Historical Filings

Historical SEC Filings

Access historical SEC filings through the FinFeedAPI SEC Filings API.

Search filings across the EDGAR archive using company ticker, CIK, SEC form type, filing date, report date, or disclosed filing items. Retrieve structured filing metadata for historical submissions, identify the filings relevant to your application, and use the returned accession numbers to extract filing content, download original EDGAR documents, or convert XBRL filings into structured JSON.

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What Are Historical SEC Filings?

Historical SEC filings are regulatory documents previously submitted by public companies to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and published through the EDGAR system.

A permanent regulatory record

These filings document financial performance, material corporate events, registration statements, ownership disclosures, and other regulatory reporting obligations over time. They form a permanent historical record used by investors, researchers, financial institutions, compliance teams, and analytical systems.

Rather than manually navigating the EDGAR archive, applications can retrieve historical filing metadata through a structured API. Developers can locate filings by company identifier, filing type, reporting period, or filing date before retrieving the underlying documents or processing their contents.

What each record includes

Historical filing records returned by the API include the accession number together with filing metadata such as company identifiers, filing dates, reporting periods, filing characteristics, document information, and XBRL availability.

This information provides the foundation for downstream workflows including filing extraction, original document retrieval, full-text search, and XBRL conversion.

Why Use Historical SEC Filings?

Historical filings provide the regulatory history of publicly traded companies, making them valuable for long-term analysis, research, compliance, and financial data processing.

Discover filings before downloading them

Many applications begin with historical filings before performing document extraction or financial analysis. Instead of working directly with large EDGAR archives, developers can discover relevant filings using structured metadata and retrieve only the documents required for their workflow.

Using historical SEC filings helps applications:

  • retrieve historical filings by ticker or CIK
  • search regulatory filings across multiple reporting periods
  • analyze long-term filing history
  • build SEC filing archives and research databases
  • synchronize historical regulatory data
  • identify filings containing specific disclosed items
  • retrieve accession numbers for document processing
  • prepare filings for XBRL conversion or content extraction

Because historical filing discovery is separated from document retrieval, applications can process only the filings that match their search criteria while avoiding unnecessary downloads.

Historical SEC Filing Types

The historical filings endpoint provides access to SEC filings across the EDGAR archive. Applications can search for a single filing type or multiple forms simultaneously by providing comma-separated form codes.

Supported filing types include

  • 10-K annual reports
  • 10-Q quarterly reports
  • 8-K current reports
  • S-1 registration statements
  • S-3 registration statements
  • 20-F annual reports for foreign private issuers
  • 40-F annual reports for certain Canadian issuers
  • and hundreds of additional SEC filing types available through EDGAR

Filter the archive by form

Filtering by form type allows developers to isolate specific categories of regulatory filings while working with the broader historical SEC archive.

http
GET /v1/filings?form_type=10-K,10-Q,8-K

Searching by form type makes it possible to separate annual reports, quarterly reports, current reports, registration statements, and other filing categories.

Search Historical SEC Filings

Historical SEC filings can be queried using multiple search criteria, allowing applications to efficiently locate filings without browsing the EDGAR archive manually.

Search by company

Locate historical filings using either the company ticker symbol or its SEC Central Index Key (CIK).

http
GET /v1/filings?ticker=AAPL
http
GET /v1/filings?cik=320193

Ticker-based searches are convenient for investor-facing applications, while CIK provides a stable company identifier commonly used by internal databases and regulatory systems.

Search by filing type

Retrieve one or more SEC filing types from the historical archive.

http
GET /v1/filings?form_type=10-K
http
GET /v1/filings?form_type=10-K,10-Q,8-K

Searching by form type makes it possible to separate annual reports, quarterly reports, current reports, registration statements, and other filing categories.

Search by filing date

Retrieve filings submitted during a specific filing period.

http
GET /v1/filings?filling_date_start=2025-01-01&filling_date_end=2025-03-31

Filing date filters are commonly used for historical synchronization, incremental imports, and regulatory monitoring. Date filters use filling_date_start and filling_date_end.

Search by reporting period

Retrieve filings covering a particular reporting period.

http
GET /v1/filings?report_date_start=2024-01-01&report_date_end=2024-12-31

Unlike filing dates, report dates identify the financial period represented by the filing.

Search by disclosed filing items

Identify filings referencing specific disclosure items.

http
GET /v1/filings?form_type=8-K&items_contain=1.01

This allows applications to narrow historical filing searches before retrieving or extracting filing content.

Sort and Paginate Historical Filing Results

Historical SEC filing searches can return anything from a handful of records to large filing archives covering many years. The API supports sorting and pagination to help applications process historical filings efficiently and retrieve results in a predictable order.

