A free SEC EDGAR API that returns clean JSON
SEC EDGAR is the system of record for every US public company's filings, but its company-facts API ships raw XBRL: thousands of company-specific GAAP tags, inconsistent units, and the same line item named five different ways across filers. SECfinAPI does the normalization for you and serves standardized financial statements as plain JSON over a simple REST API — free to start, no credit card.
What the SEC EDGAR API gives you vs. what we add
EDGAR’s companyfacts endpoint is comprehensive but unopinionated: you get every tag a company ever reported, across every amendment, with no mapping to a common schema. To build anything on top you first have to deduplicate filings, resolve restatements, pair periods, and reconcile dozens of synonymous concepts. SECfinAPI ships that pipeline as a service.
Every filer’s revenue tag — Apple’s RevenueFromContractWithCustomerExcludingAssessedTax, Tesla’s Revenues, and the rest — maps to a single Revenue field. Per-share figures are split-adjusted to the current basis so multi-year EPS is comparable. Foreign filers are kept in a single reporting currency.
Example: Apple income statement as JSON
One authenticated GET request returns a standardized, period-indexed income statement:
curl https://sec-financial-api-production.up.railway.app/v1/company/AAPL/income-statement \
-H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY"Swap the endpoint for /balance-sheet, /cash-flow, /financials (all three) or /metrics (40+ ratios). Add ?format=csv to any statement for a spreadsheet download.
Coverage and freshness
19,000+ operating companies, with funds and trusts separated out. A daily job scans EDGAR’s index files and re-ingests every filer that submitted in the last 48 hours, and a full-universe refresh runs weekly — all within the SEC’s documented 10 requests/second limit. History goes back up to 10 years depending on plan.
FAQ
Is the SEC EDGAR API free?
EDGAR itself is free and public. SECfinAPI’s free tier gives you standardized JSON for the S&P 500 with 100 requests/day and 5 years of history, no credit card. Paid tiers from $9/mo add all 19,000+ filers and full history.
Do I still need to parse XBRL?
No. SECfinAPI parses the XBRL, maps every filer’s GAAP concepts to one schema, computes derived rows, and returns JSON. You never touch raw company-facts.
Which forms are covered?
10-K, 10-Q, 20-F and 40-F. Annual and quarterly periods, each tagged with the original filing date for point-in-time use.
Can I use it for backtesting?
Yes. Every period carries its original filing_date (when the number first became public), so you can avoid lookahead bias. Absolute figures are as-reported; per-share figures are split-adjusted for comparability.
Related
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Free API key, no credit card. Standardized JSON for 19,000+ US public companies.
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