10 years.

The website includes 48,000+ time series published in over 600 releases a year that can be used to make customisable charts and a tool is available for selecting and downloading up to 50 of them to create bespoke datasets.

Home Page

On the Home Page you can find the following:

At the top you can access data and publications under 5 broad categories (Business, industry and trade; Economy; Employment and labour market; People, population and community and Taking part in a survey?) and 32 subcategories (e.g. Inflation and price indices and National accounts under Economy). In addition, there is an A to Z listing of statistical bulletins.

On the Home Page, you can also see the latest headline news, figures and publications.

Also on the Home page and throughout the site is a search box. This enables you to search by keyword for any topic and the results will be organised by 'Publications', 'Data' and 'Other'. Under each of these you can apply filters. So, under the 'Publications' category, you can filter by 'Statistical bulletins', 'Articles' or 'Compendiums'.

Data can be downloaded as an Excel or CSV file. Statistical bulletins can be accessed on line or downloaded as a PDF file, with particular graphs or tables downloaded as an Excel or CSV file.

The search box also allows you to access a particular time series by its unique 4-digit identifier. Thus if you wanted to find 'Gross domestic product: expenditure at current market prices', which has the code YBHA, then simply put YBHA in the search box. Your series will be displayed as a graph and you can download it as an Excel or CSV file. You are also given a list of related series.

To find a 4-digit code, you can use the archived page at:
Key Economic Time Series Data

You can also find data by using the Time series explorer tool
Time series explorer

Using this tool you can search by keyword and then refine by topic and when last updated.

Finally there is a very easy-to-use clickable list of all the main ONS series, such as the United Kingdom Economic Accounts, Labour Market Statistics and Balance of Payments provided by UK Data Explorer.
List of ONS Releases

The UK economy: a dashboard
A recent site that uses ONS data is the House of Commons Library's UK economy dashboard.
The UK economy: a dashboard

The dashboard allows you to investigate how the UK economy has performed over the past 70 years. It is updated every time the ONS publishes new data.  Data can be downloaded as spreadsheets (CSV files). Topics include: GDP growth, inflation, trade labour market and public finances.

The dashboard also includes a monthly economic update on how the UK economy is performing.
Monthly economic update

2. Bank of England Statistics

The statistics area of the Bank's site contains a large range of monetary and financial data.
Statistics

The statistics include the monthly publication, Bankstats, available as separate tables grouped into categories (scroll down) or as a zip file of all tables grouped into Excel Workbooks (click on Bankstats tables).
Bankstats

There is also a large range of banking, monetary and financial statistics in the Monetary & Financial Statistics Tables section. There are two easy ways of accessing the statistics in the database. The first is by category of table using the following link:
Monetary & Financial Statistics Tables

First you click on a category (e.g. Money and lending); then select a series (e.g. Monthly growth rates of M4 and M4 Lending) by clicking on the "+" sign to open up the options and then again with the selected option; then check the relevant series and click on 'Next' at the bottom of the screen; then select the date range and click on View data; then click on the down arrow at the top of the Date column if you wish to display the data in ascending date order; then choose a format in which to view the table (Copy (HTML), CSV, Excel or Print).

The second method is to use the A to Z listing using the following link (this also includes other data sets):
A–Z data sets

First you choose the topic. Then, as above, check the relevant series and click on 'Next' at the bottom of the screen; then select the date range and click on View data; then click on the down arrow at the top of the Date column if you wish to display the data in ascending date order; then choose a format in which to view the table (Copy (HTML), CSV, Excel or Print).

Search facility. As with the ONS site, each of the datasets has a unique identifying code, normally seven digits. They combine a prefix (usually three letters), which contains some information about the type and frequency of the data (for internal use), and a four digit character code. Thus, the code for seasonally adjusted M4 (quarterly figures) is LPQAUYN. You can put this into the search box at the top right of each page. Bankstats tables have the code at the top of each column of figures

You can use the same search box for key words, such as 'money'.

3. The Treasury

The Treasury site (now on GOV.UK) is also a very useful source of UK data. The main site can be accessed via the following link.
HM Treasury

In the Research and statistics section you will find Latest Economic Indicators.
Research and statistics

There is also a section of the site which gives forecasts for the UK economy by 26 independent organisations. It also gives averages of these forecasts. This section is updated monthly to take account of new forecasts.

