Free SEC EDGAR API options in 2026
Facts last verified 2026-08-19.
EDGAR filings are public domain, so you never have to pay for the data itself — only for someone else doing the parsing, normalization, storage, and delivery. That makes “free SEC API” two different questions: what is free forever, and how far a hosted provider's free tier actually goes before it stops. This page answers both, with sources.
Who is writing this: we build FilingPulse, so we have an obvious interest. To keep this useful anyway, every factual claim about another provider below was read from that provider's own public pages on the date shown, each section links its source, and we say plainly where a competitor is the better choice. If you find something out of date, email keys@filingpulse.io and we will fix it.
Free forever: the SEC's own APIs and open source
Two options cost nothing at any scale, because you run them yourself:
| Option | What's free | Insider (Form 4) data |
|---|---|---|
| SEC EDGAR (official APIs) | Free, no key — max 10 requests/second with a declared User-Agent | No — the official JSON APIs cover submissions history and XBRL financial facts; Form 4 content is raw XML you parse yourself |
| edgartools (open source) | Free — MIT-licensed Python library you run yourself | Yes — parses Form 3/4/5 into structured Python objects locally |
The trade is operational, not financial: you write and run the polling, parsing, storage, backfill, and any push delivery, inside the SEC's 10 requests/second fair-access budget with a declared User-Agent. For batch research — pull filings, analyze locally — this is genuinely hard to beat, and it is what we would pick for a one-off study.
Free tiers on hosted APIs — and where each one stops
| Provider | Free tier | Insider (Form 4) data |
|---|---|---|
| FilingPulse | 2,500 requests/month, 10/min, email only — no card | Yes — complete normalized Form 4 objects: owners, non-derivative and derivative transactions, holdings, footnotes, remarks |
| sec-api.io | First 100 API calls — one-time, not monthly | Yes — Form 3/4/5 Insider Trading API with transaction detail |
| Financial Modeling Prep | 250 calls/day, end-of-day data | Yes — insider-trade records as flattened per-transaction rows |
| Finnhub | 60 API calls/minute, personal use | Yes — flattened insider-transaction records (name, shares, price, code), capped at 100 transactions per call |
| Massive (formerly Polygon.io) | Market-data plans include a free tier; filings endpoints are part of the stocks plans | Yes — a Form 4 endpoint exists in their filings family |
The differences that matter, plainly:
- One-time vs monthly. sec-api.io's free allowance is 100 calls total, ever — enough to evaluate the response shape, not to run anything. FilingPulse's free tier is 2,500 requests every month; FMP's is 250 calls every day; Finnhub's is a per-minute rate limit with no published monthly cap.
- License scope. Finnhub's free tier is licensed for personal use, and FMP's listed plans are individual-use (commercial licensing is separate). FilingPulse's free tier carries no personal-use restriction — every tier is licensed the same.
- Push on a free tier. Of the hosted options here, only FilingPulse includes webhooks free (1 subscription, HMAC-signed), plus a hosted MCP server any AI agent can query without an account at all. The others are poll-only until you pay, or entirely.
- Depth of the insider objects. FMP and Finnhub return flattened per-transaction rows; FilingPulse returns the complete normalized filing — owners, derivative legs, holdings, footnotes — under a frozen public schema. Depth is identical on our free and paid tiers; paying buys volume, not fields.
What you can actually run on $0
- A one-off research dataset: the official EDGAR APIs + edgartools, locally. No quota anxiety, full history, your compute.
- A live insider-filing monitor: a FilingPulse free key — 2,500 requests/month is a poll every 20 minutes around the clock, or use the free webhook and spend almost none of the quota. The screener needs no key at all.
- Quotes and fundamentals with filings on the side: Finnhub's 60 calls/min free tier, if personal-use licensing fits your project.
- Evaluating sec-api.io before buying: its 100 free calls — that is what they are for.
Where free runs out
Honest limits, ours included: FilingPulse's free tier is 10 requests/minute — fine for a monitor, not for bulk backfilling your own database (paid tiers raise volume; the data and schema stay identical). We also cover three verticals, not all of EDGAR — no full-text search, no XBRL financials, no 13F. If you need those, the free path is the SEC's own XBRL APIs or edgartools, and the paid path is sec-api.io.
