Evaluate SEC Filing Search API

Use this guide when your product needs to find the filing behind a company question. SEC API supplies filtered filing records, filing search, and section retrieval. Your product still decides what the disclosure means and how to present it.

Start with one research job

Choose one issuer, form family, date range, and question that a reviewer can check. For example: find AAPL’s annual filings, locate a risk-factor phrase, then open the returned section. This is a better evaluation than asking whether a broad filing corpus “works.”

Run the filing-to-section path

curl --fail-with-body -H "x-api-key: $SECAPI_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.secapi.ai/v1/filings?ticker=AAPL&forms=10-K,10-Q&date_from=2024-01-01&date_to=2025-12-31&limit=10&sort=filing_date_desc"

curl --fail-with-body -H "x-api-key: $SECAPI_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.secapi.ai/v1/search/fulltext?q=material%20weakness&ticker=AAPL&form=10-K&limit=10"

curl --fail-with-body -H "x-api-key: $SECAPI_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.secapi.ai/v1/filings/ACCESSION/sections/SECTION_KEY?ticker=AAPL&form=10-K&mode=full"

Use GET /v1/filings to establish the filing set. Use GET /v1/search/fulltext for words you expect in the filing, or GET /v1/search/semantic to find related language. Replace ACCESSION and SECTION_KEY only with values returned by the earlier calls.

Keep the evidence record

For each selected filing, retain the issuer identity, form, filing date, accession number, filing URL, filters, and requestId. For a passage, retain the section key, returned text, and available provenance or freshness fields. A manifest record helps identify a filing; it is not, by itself, support for a passage-level claim.

When this is the right fit

Use SEC API when you need a documented route from an issuer filter to a filing and a reviewable section. Use direct EDGAR instead when your team intends to own collection, parsing, and document normalization. Test the exact forms, date ranges, exhibits, and presentation needs in your product; a result for one issuer does not establish availability for every filing type.

Evaluate the edge cases

Keep an empty response separate from a conclusion that no disclosure exists.
Treat authorization, validation, quota, and unavailable-search responses as distinct states.
Do not reuse a cursor after changing its filters.
Open the SEC filing URL when tables, layout, definitions, or surrounding context affect the claim.

Next step

Move to a watchlist test only after one reviewer can reproduce a filing and section from the stored evidence record. Then estimate the request cadence for the actual issuer set.

Filing API reference

Review filters and response fields.

Search API reference

Compare conceptual and literal retrieval.

Pricing and limits

Estimate the intended workload.

Create an API key

Start an issuer-specific proof.

Open the sandbox

Inspect a filing response.

Public pricing

Review expansion options.

Bound the universe

Choose one issuer, form family, and date range.

Select evidence

Carry the returned accession into section retrieval.

Test expansion

Measure the intended watchlist pattern before rollout.

​Start with one research job

​Run the filing-to-section path

​Keep the evidence record

​When this is the right fit

​Evaluate the edge cases

​Next step