There is also a separate section on the site for the Budget and the Spending Review (use the links in the site's top right-hand navigation panel). The full reports, tables and charts can be downloaded.

4. Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR)

The OBR was set up by the Coalition government in 2010 to provide forecasts and analysis of the UK's public finances.
The role of the OBR

It produces a number of publications.
Publications

These include the Economic and Fiscal Outlook, which is published twice per year in the Spring and Autumn and sets out forecasts for the economy and the public finances over a five-year horizon.
Economic and Fiscal Outlook

They also include the annual Fiscal Risks and Sustainability report. This presents long-term projections for public spending and tax revenue and identifies and analyses risks to the medium-term outlook for the public finances and to long-term fiscal sustainability.
Fiscal Risks and Sustainability

It also provides a commentary on the monthly Public Sector Finances published by the ONS.
Monthly Commentary on the Public Sector Finances

There is also a very useful and comprehensive data section containing a
Public finances databank
This has a large range of data series for financial years going back to 1946/47 and includes forecasts for the next five years. There are 25 main indicators, in one worksheet given in current prices, in another in constant prices and in another as percentages of GDP. For four series there are data going back to 1900/01

5. Institute for Fiscal Studies

The IFS is an independent research institute which publishes research; podcasts, explainers & calculators; announcements and commentary relevant to fiscal policy, public finances, incomes and the UK economy. It conducts a detailed analysis of the Budget each year:
Budget analysis

It also publishes regular press releases related to its work.
Press releases

Prior to the Budget each year, it provides its Green Budget analysis, which provides relevant background data and analysis. This is to fill the gap left by the lack of a background government 'green paper' on the Budget. Green papers of data and analysis are often published by the government prior to bringing in legislation – but not in the case of the Budget.
Green Budget

You can browse the IFS site by topic. The 11 topics include Business and investment, Consumption and prices, and Poverty, inequality and social mobility.
Topics

6. GOV.UK Statistics

This is the UK's site for official government statistics. The data can be searched by policy area (such as energy, employment, tax and revenue or UK economy). It can also be searched by keyword or by government department. You can select a date range for publication.
Statistics

B. International sites for data

The following sites give access to international data. Some of the data are for individual countries; some are for groups of countries.

7. European Central Bank Statistics

On the ECB site you will find a statistical section containing a number of series. The index can be accessed via the following link:
ECB Statistical Section
From there you can access the
Data Portal

The Economic Bulletin and Annual Report are particularly useful
Economic Bulletin
Annual Report

It has a section on monetary policy, with information on monetary policy decisions, the latest economic, monetary and financial developments and the structure of the euro area economy.
Monetary policy

8. European Economy

The European Economy supplements, also available in hard-copy form, can be downloaded from the Europa portal site. They are contained in the Business, Economy, Euro (DG) site. The home page of the directorate is:
Business, Economy, Euro

Annual Macroeconomic Database (AMECO)
AMECO contains a large range of annual time-series data for the 27 EU countries, the EU candidates, the EEA countries and other OECD countries, including the UK. There are approximately 700 indicators in the dataset. Many of the indicators go back to 1960 and forecast ahead for two years. The data can be viewed online and is accessed from:
AMECO

6-monthly forecasts
By clicking on the following link, you will arrive at the 6-monthly forecasts for each of the 27 EU countries, the euro area, the 27 EU countries as a whole and also the UK, the USA, Japan and China. Apart from containing a comprehensive verbal economic report (plus tables) of each country and the EU as a whole, there is a comprehensive statistical annex with 61 tables of time series data, plus forecasts for the next one or two years. This can be downloaded under the documents section as a PDF file.
Index of Economic Forecasts

It may be useful to know how to import a table from PDF into Excel. Also, with an Excel file containing many rows or columns, it may be useful to keep the header rows (or columns) of the spreadsheet static while the rest of the figures can be moved with the scroll bar or mouse wheel.

