EDGAR Suite
Tool for the retrieval of corporate and financial data from SEC's EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval) database.
URL
https://pypi.org/project/edgar-tool/
EDGAR Database Overview
SEC's EDGAR database is a public repository of filings submitted by companies, mutual funds, and other entities required to report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. EDGAR provides free access to hundreds of financial document filling types, including quarterly and annual reports, insider trading disclosures, and registration statements.
EDGAR aims to ensure equal access to corporate disclosures within the U.S. capital market. The database is freely accessible online for financial analysis and open-source intelligence in the finance sector. You can access the EDGAR UI at www.sec.gov/edgar/search/.
Bellingcat's edgar-tool
Overview
edgar-tool
Overviewedgar-tool
provides programmatic access to SEC's EDGAR database from the command line. The CLI is feature-complete, meaning all queries you can perform on www.sec.gov/edgar/search/ are achievable with the CLI.
Here are a few of the reasons you might want to use edgar-tool
:
Batch Downloading of Search Results: The EDGAR UI doesn't allow you to download all documents from a search text search at once.
edgar-tool
automates this process so you can download hundreds (or even thousands) of EDGAR documents with one command.Consistent Financial Profiling:
edgar-tool
eases financial analysis by standardizing across different companies' reports. Companies often use custom tags or apply standard tags inconsistently which leads to variations that complicate direct comparisons.edgar-tool
uses a custom table of XBRL tags to make cross-company financial comparison easier.Customized RSS Feeds: EDGAR does not allow users to subscribe to a single RSS feed for multiple companies.
edgar-tool
'srss
command allows you to filter EDGAR's broadest RSS feed by specific companies of interest and produce a CSV file similar to the one produced byedgar-tools
text search functionality.
Cost
Level of difficulty
Requirements
edgar-tool
requires the Python interpreter to download and use. It supports any currently maintained version of Python (Python >=3.9 as of this writing). Check the Programming Language section of edgar-tool
's release page on PyPI for officially supported versions. When in doubt, use the latest stable Python version. You can download the latest version of the Python interpreter from www.python.org/downloads/.
Limitations
The tool is limited by the limitations of the SEC's EDGAR database itself, such as:
No historical data before 2001
Documents are raw corporate fillings - there are no summaries or analysis
Limited API options compared to other financial data sources
No private company data - only data for public companies and some regulated entities is available
Ethical Considerations
Users Bellingcat's edgar-tool
must adhere to the following:
Respect the SEC's Internet Security Policy and Vulnerability Disclosure Policy
Respect the SEC EDGAR API's fair access policy & current 10 requests/second max request limit
Guide
The most up-to-date guides on downloading & using edgar-tool are always available on the bellingcat/EDGAR GitHub site. The December 18th 2023 Bellingcat article, New Tools Dig Deeper Into Hard-to-Aggregate US Corporate Data by edgar-tool creator George Dyer, provides examples of using edgar-tool's text search and RSS feed functionality.
Tool provider
George Dyer (former Bellingcat Tech Fellow)
Advertising Trackers
Bellingcat Volunteer Team/Unassigned
Last updated