How do you search SEC EDGAR for a company's filings?

EDGAR, the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval system, holds the official filings of every U.S. public company and many other registrants. Everything on it is free. The hard part is knowing which of its several search tools to use for a given question. This guide walks through each one.

Step 1: Find the company

Go to the EDGAR search page at sec.gov/edgar/search. The single search box accepts:

• a company name (partial names work, and suggestions appear as you type);
• a ticker symbol; or
• a CIK, the Central Index Key that EDGAR assigns to every filer.

Choosing a suggestion opens the company’s filing page. That page lists recent filings newest first, with the form type, a short description, the filing date and links to the documents. It also shows the company’s state of incorporation, fiscal year end, SIC industry code and business address. If the name you searched for does not appear, try the legal name: EDGAR uses the registrant’s name, which may differ from the brand.

Each company page in our companies index shows the company’s CIK, the key that EDGAR uses for every lookup.

Step 2: Filter by form type and date

On a company page you can narrow the list. Useful filters:

• 10-K and 10-Q for annual and quarterly reports;
• 8-K for current reports of specific events;
• DEF 14A for the annual proxy statement;
• 4 for insider transactions by directors and officers;
• SC 13D and SC 13G (shown as SCHEDULE 13D/13G for newer filings) for large shareholders.

You can also filter by date range. To see everything a company filed in a particular week, set the dates and leave the form type blank.

Step 3: Open the right document

Each filing has an index page listing every document in it: the main form, exhibits and, for financial reports, XBRL data files. The main document is usually first. For an 8-K, the press release is typically Exhibit 99.1. For a 10-K, look for exhibits such as 21 (subsidiaries) and the certifications labeled 31 and 32.

Many recent filings open in the Inline XBRL viewer, which lets you click a reported number to see its tagged concept and period. You can switch to the plain HTML version from the viewer menu.

Step 4: Use full-text search for words inside filings

When the question is “which filings mention X?”, use EDGAR full-text search, at the same sec.gov/edgar/search address. It searches the text of filings and exhibits from 2001 onward. You can:

• search an exact phrase by putting it in quotation marks;
• filter by form category, filer name or CIK, and filing date range;
• filter by the location of the company’s principal office or state of incorporation.

Full-text search is how researchers find, for example, every 8-K that mentions a particular supplier or every risk-factor section that mentions a specific regulation. Results link straight to the matching document.

Step 5: For data, use the APIs

The SEC publishes free JSON interfaces on data.sec.gov, with no API key:

• Submissions (/submissions/CIK##########.json): a company’s identifying information and its recent filing history. The Filings Docket is built from this endpoint.
• Company facts and company concept: XBRL financial data reported across all of a company’s filings.
• Frames: one reported concept for all companies for a given period.

The SEC also publishes a mapping file of tickers to CIKs. The SEC’s fair-access policy asks automated users to stay at or below 10 requests per second and to declare a User-Agent that identifies the requester with contact information. Requests that ignore the policy can be blocked.

Common pitfalls

• Filing date versus period. A 10-Q filed in November covers a quarter that ended earlier. Check “period of report”.
• Amendments. Forms ending in “/A” amend an earlier filing; read both.
• Ticker changes. Tickers can change or be reused; the CIK stays with the registrant.
• Filer agents. Some filings are submitted by agents; the accession number then begins with the agent’s CIK. See our guide to CIKs and accession numbers.

What EDGAR is not

EDGAR shows what companies filed, as filed. The SEC does not vouch for the accuracy of filings by publishing them. For analysis, read the 10-K itself, and remember that our plain-English summaries are a reading aid, not a substitute for the documents.