Skip to main content
Choose a webhook when SEC API should notify a public receiver. Choose stream polling when your worker needs explicit checkpoints and controlled replay. Both are delivery mechanisms; neither replaces retrieving and evaluating the cited filing.

​
Configure delivery in the dashboard

Open the signed-in SEC API dashboard to create endpoint destinations, change subscriptions, rotate secrets, send tests, replay deliveries, or change stream subscriptions. These actions require a human-authenticated organization session. Do not give an API key or an autonomous agent authority to make them. For a monitor job, subscribe the endpoint to monitor.match, save the signing secret once, and configure the saved monitor. The event tells your service which monitor matched and which filings require review.

​
Process a webhook safely

  1. Read the exact raw body and verify x-secapi-signature before parsing JSON.
  2. Reject old timestamps and invalid signatures.
  3. Store the delivery/event identifier in a durable idempotency table.
  4. Queue the work, return a fast 2xx, then retrieve the filing evidence needed downstream.
Keep the event type, event id, request id, monitor id, accession number, and filing URL with the queued work. An event payload can be incomplete or retried; it is not a substitute for the filing source.

​
Use cursor polling for checkpoints

Read events with an API key after the stream subscription exists:
Process each event idempotently. Commit your cursor only after the database transaction or queue write succeeds, then pass the returned cursor on the next poll. Cursor order is recorded event order, not the SEC filing timestamp.

​
Failure boundaries

Retry a transient receiver failure through the delivery mechanism, not by treating your handler as stateless. Do not advance a stream cursor after a partial batch. For an unknown event type, verify the signature, record it, return success if appropriate for your receiver, and add support deliberately rather than failing every future delivery. See Webhook delivery audit, Stream polling, and Build a filing monitor.