Microproduct data guidebeginner

CFPB Consumer Complaint Database

Consumer financial product complaints sent to companies for response, for building company, product, and state complaint-monitoring tools.

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At a glance

Difficulty
Beginner — comfortable for a first prototype
Size
Small · ≤0.5 GB
Formats
JSON, CSV, ZIP
Access
API or Download
API key
Not required
Provider
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Updates
Daily
Data terms
U.S. Government public data / CFPB public-domain dedication

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

The Consumer Complaint Database publishes complaints that CFPB sent to companies for response. Start with one product and one state through the search API. These records are not a statistical sample of consumer experience and are not a finding that a company violated the law.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • An internet connection
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Open the Consumer Complaint Database page and read what is published and when.
  2. 2.Query the search API for one product in one state with a small result size.
  3. 3.Record the query filters and retrieval timestamp before comparing companies.
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3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas requests

import pandas as pd
import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/consumer-complaints/search/api/v1/",
    params={"size": 20, "product": "Mortgage", "state": "CA"},
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()
hits = [hit["_source"] for hit in response.json()["hits"]["hits"]]
complaints = pd.DataFrame(hits)
complaints["retrieved_at_utc"] = pd.Timestamp.now(tz="UTC")
print(complaints[["company", "product", "issue", "date_received"]].head(20))
4

Test a useful signal

Monitor mortgage complaints in one state

Identify which companies appear most often in recent California mortgage complaints.

  1. 01Confirm the API returned complaint records for the Mortgage product and CA state filter.
  2. 02Count complaints by company and issue, and note companies with large market share may appear more often.
  3. 03State that published complaints are not a representative sample or a determination of legal wrongdoing.

Dataset details

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a government source. Last verified 2026-08-14. Temporal coverage: 2011-present.

Theme

Markets & Economics

Domains

Consumer FinanceFinancial Regulation

Data types

Event DataTabular

Tasks

Complaint MonitoringTrend AnalysisAlerting

Geography

United States

Formats

JSONCSVZIP

Provider

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Data terms

U.S. Government public data / CFPB public-domain dedication