# SEC EDGAR Every US filing since 1994, free and keyless — the limit is ten requests a second. *https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/sec-edgar · Fundamental Data & Stock Research Platforms* ## Facts ### At a glance | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Vendor | U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission | | Category | Fundamental Data & Stock Research Platforms | | Job | filings | | Website | https://www.sec.gov/edgar | | Pricing model | free | | Free tier | true | | Open source | false | | Licence | none | | Self-hosted | false | | Tested hands-on | false | | Last updated | 2026-09-21 | ### Pricing | Tier | USD | Period | | --- | --- | --- | | Free | 0 USD | month | ### Coverage | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | Asset classes | stocks, etf, mutual_funds | | Markets | us | | Works outside the US | false | | Data latency | none | | Platforms | web | | AI features | none | ### Interfaces | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | API | true | | Webhooks | false | | Scripting | none | | Python | false | | Spreadsheet add-in | false | | MCP server | false | | Export | json, api | ### Capabilities Yes: none No: charting, screening, scanning, backtesting, automation, live_trading, paper_trading, portfolio_tracking, broker_import, tax_reporting, alerts, news, options_analysis *Verified: pricing 2026-09-21; capabilities 2026-09-21; coverage 2026-09-21.* ## What it is The filing system itself — the place every other product in this category reads from. Three surfaces matter to somebody building rather than browsing. **The JSON APIs on `data.sec.gov`.** A submissions endpoint per company returning its filing history, and three XBRL endpoints returning tagged financial facts by company, by concept or across every filer for one period. No key, no account, no registration. **Full-text search.** Every filing from 2001 onward, searchable by phrase, form type and date, with a public JSON backend behind the UI that the SEC does not document as a product. **Quarterly flat files.** The research sets are how you get insider and holdings data in bulk without writing a parser: Insider Transactions from the first quarter of 2006, flattening Forms 3, 4 and 5, and Form 13F from the third quarter of 2013. ## Pricing Free, and structurally so. There is no plan, no key, no commercial tier and no redistribution licence to negotiate, because these are public records a filing requirement puts there. That is a different kind of free from a vendor's free tier: nobody can withdraw it to sell you an upgrade, and no term of service narrows what you may do with what you downloaded. What replaces the price is a rate limit. Ten requests a second is the published ceiling, a declared user agent naming you and a contact address is required on every request, and the SEC asks for efficient scripting and reserves the right to throttle. Ignore that and the cost is access, which is the only bill this product can send. ## Data & coverage Everything filed on EDGAR: Forms 3, 4 and 5 for insider transactions, 13F-HR for institutional holdings, Schedules 13D and 13G for large stakes, Form D for private offerings, N-PORT for fund constituents, and the whole 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K series underneath. US registrants and foreign private issuers filing into the US market. Latency is not the limit people expect. The SEC gives a typical processing delay of under a second for the submissions API and under a minute for the XBRL APIs, so a Form 4 is machine-readable essentially when it is accepted. Everything downstream — every tracker in this category — is slower than this by construction. The gap worth committing to memory is which endpoint holds what. The XBRL APIs are financial statement facts only. Insider and 13F data live in the raw filings, so you either parse the filing XML, use full-text search to find it, or take the quarterly flat file and accept that it lands a quarter late. ## Integrations Plain REST over HTTPS returning JSON, an RSS feed of recent filings, and nightly bulk archives of the submissions and company-facts datasets. No websocket, no webhooks, no spreadsheet add-in, and no official MCP server — [SEC EDGAR MCP](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/sec-edgar-mcp) is a third-party project over these same endpoints, as are several others. Identifiers are the practical friction. EDGAR is organised by CIK, not by ticker, and the mapping file between them is a separate download that a reader is expected to join for themselves. ## Limitations - **No congressional data.** STOCK Act reports go to the House Clerk and the Senate, not the SEC. Lobbying, short interest and government contracts are three more bodies again. - **The XBRL APIs do not carry Form 4 or 13F.** The single most common wrong assumption about this product. - **Nothing is normalised across filers.** A 13F is what the manager typed. Names, CUSIPs and share classes disagree between filings, and reconciling them is the work every paid vendor in this category is actually charging for. - **Full-text search starts in 2001** and the flat files start later again — 2006 for insider forms, 2013 for 13F. Older filings exist in the archives as documents, not as data. - **No service commitment.** No SLA, no support channel, no notice before a page moves. The APIs are published for public use, not sold. - **Ten requests a second is a hard planning constraint.** Anything that wants the whole corpus needs the bulk files rather than a loop over endpoints. ## Alternatives [sec-api.io](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/sec-api-io) is the commercial version of the same data — filing search, XBRL-to-JSON, section extraction and a real-time stream from $55 a month — and the reason to pay is the parsing, not the access. [OpenInsider](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/openinsider) and [Insider Screener](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/insider-screener) turn Form 4 into something filterable; [13F.info](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/13f-info) and [WhaleWisdom](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/whalewisdom) do the same for 13F. For financial statements as a maintained API rather than raw XBRL, [Financial Modeling Prep](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/financial-modeling-prep) and [Intrinio](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/intrinio) sit in [fundamental data and research platforms](https://stockmarketstack.com/categories/fundamentals-research). ## FAQ ### Do I need an API key for the EDGAR APIs? No. The SEC states plainly that the APIs require no authentication and no keys. What they do require is a declared user agent naming you and a contact address, and the published fair-access ceiling is ten requests a second. The SEC also reserves the right to limit request rates, so a scraper that ignores the guidance is the one thing that can lose you access. ### Can I get Form 4 or 13F data from the XBRL APIs? No, and this is the most expensive misunderstanding about EDGAR. The structured XBRL endpoints — companyconcept, companyfacts and frames — carry only US-GAAP and IFRS financial facts from 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, 20-F, 40-F and 6-K filings. Insider and institutional-holdings data come from the submissions API, the filing archives, full-text search, or the quarterly flat files. ### How far back does EDGAR go? It depends which surface. Filing indexes start in the third quarter of 1994, full-text search covers 2001 onward, the Insider Transactions flat files begin with the first quarter of 2006, and the Form 13F flat files begin with the third quarter of 2013 because that is when structured XML became mandatory. ### Does EDGAR hold congressional stock trades? No. STOCK Act periodic transaction reports are filed with the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate, not with the SEC, and they are not on EDGAR at any address. Lobbying disclosures, short interest and federal contract awards are each held by a different body again. ### Is there an official SEC MCP server? No. Several third-party open-source servers wrap these APIs, including the one catalogued here as SEC EDGAR MCP, but none of them is the SEC's and none carries any commitment from it. ## Also worth comparing - [sec-api.io](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/sec-api-io.md) — Every EDGAR filing since 1993 as JSON, plus a websocket push of new ones. - [BamSEC](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/bamsec.md) — SEC filings and earnings transcripts, relabelled, searchable and downloadable to Excel. - [GuruFocus](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/gurufocus.md) — Thirty years of financials, a deep screener and 13F guru portfolios, sold by region. - [Quartr](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/quartr.md) — Live earnings calls, transcripts, filings and decks — free on mobile, paid on the web. - [Quartr API](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/quartr-api.md) — Earnings-call audio, live transcripts, filings and decks over REST, webhooks or Snowflake. - [Fiscal.ai](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/fiscal-ai.md) — Filings, transcripts and 20-year financials, in a terminal or through an MCP server.