Business and Consumer Surveys
The European Economy site also contains monthly business and consumer surveys. There are two main indicators: the Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI) and the Employment Expectations Indicator (EEI). You can access the latest ones here:
Business and Consumer Surveys: Latest

You can also access longer time series. You can download these as sets of zipped Excel files, one for each type of indicator: economic sentiment, employment expectations, uncertainty, industry (including investment), services, consumers, retail trade, construction, financial services and labour hoarding. In most cases they can be downloaded as seasonally or non-seasonally adjusted data. The series give monthly data from 1985 and, for some series, quarterly data too. See the Index in the first worksheet of each file for the meaning of the codes used in the tables. The tables give indicators for the EU as a whole, for each of the 27 EU countries, for the eurozone, for the UK and for other non-EU countries. You will find all these at:
Business and Consumer Surveys: Time Series

9. OECD Statistics Portal (including OECD Economic Outlook)

On this site you will find a whole range of statistics for each of the 38 OECD countries, the euro area, the G20, the G7 and the OECD as a whole. The statistics are arranged by topic group, including Economy, Society, Employment, Finance and investment, Health, Education and skills. There are some 830 datasets, grouped under the following headings: Taxation, Economy, Education and skills, Regional, rural and urban development, Health and Development.
OECD Data

OECD Economic Outlook
From the catalogue you can also link to the OECD Economic Outlook. This six-monthly publication contains a large database, now accessible within OECD Data Explorer, with annual and quarterly macroeconomic data for each of the OECD countries plus selected other countries or groups. There are nearly 300 variables, which you can easily select from a pull-down menu. You can also customise them by country and year and export them to Excel or other formats. The data go back at least 20 years and in many cases back to 1960. There are also forecasts for at least one year ahead.
OECD Economic Outlook

The Statistical Annex contains 61 tables (worksheets) already in Excel format. You can download them as a single file (you can also download them as a PDF). Alternatively you can download them as seven separate Excel workbooks, each containing two of more tables as worksheets. These workbooks are grouped by topic area (use the right-hand menu).
Statistical Annex

Main Economic Indicators (MEI)
Shorter-term macroeconomic data on each of the OECD countries can be found in the OECD's Main Economic Indicators (MEI). These can be downloaded from the OECD iLibrary at:
Main Economic Indicators
or from datasets at
Main Economic Indicators: Get real-time data

OECD Data Explorer
This section of the site contains various datasets classified under 16 headings, including Economy, Finance and investment, Trade and Development. You can customise the datasets by series, frequency, countries, indicator, unit of measure and time period and download them as CSV files or via the OECD's application programming interface (API).
OECD Data Explorer

10. World Bank data sets

The World Bank site contains a vast database of economic, social and other development statistics for all countries of the world. Although much of the data on the site is available only by subscription, the following link takes you to quite a large selection of open-access data, which you can search by country and indicator:
Open data

The World Bank also publishes its annual World Development Report. You can download the reports for each year from the following:
World Development Reports

The database of World Development Indicators can be found at:
World Development Indicators

The World Bank provides a number of data portals which provide data dashboards on various topics. These allow the visual display of data, using Databank.
Data portals and tools

Since 2017, the World Bank has been publishing an Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals, built around World Development Indicators. This uses data to present interactive storytelling and data visualisations about 17 Sustainable Development Goals. You can choose a particular country as a point of comparison in all stories, with the selected country highlighted in the visualisations. The fourth edition was published in 2023.
Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals

The World Bank site has a section on World Integrated Trade Solutions (WITS). This allows you to visualise countries' exports to and imports from various countries. It also details products exported and their export and import share. You can also visualise different types of tariff.
Trade Data Visualization

11. IMF data sets

Country reports for all countries of the world can be found via the following link:
Country Information

Four particularly useful publications are the World Economic Outlook (see also WEO databases), Global Financial Stability Report, Fiscal Monitor and Annual Report. Each of these has a large statistical annex. These publications and several others can be accessed via the following link
Data and Statistics

A number of additional IMF datasets are available for free access on the IMF Data site, including data on international reserves, investment, financial soundness and financial access. These can be searched by country, topic and data source.
IMF data

12. WTO international trade statistics

The statistics section of the WTO site contains a number of databases and publications providing extensive access to trade and tariff data.
Trade and tariff data

There are several parts to the site. These include: data on Merchandise trade; Trade in services; Tariffs; and two relatively new sections: Global value chains, which measures and analyses trade in value added, and Non-tariff measures.