Each option, honestly
FilingPulse (that's us)
What it is: three EDGAR datasets — Form 4 insider trades,
8-K corporate events classified by item code, and the S-1/F-1 registration
lifecycle — normalized to one frozen JSON schema, with HMAC-signed webhooks on
new filings and a hosted MCP server for AI agents.
Values stay strings exactly as filed; every documented field is always present.
The full contract is public at GET /v1/schema.
Choose it when: you want complete normalized filing objects (footnotes, derivative legs, holdings — not flattened rows), push delivery the minute a filing lands, and a free tier you can actually build on: 2,500 requests/month with no card. Paid tiers ($19/$49/$99) buy volume, not access — the schema and data are identical on every tier.
Know going in: we cover three verticals, not all of EDGAR — no full-text search, no XBRL financials, no 13F (yet). Form 4 history is backfilling continuously and the live coverage window is published at /v1/health; S-1 tracking is live-forward since August 2026. We launched in July 2026 — young, and we'd rather say so than pretend otherwise. HMAC-signed webhooks on new filings carries a per-subscription secret and a fixed retry ladder.
sec-api.io
Choose it when: The broadest EDGAR coverage of any commercial provider: full-text search (Business tier and up), XBRL-to-JSON, 13F, Form ADV, Form D, and many more form types, with history back to the 1990s.
Know going in: The free tier is a one-time 100-call allowance, the entry plan carries a license restriction and excludes full-text search, and plans are priced by rate limit and data volume (GB) rather than a published monthly request quota.
Facts: https://sec-api.io/pricing, read 2026-08-19.
SEC EDGAR (official APIs)
Choose it when: The source of truth, free forever, and the right choice whenever raw documents or XBRL financial-statement facts are all you need. Every provider on this page, us included, is built on it.
Know going in: Normalization, ticker lookup on filings, 8-K item classification, historical assembly, and any push delivery are yours to build and operate.
Facts: https://www.sec.gov/search-filings/edgar-application-programming-interfaces, read 2026-08-19.
Financial Modeling Prep
Choose it when: A broad financial-data platform — fundamentals, statements, quotes, news — where SEC filings are one dataset among many; good when you want financials and filings from one vendor.
Know going in: Filings endpoints return metadata and links rather than complete normalized filing objects, and delivery is poll-only.
Facts: https://site.financialmodelingprep.com/pricing-plans, read 2026-08-19.
Finnhub
Choose it when: A generous free market-data tier at 60 calls/min that includes filings metadata — hard to beat for hobby projects that mostly need quotes and fundamentals.
Know going in: Insider data is flattened rows without footnotes, derivative detail, or holdings, and the jump from free to paid is $3,500/mo.
Facts: https://finnhub.io/pricing, read 2026-08-19.
edgartools (open source)
Choose it when: The best self-hosted option: actively maintained, parses insider filings, 13F, XBRL and more into Python objects, and costs nothing but your time.
Know going in: You operate everything — polling, storage, backfill, uptime — inside the SEC's 10 req/s budget, and there is no API for non-Python consumers without building one.
Facts: https://github.com/dgunning/edgartools, read 2026-08-19.
Massive (formerly Polygon.io)
Choose it when: A major market-data platform (formerly Polygon.io) that has recently added SEC filings endpoints — attractive if you already use it for market data.
Know going in: Filings recency is documented as daily, so it is not a fit for reacting to filings the minute EDGAR accepts them.
Facts: https://massive.com/docs/rest/stocks/filings/form-4, read 2026-08-19.
Sources
Competitor facts were read from these pages on the dates shown. Pricing and limits change; the linked page always wins over this one.
- sec-api.io — verified 2026-08-19
- SEC EDGAR (official APIs) — verified 2026-08-19
- Financial Modeling Prep — verified 2026-08-19
- Finnhub — verified 2026-08-19
- edgartools (open source) — verified 2026-08-19
- Massive (formerly Polygon.io) — verified 2026-08-19
More comparisons: Best SEC EDGAR API in 2026 · sec-api.io alternatives · FilingPulse vs sec-api.io