Connect SEC EDGAR to ChatGPT via MCP: Filings and CIKs

💡 No install? Use cloud.anythingmcp.com directly. Sign in, click Connectors → SEC EDGAR, install it with no key, mint an MCP API key and you're done. No Docker, no git clone, no local server.

SEC EDGAR + ChatGPT

U.S. SEC EDGAR filings and financial data, free and without a key: find a company CIK, read its profile and filing history (10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, Form 4), get XBRL financial statement values per concept, compare companies with frames, search the full text of filings since 2001 and list the documents of a filing. Only a contact User-Agent is required.

Prerequisites

See the full setup instructions baked into the connector (visible in the in-app store when you select the connector). The required environment variables for this connector are:

SEC_EDGAR_USER_AGENT (a name and a contact e-mail, not a key)

Step 1 — Set up the connector

Free, no key, one setting: setup takes about a minute. The connector reads the public EDGAR APIs of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: filer profiles, filing histories and XBRL financial data from https://data.sec.gov, full-text search and company lookup from https://efts.sec.gov, and filing folders from the EDGAR archive on https://www.sec.gov. No account or key is needed.

1. SEC policy requires every automated request to say who sends it, with a contact e-mail, in the User-Agent header, and requests without it are blocked with 403. Enter your organisation or name and an e-mail address where the SEC can reach you in SEC_EDGAR_USER_AGENT, for example Example Research LLC [email protected].
2. Install the connector. There is no Authorize with Provider step.
3. Check it with sec_edgar_full_text_search and forms 10-K: it lists the latest annual reports filed.

CIK: every filer has a Central Index Key. The data.sec.gov tools want it padded to 10 digits (0000320193 for Apple); sec_edgar_get_filing_index also takes it without leading zeros. sec_edgar_search_companies turns a name or ticker into the CIK: NVDA gives 1045810, padded 0001045810.

What it reads: every SEC filer, including US listed companies, foreign private issuers, funds and insiders.

• Up to 10 matching filers for a name or ticker, with CIK, name and tickers.
• A filer's profile: name, tickers, exchanges, SIC industry, fiscal year end, state of incorporation, addresses and former names, plus its 100 most recent filings with accession number, form (10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, 4, DEF 14A and others), filing date, report date and primary document. Older history comes from the files listed in olderFilingFiles.
• XBRL financial data: the names of every concept a company reports (us-gaap, ifrs-full, dei, srt), then every value of one concept, for example us-gaap NetIncomeLoss in USD. Revenue is often Revenues or RevenueFromContractWithCustomerExcludingAssessedTax depending on the company, so the AI checks the concept list first.
• Cross-company comparisons with frames: one concept for one calendar period, the 250 largest values with CIK, company, location and period end. CY2024 is a full year, CY2024Q3 a quarter and CY2024Q4I a balance sheet date.
• Full-text search of filings since 2001, by words or an "exact phrase", form types, startdt and enddt, ciks or entityName and business location. Without q it lists the latest filings of a form, such as today's 8-Ks.
• The documents of one filing: file names, types and sizes of the main document, exhibits, XBRL files and the full submission text.

Data formats: in recentFilings the lists run in parallel: entry n of accessionNumber, form, filingDate, reportDate and primaryDocument describes the same filing, newest first. XBRL values are in the unit given (USD, shares, USD-per-shares), not in thousands. fy and fp (FY, Q1 to Q4) are the fiscal year and period of the filing that reported the value, while start and end give the actual period. The same period shows up in several filings, since a 10-K repeats prior years: for one value per period, the AI prefers the entries with a frame (e.g. CY2024). Quarterly 10-Q values can be year-to-date, so it compares start and end. A document link is https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/<cik>/<accession without dashes>/<file name>; a full-text hit's id is <accession>:<file name>.

Paging: full-text search returns 100 hits per page; the AI moves on with from in steps of 100, up to 10,000 hits per query, so it narrows by form and date. The filing history pages through olderFilingFiles.

Read-only: every tool only reads, so there is nothing to confirm and no tool is switched off at install.

Limits: at most 10 requests per second per sender. Above that the SEC blocks the address for about 10 minutes.

Common errors: 403 means the User-Agent is missing or not accepted, or the rate limit was exceeded. 404 means an unknown CIK, concept, unit or period; not every company reports every concept.

The connector does not download the bulk ZIP archives or the 1 MB company_tickers.json, does not read full filing documents (often megabytes of HTML) and does not submit filings. The full-text search and company lookup endpoints on efts.sec.gov power the EDGAR website and are not part of the SEC's documented API, so they may change.

Step 2 — Install the adapter

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HelpCode-ai/anythingmcp/main/docker-compose.quickstart.yml -o docker-compose.yml
printf 'JWT_SECRET=%s\nENCRYPTION_KEY=%s\n' "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" > .env
docker compose up -d

Step 3 — Add the connector in ChatGPT

Your server URL: in AnythingMCP, open MCP Servers → the server this connector is on, and copy its URL (https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/…). Use it wherever this guide shows YOUR_SERVER_ID.

ChatGPT adds MCP servers as plugins on its Plugins page, on the web and on paid plans. Developer mode is no longer needed. In a Business workspace only admins and owners can add one; in Enterprise and Edu an admin can grant the Create plugins with MCPs permission.

1. Go to chatgpt.com/plugins, click Add, then Add custom MCP server.
2. Enter a name, e.g. Name: SEC EDGAR.
3. Under Connection, enter the Server URL https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/YOUR_SERVER_ID and keep Authentication on OAuth.
4. Select I understand and want to continue, then Create as a plugin. When ChatGPT asks, sign in to AnythingMCP and allow access.
5. Install the new plugin from your personal plugins, then type @ in a chat and pick it.

Available tools

Example prompts

• "What was the annual revenue and net income of NVIDIA for each of the last five fiscal years, according to its SEC filings?"
• "List the 8-K filings Tesla made this year, with date and primary document."
• "Which 10 companies reported the highest total assets at the end of 2024?"
• "Find 10-K filings since 2023 that mention "tariff exposure", and tell me which companies they are from."
• "Show the insider Form 4 filings for Apple in the last month and link the documents."

FAQ

Does the free ChatGPT plan work with custom MCP servers? OpenAI documents custom MCP servers for paid plans only; the Free plan is not on its list.

Next steps

• Connector landing page
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