There is also a section with trade maps, where countries are colour-coded on a world map by the values of six indicators.
Trade maps

There is also a data portal, which "contains statistical indicators related to WTO issues. Available time series cover merchandise trade and trade in services statistics, market access indicators (bound, applied and preferential tariffs), non-tariff information as well as other indicators".
Data portal

An excellent annual publication is the World Trade Statistical Review. You can download this as a PDF file, with the datasets also available in Excel files. The publication "provides a detailed analysis of the latest developments in world trade". For the latest volume see:
World Trade Statistical Review series

13. UNCTAD statistics

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) site has an online statistical database, UNCTADstat. This contains data on international trade, economy and finance (including national accounts, balance of payments, foreign direct investment (FDI)), productive capacities, inflation and exchange rates, commodity prices and public finance), maritime transport, environment and related trade, digital economy and technology, and population and inclusiveness.
UNCTADstat

You can also download the annual World Investment Report in PDF files at:
World Investment Report (WIR)

The above report contains many tables on global and regional FDI, cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and transnational corporations (TNCs).

The Annexes to the World Investment Report (scroll down on the WIR page) contain a range of additional FDI, M&A and TNC statistics that can be downloaded as 20 Excel files.

Also on the WIR page are country and regional fact sheets on FDI stocks and flows.

14. Bank for International Settlements

The Bank for International Settlements is "an international organisation which fosters international monetary and financial cooperation and serves as a bank for central banks". From the hub part of the site you can access the websites of each of the world's central banks.
Central bank websites

...and working and research papers published by central banks.
Central Bank Research Hub

There is also a substantial statistical section. It is the best source for data on nominal and real exchange rate indices. It uses narrow indices (comprising 26 and 27 economies for the nominal and real indices, respectively) with data going back to 1964, and broad indices (comprising 64 economies) with data going back to 1994. Using the 'Sample tables' and 'Filters', you can customise your own tables and export them to Excel or CSV by clicking on 'Export' at the top right and then selecting the 'Table' tab. 
BIS effective exchange rate indices

A large range of banking, financial and macroeconomic data can be found using the:
BIS Data Portal

The statistical section also has data on cross-border lending and borrowing of banks:
Locational banking statistics

It also has information and data on securities and derivatives. Also, every three years BIS conducts a global central bank survey of activity in the foreign exchange market. The results of the April 2022 survey were released in December 2022.
Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange and Over-the-counter (OTC) Derivatives Markets in 2022

The statistical section also has a link to the joint BIS-IMF-OECD-World Bank statistics on external debt, see:
Joint External Debt Hub (JEDH)

You can also find details of the payments systems in 26 countries plus the eurozone, including data on money supply, total bank notes and coin issued, data on banks and other financial institutions including branches and value of accounts, cards issued, ATMs, transactions per type of payment instrument, number and value of securities and derivatives trades and many other indicators:
Payments and financial market infrastructures

15. UN Statistics Division

The United Nations Statistics Division site has a large range of world and individual country data. An easy way to access them is via Topics from the top bar of the home page.
Home page
There are six broad topics: Coordination, Development indicators, Economy, Environment, Geospatial information and Population and Society. Each is divided into sub-topics. For example, Economy is divided into Basic Economic Statistics, Business Statistics, Energy Statistics, Industrial Statistics, National Accounts, Tourism Statistics and Trade Statistics.

Also from the top bar you can access various datasets under Data. These include the UN's own datasets.
UN Data
You can select an indicator from the left-hand panel and then download the data as a CSV or PDF file. Or you can select a country from the central panel or a group of countries from the right-hand panel. In each case there is a choice of four tables: General information, Economic indicators, Social indicators and Environment and infrastructure indicators. You can also use the Data tab to access the Monthly Bulletin of Statistics (MBS), Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicators and the UN Comtrade database of global trade data.

You can also use the Home page to access key UN statistical publications.
Publications
These include:
Statistical Yearbook
World Statistics Pocketbook
Monthly Bulletin of Statistics

16. NationMaster

This is a compilation of more than five thousand data series, from sources including the CIA World Factbook, UN, and OECD. As well as profiles of individual countries including their maps and flags, you can browse the data by topic, including education, economy, crime, mortality or health. The site offers a 'facility to create correlation reports and scatter-plots on the fly'.
NationMaster

From the home page you can select any of 300 sectors grouped into nine categories (such as Manufacturing and Financial Services). There is also a search box at the top for sectors and statistics.

