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SEC EDGAR

In-depth entry

by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission · Data service · also known as EDGAR, Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval, EDGAR Full-Text Search, data.sec.gov APIs

The SEC's free public filing system: company and full-text search, bulk index and feed archives, and data.sec.gov JSON APIs for submissions and XBRL financial facts, subject to a fair-access rate policy

ProprietaryFreeCloud
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Link verified Nov 2, 2026

Overview

EDGAR is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's system through which public companies, funds and insiders file disclosures, and it is the primary free source of corporate filings for research. On sec.gov users search filings by company, ticker or CIK, browse each filer's history and open any document since the 1990s; EDGAR Full-Text Search (backed by the efts.sec.gov endpoint) indexes the text of filings since 2001 with filters for form type, date range, location and incorporation, and results export to CSV. RSS feeds, daily and quarterly index files and daily archive bundles under /edgar/Feed support bulk collection.

The data.sec.gov APIs return JSON without authentication: the submissions API gives each filer's metadata and complete filing history; the XBRL company-concept, company-facts and frames APIs aggregate the financial-statement facts companies tag in 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, 20-F, 40-F and 6-K filings, updated in near real time as filings are disseminated, with nightly bulk ZIP files for companyfacts and submissions. CORS is not supported.

Access is governed by the SEC's fair-access policy: automated tools must stay within ten requests per second, declare a User-Agent that names the organization and a contact e-mail (requests without one receive an "Undeclared Automated Tool" error), accept gzip encoding and expect IP blocking when limits are exceeded. The SEC publishes filings as submitted, so documents vary in structure and XBRL tagging quality, older filings are plain text or HTML without structured data, and research workflows typically layer a parser such as edgartools or a commercial dataset (Compustat, Audit Analytics via WRDS) on top of the raw archive.

Editorial note on uncertainty. sec.gov returns 403 to requests without a descriptive User-Agent, so automated link checks must declare one. source_model 'proprietary' is used in the sense of a government-operated service; filings themselves are public records.

Capabilities

  • Company, CIK and ticker search with full filing histories
  • Full-text search of filings since 2001 with form and date filters
  • Submissions API with filer metadata and filing index (JSON)
  • XBRL company-concept, company-facts and frames APIs
  • Nightly bulk ZIPs of submissions and company facts
  • Daily and quarterly index files and feed archives
  • RSS feeds for latest filings and company results
  • Near-real-time updates as filings are disseminated

Typical workflows

  1. Building a point-in-time fundamentals panel from company-facts JSON
  2. Full-text search for a disclosure phrase across all 10-Ks
  3. Monitoring 8-K filings for an event study
  4. Downloading Form 4 insider transactions for a sample of firms

Strengths

  • Free, authoritative primary source
  • Structured XBRL facts via JSON without API keys
  • Bulk archives for large-scale collection
  • Documented access policy

Limitations

  • Strict rate limit and User-Agent requirement
  • No CORS; browser apps need a proxy
  • Filing formats and XBRL quality vary by filer and era
  • sec.gov blocks clients without a declared User-Agent

Prerequisites

  • HTTP client sending a User-Agent with organization and e-mail
  • Rate limiting to the published maximum

Who it is for

  • Accounting and finance researchers
  • Compliance and investor-relations teams
  • Developers of filing-parsing tools

Alternatives & comparison

edgartools is a Python library that wraps these endpoints and parses filings into DataFrames; WRDS hosts commercial structured versions (Compustat, Audit Analytics) built from EDGAR; Massive exposes EDGAR-derived filing sections through its market-data API. EDGAR itself is the free primary source all of these depend on.

  • edgartools

    MIT-licensed Python library for SEC EDGAR: company and filing objects, XBRL financial statements, Form 3/4/5, 13F and proxy parsing into pandas, with the SEC identity requirement built in

    Open sourceFree
  • Massive (formerly Polygon.io)

    Market data platform (renamed from Polygon.io in October 2025) with REST and WebSocket APIs, flat files and SQL access for US stocks, options, indices, forex, crypto and futures

    ProprietaryPaid
  • OpenFIGI

    Free API and web tool from Bloomberg for mapping tickers, ISINs, CUSIPs and other identifiers to public-domain FIGI instrument identifiers, with search and filter endpoints

    ProprietaryFree
  • Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS)

    Institution-subscribed research data platform from Wharton hosting CRSP, Compustat, TAQ, OptionMetrics and dozens of other vendors' databases with web queries, SQL, SAS, Python and R access

    ProprietaryEnterprise
Compare SEC EDGAR with its alternatives →

Sources & verification

Primary sources consulted for this record. Claims are tied to the fields each source supports; the automated link checker re-verifies every URL on a schedule.

  • Official documentation
    SEC.gov | Developer Resources

    https://www.sec.gov/about/developer-resources

    Supports: capabilities, limitations, description

    Lists data.sec.gov APIs, RSS, bulk indexes and the ten-requests-per-second limit

    checked Nov 1, 2026
  • Official documentation
    SEC.gov | EDGAR Full Text Search

    https://www.sec.gov/edgar/search

    Supports: capabilities

    checked Nov 1, 2026
  • Official documentation
    EDGAR Application Programming Interfaces

    https://www.sec.gov/search-filings/edgar-application-programming-interfaces

    Supports: capabilities, data_formats

    Submissions, companyconcept, companyfacts, frames; nightly bulk ZIPs; no CORS

    checked Nov 1, 2026
  • Official site
    SEC.gov | Search Filings

    https://www.sec.gov/search-filings

    Supports: name, summary, homepage_url

    checked Nov 1, 2026
  • Other
    EDGAR full-text search API endpoint (efts.sec.gov)

    https://efts.sec.gov/LATEST/search-index?q=climate

    Supports: capabilities

    checked Nov 1, 2026
  • Policy page
    SEC.gov | Webmaster FAQ (fair access)

    https://www.sec.gov/about/webmaster-frequently-asked-questions

    Supports: limitations, prerequisites

    Declare User-Agent with company name and contact; maximum access rate

    checked Nov 1, 2026
Confidence
High
Reviewed
Nov 1, 2026
Links
Verified · Nov 2, 2026

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