SEC EDGAR JSON API — a cheatsheet

The SEC publishes every filing — 10-Ks, 8-Ks, insider trades (Form 4), 13F holdings, S-1s — through a free, keyless JSON API. No sign-up, no API key, no paid tier. The only requirement is a descriptive User-Agent header; the only limit is a flat rate cap.

Endpoints

Endpoint	Purpose	Auth	Notes
GET https://www.sec.gov/files/company_tickers.json	Ticker → CIK lookup for every public company	None (User-Agent required)	Keyed by row index, not ticker; fields: cik_str, ticker, title
GET https://data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK##########.json	Full filing history + company metadata	None (User-Agent required)	CIK zero-padded to 10 digits; returns filings.recent (form, filingDate, reportDate, accessionNumber)
GET https://efts.sec.gov/LATEST/search-index?q=&forms=&startdt=&enddt=	Full-text search across every filing	None (User-Agent required)	Elasticsearch-style response under hits.hits; params: q, forms, startdt/enddt

Examples

# Ticker -> CIK (Apple = 320193)
curl -s -H "User-Agent: Your Name your@email.com" \
  https://www.sec.gov/files/company_tickers.json | head -c 200

# Full filing history for a CIK
curl -s -H "User-Agent: Your Name your@email.com" \
  https://data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK0000320193.json | head -c 400

# Full-text search, scoped to 10-Ks in a date range
curl -s -H "User-Agent: Your Name your@email.com" \
  "https://efts.sec.gov/LATEST/search-index?q=%22material+weakness%22&forms=10-K&startdt=2026-01-01&enddt=2026-06-30"

A filings.recent entry (submissions endpoint) looks like:

{
  "form": "10-K",
  "filingDate": "2025-11-01",
  "reportDate": "2025-09-27",
  "accessionNumber": "0000320193-25-000123"
}

Turn an accessionNumber into a document URL by stripping the dashes and joining it under https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/<CIK>/<accession-no-dashes>/.

Gotchas

• Send a real User-Agent. An actual name + contact email, not a browser string — that's SEC's entire access control, and it's enforced.
• 10 requests/second, combined across data.sec.gov and efts.sec.gov. Fine for normal use; don't hammer it in a tight loop.
• CIKs must be zero-padded to 10 digits in the submissions URL (320193 → 0000320193) — the ticker file gives you the unpadded number.
• company_tickers.json is keyed by row index ("0", "1", …), not by ticker — you have to scan values, not index directly by symbol.

More

Same free official API underneath, wrapped so you skip the glue code (CIK padding, form-type filtering, pagination, rate-limit backoff, accession → URL): SEC EDGAR Filings Scraper & Full-Text Search.

Full write-up with more context: "SEC Filings Have a Free JSON API" on dev.to/ronin13 (link goes live once that article is published).