Also at the bottom of the home page, you can use the pull-down menu in the 'More Statistics' section to access 20 categories of 'Top Stats', statistics for 19 groups of countries or 'Geographic Entities' (such as the EU, the G7 and heavily indebted countries) and 27 Other Sectors and topics (such as economy, industry, education and environment).

There are country profiles for 305 countries and geographical entities
Country profiles

17. Gapminder

Gapminder allows you to chart three indicators (from a very large selection) over time for most countries simultaneously, with data going back decades, or even centuries for some indicators. The charts allow you to see very easily the differences between countries: hence the title of the site! The following link takes you to Gapminder World.
Gapminder World

The link above takes you to the default view, which is Chart View, where you can choose which indicator to put on each axis by clicking on each axis in turn and selecting from the drop-down list. Each axis can be shown in linear or log mode. Each country is represented by a bubble, whose colour varies by continent. The size of the bubble gives the third indicator, whose default is the population size, but again you can use a drop-down menu (bottom right or right, depending on your browser) to select this third indicator. The default is all countries, but you can select just one or more countries from a list on the right. The non-selected countries appear in faded colour. You can use a slider under the list of countries to fade them out completely if you prefer. You can also track the path of your selected countries over time if you choose.

A guide to Chart View is given at:
Gapminder World Guide

An alternative view is the Map view (click on Bubbles link at top left of screen). Each country bubble is positioned on a world map. The size of the bubble gives one indicator. A second indicator can be shown by colour gradation of the bubbles. Again, you can select individual countries from the menu on the right.

Other views include Income, Trends, Ranks, Ages and Spreadsheet (again click on the menu at top left of screen).

The site also has a range of videos which examine specific data.
Gapminder videos

18. CIA World Factbook

If you don't mind that this information comes courtesy of the CIA, this is a very useful site, giving a host of economic and other data, country-by-country. Simply select a country from the 'Countries' link at the top of the page, or use the search box.
The World Factbook

Alternatively, you can compare countries by indicator. There are 48 indicators from which to choose, including 17 economic indicators. When you select an indicator, countries are arranged in descending order (except for inflation and unemployment rates, where countries are arranged in ascending order).
Country Comparisons

19. IndexMundi

IndexMundi contains detailed country statistics, charts, and maps compiled from multiple sources. You can explore and analyse thousands of indicators organised by region, country, topic, sector, and type. (See also site 31 below).
IndexMundi

The IndexMundi site has a powerful graphing feature which you can use for the following:

World and continent maps showing colour-coded information and data tables by country for 74 separate indicators (use the drop-down menus):
World maps by indicator

Bar charts with figures for ranking countries for a range of indicators:
Country comparison charts

Times series charts and tables that allow you to compare up to four countries using up to ten indicators:
Historical data graphs

Correlation scatter charts (plus table) that allow you to compare two indicators for all countries for a selected year:
Correlation charts

20. FRED: Federal Reserve Economic Data

Over 825,000 US and international time series from 114 sources updated daily from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Fred home page
Time series data

21. EconStats from EconomyWatch

The EconomyWatch site includes news and country briefings under various headings, such as:
Economic conditions
International trade
Monetary policy

A full list of topics can be found at the bottom of each page.

22. Penn World Table

Penn World Table 10.01 by Robert C. Feenstra, Robert Inklaar and Marcel P. Timmer is provided by the University of Groningen's Growth and Development Centre. It is a database with information on relative levels of income, output, input and productivity, covering 183 countries between 1950 and 2019. Data may be opened in Excel or Stata.
Penn World Table 10.01 Database

There is also a comprehensive User Guide

23. Trading Economics

Trading Economics provides data with commentary for 196 countries. The site includes historical data and forecasts for more than 20 million economic indicators, such as exchange rates, stock market indexes, government bond yields and commodity prices. The data are from official sources.
Trading Economics

You can access data by countries and indicators. There are also data on financial markets, including currencies, stock market indices and shares within each one, commodities, bonds, crypto and earnings.

You can also access forecasts by countries, indicators, currencies, stock market indices and shares within each one, commodities, bonds and crypto.

There is also a News stream, which can be filtered by economy or markets.

24. ILOSTAT

ILOSTAT is the International Labour Organization's site for labour statistics. The ILO was created in 1919, as part of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1946, the ILO became a specialised agency of the United Nations.
Home page

Under the Data tab you can access data by indicator or country or ILO region.
Data

You can also use the Data Explorer to find, filter, pivot, and download ILOSTAT data in various formats.
Data Explorer

From the top menu on the Home page you can access Country Profiles and Labour statistics for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There is also a Blog.

