If you've searched for Pakistan economic data, you've probably met EasyData, the State Bank of Pakistan's open-data portal at easydata.sbp.org.pk. It's official, it's large, and it has an API. So why would you use anything else?
The short answer: PakDataHub serves the same official SBP numbers. It ingests every EasyData dataset, and it adds the rest of Pakistan's official data plus the parts developers need. You aren't choosing between official data and convenient data. PakDataHub is both.
What EasyData is great at
- Authority: it's the SBP's own publication channel for its statistics.
- Breadth within SBP: exchange rates, money and banking, the balance of payments, external debt, public finance, the real sector and social indicators the SBP compiles.
- Free and open: you can browse it and download from it.
For a one-off download of a single SBP table, EasyData is a perfectly good choice.
Where developers hit friction
- One institution. EasyData covers what the SBP publishes. It doesn't carry PBS's CPI by COICOP group, the weekly SPI prices of 30 essentials in 17 cities, Large-Scale Manufacturing, PTA telecom data, MUFAP mutual-fund NAVs, the PKRV yield curve or debt-security prices.
- Codes, not names. Series are identified by codes like
TS_GP_ER_FAERPKR_M.E00220. PakDataHub calls the same seriesfx.rate.avg.usd, and keeps the SBP code in itssource_urlso you can trace it. - Unstated scale. Many values are published without saying whether they're in thousands, millions or billions. PakDataHub checked each dataset against known totals and labels the unit (
usd_mn,pkr_bn, …). - Access limits. API access requires signing in, and keys carry per-hour and per-day quotas and expire.
Side by side
| SBP EasyData | PakDataHub | |
|---|---|---|
| Numbers | Official SBP figures | The same official SBP figures, plus PBS, PTA, MUFAP |
| Series | SBP datasets | 16,964 series across 4 publishers, plus 567 funds, debt securities and auctions |
| Ids | Source codes | Readable, stable ids, with the source code kept for traceability |
| Units | Often unstated | Labelled |
| Formats | Portal downloads, API | REST API, JSON or CSV, one key |
| Transforms | - | YoY, MoM, % change, moving average, rebasing, server-side |
| Revisions | Current values | Revision vintages: data as it stood on any date |
| Update push | - | Webhooks |
| Free access | Yes (sign-in for API) | Free tier to every dataset, no card |
The same number, two ways
# PakDataHub: readable id, labelled unit, source traced
curl -H "X-API-Key: pk_live_xxx" \
"https://api.pakdatahub.com/v1/series/fx.rate.avg.usd/latest"
curl "https://api.pakdatahub.com/v1/catalog/fx.rate.avg.usd"
# "source": "SBP", "source_url": ".../TS_GP_ER_FAERPKR_M.E00220/data"
The value you get is SBP's published monthly-average rate, identical to EasyData's.
Which should you use?
- One SBP table, once: EasyData.
- An app, model, dashboard or research pipeline, especially one that mixes SBP data with prices, CPI detail, telecom, funds or rates curves: PakDataHub. It's the official data, unified, with a key in minutes.
Read how PakDataHub sources and validates every number, or get a free key.