search and download sec filings from edgar (full-text search, user-agent and rate-limit rules)
domain: sec.gov · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Set a descriptive User-Agent header on every request in the format 'CompanyName ContactEmail' as required by SEC EDGAR fair access policy; requests without this header are blocked.
Search filings via GET https://efts.sec.gov/LATEST/search-index?q=<query>&dateRange=custom&startdt=YYYY-MM-DD&enddt=YYYY-MM-DD&forms=10-K to the EDGAR full-text search endpoint.
Retrieve a company's filing index by CIK via GET https://data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK{zero-padded-10-digit}.json; this JSON lists all recent filings with accession numbers and form types.
Construct the filing index URL as https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/{cik}/{accession-no-dashes}/ and fetch the index JSON or HTML to enumerate documents in the filing.
Download individual documents (10-K body, exhibits) directly from the Archives path; respect the rate limit of no more than 10 requests per second per IP.
Known gotchas
EDGAR enforces a hard rate limit of 10 requests/second; exceeding it results in temporary IP blocks — add explicit throttling with at least 100ms between requests.
The User-Agent requirement is strictly enforced; automated scripts without a valid company-name-and-email User-Agent will receive 403 responses.
CIK numbers must be zero-padded to 10 digits in the submissions JSON URL; using the raw integer will return a 404.
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