25. The Conference Board datasets

The Conference Board, founded in 1916, is an independent non-profit global organisation. Its aim is "to help leaders navigate the biggest issues impacting business and better serve society". Amongst other activities, it provides a range of international data.
Economic Data & Analysis

Particularly useful datasets include:
Global Economic Outlook
This tracks the latest short-, medium- and long-term growth outlooks for 77 economies.
Global Leading Indicators
This tracks the state of the business cycle for 12 global economies across Asia and Europe.

On the site you will also find a Total Economy Database, which provides annual data covering GDP, population, employment, hours, labour quality, capital services, labour productivity and total factor productivity for 131 countries.
Total Economy Database
(To download this you will have to set up a free account. You can set up and account and download data at The Conference board Data Central.)

26. USDA International Macroeconomic Data Set

This international macroeconomic dataset is on the U.S. Department of Agriculture site. It 'provides historical and projected data for 181 countries that account for more than 99 percent of the world economy'.
International Macroeconomic Data Set

The site also includes agricultural data for a range of countries and regions. It also has information on International Consumer and Food Industry Trends

27. Asian Development Bank: Data and Research

The Asian Development Bank publishes a range of economic, financial, social, environmental and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) statistics on its 49 member countries from the Asia and Pacific region (there are 68 members in total). In the data section, you can find statistics on a number of indicators.
Data and Statistics

Four useful statistical publications are:
Basic Statistics Series
Asian Development Review (ADR)
Key Indicators (KI) for Asia and the Pacific Series
Asian Development Outlook (ADO)

In each case data are available to download to Excel.

28. Countryeconomy.com

This Spanish site has a large range of macroeconomic and market data from official sources. You can access the data by country:
Countries
or by indicator
Indicators
Broad indicators can also be found from the top navigation bar. Clicking on an indicator (e.g. GDP) takes you to a list of countries. Clicking on any of these gives you a range of specific data for that country for that broad indicator.

The site can be accessed in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French.

C. Market data

The following sites provide data on UK and international markets for individual commodities, shares or products.

29. Yahoo Finance

The following link is to the home page, from which you can access the various sections of the site, including market data, sectors and personal finance.
Yahoo Finance: home page

In the market data section you can access market information on currencies, cryptocurrencies, most active stocks and world stock market indices.

When you click on a particular stock or market, you get a real-time summary, including a small graph. If you click on 'Full screen' this gives you a full-page graph from which you can easily read prices on any day over any time period. You can also see additional stock or market prices on the same screen on the same dates by clicking on 'Comparison'. For example, the following shows the FTSE 100 graph, with comparison data for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA).
FTSE 100

30. Financial Times Markets Data

This is a well presented and clearly navigable site for finding financial market data.
Markets Data

The default view is an overview of markets. These include major global stock market indices (which you can refine by Global, Americas, Europe & Africa and Asia-Pacific), Currencies, Commodities and Bonds & rates. In each case, in addition to the data, there are links to relevant news articles.

From the white highlighted bar under the FT's main sections you can select from a range of markets from the Markets Data section, including:
Equities, where you can find shares by company name or ticker or search by country, sector & industry or equity attributes (such as market capitalisation or dividend yield).
Currencies. You can compare two currencies and display their cross rates for up to 5 years.
Commodities
Bonds
Funds and ETFs. You can search by fund name or use the Fund Screener to find funds by investment focus (i.e. sector or region), by fund attributes (returns, expense ratio or total net assets) or by fund company or issuer. There is also the function to compare the performance of up to five funds.
World Markets. You can search market indices by market name or by region or country (using a world map or by name).

There are also League Tables of companies by performance.

Also, there is a Compound Growth Calculator, which allows you to "explore the time value of money, the impact of regular contributions, and the power of saving over longer timeframes."

31. IndexMundi commodities

The IndexMundi site has an extensive set of commodity price data drawn from the IMF.
Commodity Prices

These can be charted for a 6-month, 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30-year range. The figures also appear in a table which can be downloaded to Excel (although you will have to register free first to download the data). Alternatively you can simply copy the figures and paste them into Excel.