Supported sort fields

Applications can retrieve the newest filings first, process filings chronologically, or organize historical records by reporting period depending on the ingestion strategy.

  • AccessionNumber
  • FilingDate
  • ReportDate
  • AcceptanceDateTime
  • Size
http
GET /v1/filings?ticker=AAPL&sort_by=FilingDate&sort_order=desc

Page through large archives

For larger historical datasets, page-based pagination is available through page_size and page_number.

http
GET /v1/filings?form_type=10-K&page_size=100&page_number=2

This makes it practical to synchronize historical filing archives, perform incremental imports, or build searchable SEC filing databases without requesting every record in a single response.

Build Historical Filing Research Workflows

Historical SEC filings often serve as the starting point for broader regulatory data workflows. Instead of downloading large numbers of EDGAR documents, applications can first locate relevant filings using structured metadata and then continue processing only the filings that match their search criteria.

A typical workflow

  1. 1Search historical SEC filings
  2. 2Locate the relevant filing
  3. 3Retrieve the accession number
  4. 4Extract filing content, download original documents, or convert XBRL into JSON

Using filing discovery as the first stage of the pipeline reduces unnecessary downloads while keeping document retrieval, extraction, and financial data processing independent from the initial search.

From search to analysis

  1. Search historical filings
  2. Accession number
  3. Extract content
  4. Download documents
  5. Convert XBRL

Example Historical SEC Filing Request

Retrieve the latest historical annual, quarterly, and current reports for a company. The API requires an API key in the Authorization header.

Request

bash
curl -X GET \
  "https://api.sec.finfeedapi.com/v1/filings?ticker=AAPL&form_type=10-K,10-Q,8-K&page_size=10&page_number=1&sort_by=FilingDate&sort_order=desc" \
  -H "Authorization: YOUR_API_KEY"

Example response

json
{
  "cik": 1234567890,
  "accession_number": "0001140361-21-012345",
  "filing_date": "2021-03-15",
  "report_date": "2020-12-31",
  "acceptance_date_time": "2021-03-15T16:30:00.0000000Z",
  "form": "10-K",
  "items": "1,1A,2",
  "size": 15000000,
  "is_xbrl": true,
  "is_inline_xbrl": true,
  "primary_document": "form10k.htm",
  "primary_doc_description": "Form 10-K Annual Report",
  "source_file": "edgar/data/1234567890/0001140361-21-012345.txt"
}

REST, MCP, and JSON-RPC Access

Historical SEC filings are available through multiple FinFeedAPI interfaces, allowing the same filing discovery workflow to be integrated into traditional applications, AI agents, and RPC-based systems. All three interfaces expose the same historical filing discovery capabilities while supporting different integration patterns.

REST API

Use the REST endpoint for direct request-response access from applications, backend services, and historical data pipelines.

http
GET /v1/filings

MCP

The hosted SEC MCP server exposes historical filing discovery through the filings_query tool. The MCP interface allows AI agents and compatible clients to search historical filings using self-describing tools instead of manually constructing HTTP requests.

json
{
  "tool": "filings_query",
  "arguments": {
    "ticker": "AAPL",
    "form_type": "10-K,10-Q,8-K",
    "page_size": 10,
    "sort_by": "FilingDate",
    "sort_order": "desc"
  }
}

JSON-RPC

The JSON-RPC interface provides a proxy to the REST endpoint at https://api.sec.finfeedapi.com/jsonrpc. Set the method to v1/filings and supply search parameters inside params.

json
{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "method": "v1/filings",
  "params": {
    "ticker": "AAPL",
    "form_type": "10-K,10-Q",
    "page_number": 1
  },
  "id": "historical-filings-001"
}

Why Developers Use Historical SEC Filings

Historical SEC filings provide the foundation for long-term regulatory data analysis. Instead of processing complete EDGAR archives, applications can discover relevant filings using structured metadata, retrieve accession numbers, and continue into document extraction, original file downloads, or XBRL conversion only when necessary.

Historical filing workflows help developers

  • build searchable regulatory databases
  • synchronize historical filing archives
  • reduce unnecessary EDGAR downloads
  • retrieve filings by company, form type, or reporting period
  • connect filing discovery with document extraction
  • prepare filings for AI, analytics, and financial data pipelines

For many applications, historical filing discovery becomes the entry point for the entire SEC document processing workflow.

Historical Filings

Start Searching Historical SEC Filings

Search historical SEC filings by company, SEC form type, filing date, report date, or disclosed filing items.

Retrieve structured filing metadata, identify the filings relevant to your application, and continue into document extraction, original EDGAR downloads, or XBRL conversion through the FinFeedAPI SEC Filings API.

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