There are also links to recent news articles relevant to the selected commodity.

The site also contains country data, which can be found from the site's home page.
IndexMundi: home page

Details of the charting features of the country data can be found above at site 19

32. Statista

Statista is a leading provider of market and consumer data, with some 18 million visits per month. It covers 80,000 topics from 22,500 sources in 170 industries.
Home page

Many of the datasets are free to display as line or bar graphs, with the values of data points displayed. If you want to download the data, you have to subscribe to the site.

Its statistics are grouped into 22 industry groups. These include Agriculture, Consumer goods, E-commerce, Energy & environment, Finance & insurance, the Internet, Metals & electronics, Retail & trade, Services, Technology & telecommunications and Transportation & logistics.

There is also a section on Economy & Politics.

Other parts of the site, containing country and market outlooks, reports, etc. are not free.

33. Energy Information Administration

This is a US government site, but it gives international as well as US data on electricity, coal, gas, nuclear power and oil.
Home page

For individual country analyses, see:
International (Click "Select Country/Region")

You can download Excel files of daily, weekly, monthly and annual spot prices for various fuels.
Spot fuel Prices

For example, monthly historical prices for Brent crude are at:
Brent crude prices
Use the 'View history' panel at the top to toggle between annual, monthly, weekly and daily prices.

34. The UK government's Debt Management Office

This UK government site has, amongst other things, market data on Gilt markets and Treasury Bill markets.
UK Debt Management Office (DMO)
Data

35. BBC Market Data

The BBC news site has a section with market data.
BBC News: Market Data

You can find current prices and charts of movements over the past day, one, three or twelve months, or five years of share prices, stock markets, currencies and commodities.

36. UK house prices

There are five excellent sites for UK house price data.

UK House Price Indices (ONS using Land Registry data)
The following link takes you to reports on the UK housing market and house prices.
UK House Price Index: reports

The reports contain summary data and charts. They also contain links to the underlying datasets. You can customise the datasets by topic, year, etc. and download your selection to Excel using the following link.
UK HPI tool

Click on search the UK house price index and then on Customise your search. You can then download your selected data to Excel or another spreadsheet.

Nationwide house prices site
This gives quarterly movements in national house prices since 1952. More detailed series distinguishing type of property, type of buyer and region are given from more recent years (1973, 1983 or 1991). Data can be downloaded as charts or as Excel spreadsheets.
House Prices: Chart Data Download

Halifax House Price Index (Lloyds Banking Group)
The Halifax House Price Index site shows the movements in UK house prices over the past 13 months. This is a free site. There is a much more extensive set of national, regional and housing-type data going back to 1983, which used to be free but has now been moved to the Markit site where a subscription is required to access the data.
Halifax House Price Index

House price forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility
The OBR forecasts two key housing variables: average house prices, as measured by the ONS house price index, and the number of transactions which take place, reported by HMRC.
Housing market

See also the following paper on the house price forecasting methodology used by the OBR.
Forecasting house prices

Zoopla
The site gives real-time house price valuations by postcode, as well as house price trends by region.
Home values

37. International property prices

There are three useful sites for international property prices.

The Bank for International Settlements
The BIS site (see site 14 above) has a section on residential and commercial property prices in a range of countries that can be downloaded as an Excel file.
Property price statistics from BIS

Global Property Guide
You may also find the following site useful, which is designed for residential property investors who are considering buying houses or apartments in other countries. It tracks official and semi-official house price indices in 59 countries. It also has data on gross rental yields, market structures, conveyancing costs, landlord and tenant law and effective tax rates for residential property in over 100 countries.
Global Property Guide

IMF
The IMF's Global Housing Watch tracks developments in housing markets across the world on a quarterly basis. It provides current data on house prices as well as metrics used to assess valuation in housing markets, such as house price‑to‑rent and house-price‑to‑income ratios.
Global Housing Watch

38. UK labour market data from Adzuna

Adzuna is a job search site, launched in 2011. It has a large database of jobs for the UK and for 10 other countries. You can search by job type and location.
UK job search site

A useful part of the site for finding salary data is:
Salary Stats

This again allows you search by job type and location. Monthly data are displayed for the past year.

There are also national data on salaries and vacancies available at:
UK Labour Market Stats

Also on this part of the site you can compare salaries for specific jobs or in specific locations with the national average.

39. worldwide-tax.com

This site has key data on world taxes, including income tax rates, a tax rates comparison table, links to tax and business news, links to world tax and revenue administrations and a directory of world stock exchanges. It also has links to individual countries with general information, information on service providers and business opportunities, and data on taxation and the economy.
Home page

A useful section is:
Tax rates around the world
This is presented as a table giving the rates for each country, with many of the countries clickable to give you more information.

40. Mergers and Acquisitions Statistics from the IMAA

The resources section of the Institute of Mergers, Acquisitions and Alliances (IMAA) site provides extensive and regularly updated statistics on Mergers and Acquisitions worldwide. Much of the data is open access and is organised by the following: Region, Transaction type, Industry and Country.
Open-access M&A Statistics

By signing up as a free user you can also download M&A data and statistics with the actual numbers in spreadsheets (Google Sheets and Excel format).
Register as free user

D. Portals with links to other sites

These sites provide links to other sites with a range of economic data.

41. UK Data Service

This is a data service funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). It gives access to a range of datasets from national and international organisations. In addition to these datasets, the UK Data Service includes data from Census.ac.uk, Secure Data Service (SDS) and Survey Question Bank (SQB).

To gain free access to some of the datasets linked from the site you will need to enter your UK university/college username and password in the Login box on the Home Page. You will first need to register from the same page.

UK Data Service home page

You can browse the data sets by theme:
Browse by theme
The 14 themes include Economics, Environment & Energy, Health, Housing, Labour and Poverty.
The Economics theme contains 14 popular datasets, including from the World Bank, the OECD, the IMF. Some of these do not require prior registration. 

Other categories of data include:
UK surveys
Cross-national surveys
Longitudinal studies
Census data
Qualitative/mixed methods data

42. Quandl

Quandl has indexed over 5 million time-series datasets from over 400 sources. Its data are available on the Nasdaq Data Link site. Most of the data refer to financial data and asset prices, but there are also various economic datasets. To access some of the datasets, you have to be a subscriber, but many are open and free. You can download datasets in any format that you want. You can also visualize, save, share, authenticate, validate, upload, index, merge and transform data.
Home page

You can use the search box to find data or you can scroll through datasets. You can also limit your search to free datasets by using the filter at the top of the left-hand navigation panel.
Browse free datasets

43. AEA Data Links

AEA Resources is a database of links for economists provided by the American Economic Association. From the Data Sources page, there are links to very many online data sources, categorised by region. Categories include US Macroeconomic data, Other US data and Non-US data.
AEA Resources: Data Sources
(See, in particular, the More world and non-US data link.)

44. Development Initiatives

Development Initiatives (DI) is an "international development organisation that focuses on putting data-driven decision-making at the heart of poverty eradication". It provides "rigorous information to support better decisions, influence policy outcomes, increase accountability and strengthen the use of data to eradicate poverty".
Home page

In the datasets part of the site, you can search for data by Reports, Data sources, Topics and Countries. There are 58 datasets linked on the site.
Datasets

45. Economy.com

This site from Moody's Analytics links to a vast range of data from all countries of the world.
Home page

The home page itself gives today's economic releases from around the world.

For the full range of data, use the top bar on the home page, where you can search by region or indicator. The 'Regions' tab allows you to access a specific country by continent and then a specific indicator for that country. This gives data for the past 13 months, quarters or years (depending on the series) as a bar chart with the figures visible.

Alternatively, you can use the 'Indicators' tab to select an indicator from a choice of 87. This takes you to a country list with the latest and previous value for that indicator for each country. Again, clicking on a specific country gives a bar chart for that indicator with the data for the past 13 periods.

The site also serves as a portal to the external sites from which the data are extracted. This allows you to access the full original dataset. For example, if under 'Regions' you select 'Europe' and then the United Kingdom, you might then choose Real Gross Domestic Product. Then, under the bar chart, in the Series Information, you can click on Quarterly National Accounts and this takes you to the full dataset from the Office for National Statistics.

46. Economic Hotlinks from Pearson Education

This portal site contains links to 295 sites of economic data and information.
Home page

It is organised into 10 sections, including:
General news sources
Sources of economic and business data
Sites for students and teachers of economics
Economic models, simulations and classroom experiments
UK government and UK organisations' sites
Sources of monetary and financial data
European Union and related sources
International organisations