5 Free SEC Filing Tools (I Tested Them All) - 2025

I've spent way too much time testing SEC filing tools.

Bloomberg can run $24,000+ per year. AlphaSense can be $10,000+ per seat. Even "cheaper" options like BamSEC cost hundreds of dollars annually. That kind of budget makes sense if you're running a fund. Less so if you're managing your own portfolio or just getting started.

Here's the thing: the underlying information is the same for everyone. The SEC makes filings public for free. The only question is how comfortably you can access that data.

I've put together five free tools that, combined, give you a solid research stack. I'll cover what each one is actually good at, where it falls short, and how I combine them to monitor filings, study companies, and follow insiders without paying for a terminal.

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Quick Comparison

Here's what I've found after testing each:

Tool	Best For	Real-Time	Watchlists	Insider Trading	Mobile
Earnings Feed	Live monitoring, company profiles	✅ Instant	✅ Yes	✅ Yes	✅ Excellent
SEC EDGAR	Official source, complete archive	❌ Delayed	❌ No	✅ Yes	❌ Poor
OpenInsider	Form 4 insider transactions	⚠️ Near real-time	❌ No	✅ Specialized	⚠️ Basic
Last10K	Financial ratios, Excel exports	❌ Daily updates	❌ No	❌ Limited	❌ Desktop
QuiverQuant	Alternative data, Congress trades	⚠️ Varies	❌ No	✅ Yes	✅ Good

I don't think of this as "pick one." It's more like "what job do I need done right now?"

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1. Earnings Feed

Website: earningsfeed.com Best for: Real-time filing alerts, tracking companies, mobile-friendly monitoring

Full disclosure: I built this one. So take my opinion with appropriate skepticism.

Earnings Feed started because I got tired of polling EDGAR and clicking through endless lists. I wanted a live stream of filings that updates the moment documents hit the SEC.

The core experience is straightforward: a real-time feed, company pages, and watchlists.

• The live filings feed shows every 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, S-1, 13D/13G, and Form 4 as it arrives. Usually within seconds.
• Company profiles give you a clean overview: recent filings, basic stock data, and company details in one place.
• Watchlists let you follow a set of tickers and see just their filings in a focused stream. No wading through the entire market.
• There are also form-type hubs (like 10-Ks, 8-Ks, and insider trades) plus filters by industry or exchange.

I built it to be checked on a phone in a couple of taps. That's how I use it myself.

The honest limitation: it's not trying to be a full document workstation. You can jump into filings quickly, but you can't run full-text searches or compare document versions inside the app. For heavy document work, I still use EDGAR or paid tools.

How I use it: Earnings Feed is my radar. I put my portfolio and watchlist names into a list, glance at it during the day, and let the feed tell me when something files.

You can start here: Create a free watchlist →

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2. SEC EDGAR

Website: sec.gov/edgar Best for: The official source and full historical record

Every tool on this list is basically a nicer front-end on top of EDGAR. This is where every 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, proxy, registration statement, and Form 4 gets filed first.

The upside is obvious: complete coverage and official documents straight from the regulator. You can search by company name, ticker, or CIK. You can pull up filing history going back to the mid-1990s. When something looks wrong in another tool, EDGAR is where I go to double-check.

The downsides are also obvious the first time you use it:

• The interface feels like it was designed in 2003. Because it was.
• Easy to get lost in long lists of filings.
• No native watchlists or alerts. You have to refresh pages or set up RSS feeds yourself.
• On mobile? Barely usable.

I treat EDGAR as the source of truth, not my daily driver. I use it when I need the original PDF or HTML exactly as filed, when I'm digging through older documents, or when I want to verify something I saw elsewhere.

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3. OpenInsider

Website: openinsider.com Best for: Following insider buying and selling (Form 4s)

If your main question is "What are insiders doing with their own stock?", OpenInsider is built for exactly that.

Form 4 filings are what insiders must file when they buy or sell shares. OpenInsider turns that stream into something workable:

• A consolidated transaction feed showing insider trades across the market.
• Tools to highlight cluster buys where multiple insiders buy around the same time. I find these more interesting than solo transactions.
• The ability to drill into specific insiders and see their trading history across companies.
• Filters by role, transaction size, and other parameters.

It's single-purpose, and that's the trade-off. No 10-Ks, 10-Qs, or 8-Ks here. The UI is functional but feels dated. There's no watchlist concept; you're relying on filters and manual checks.

I use OpenInsider when I see insider activity in Earnings Feed and want to dig deeper. Is this a one-off sale or part of a pattern? Are other insiders at the same company doing the same thing? That's where OpenInsider shines.

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4. Last10K

Website: last10k.com Best for: Getting clean fundamentals and exporting data to Excel

Last10K sits between raw filings and a full data terminal. It parses SEC filings and extracts fundamentals: revenue, margins, EPS, balance sheet items. Then it presents them in a structured, analyst-friendly way.

Instead of typing numbers from a 10-K into a spreadsheet, you can:

• Pull up financial tables with multi-year history.
• Use ratio views to quickly see profitability, debt, and efficiency metrics.
• Export what you need to Excel or CSV and work in your own models.

The free tier covers a lot, especially if you're focusing on one company at a time. Some screening and advanced features are behind a paywall. Updates are generally daily, not second-by-second. For fundamental research, that's usually fine.

Last10K is a desktop experience. You're not going to use it on your phone. I think of it as my "get the numbers out of SEC filings and into Excel" tool.

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5. QuiverQuant

Website: quiverquant.com Best for: Alternative data and political signals

QuiverQuant doesn't start from SEC filings. It starts from the idea that interesting information leaks out in public but underused places: Congressional trading disclosures, government contracts, lobbying reports.

It does surface insider trading data too, but the real differentiator is the alternative datasets:

• Which members of Congress are trading which stocks, and when.
• Which companies are landing large government contracts.
• Who is ramping up or down on lobbying spend.
• Patent data and other non-standard signals.

Update speed varies by dataset. The point isn't millisecond-level news. It's "what is the government and political class doing around this name?"

I don't use QuiverQuant as my primary SEC reader. I use it when I want to add a political or policy dimension to research, or when I'm specifically curious about Congressional trades or government contractors.

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My Workflow: Combining the Tools

None of these tools does everything. Combined, they cover a lot of ground.

Here's how I actually use them:

• Daily awareness: Earnings Feed. It tells me what filed for companies I care about and gives me a clean way to open those filings.
• Original documents and older history: SEC EDGAR. Anything that looks odd or is missing elsewhere, I confirm here.
• Insider behavior: I split duties. Earnings Feed for quick Form 4 awareness, OpenInsider when I want to screen or dig into patterns and clusters.
• Financial modeling: Last10K to extract numbers from filings, then I work in Excel.
• Alternative angles: QuiverQuant to check whether politicians or government contracts are moving around a name.

I'm not trying to memorize every interface. I just decide what job I'm doing and pick the lowest-friction tool for that job.

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When to Actually Pay for Tools

Free tools cover a lot. But there are legitimate reasons to pay:

• You're doing heavy due diligence and need fast full-text search inside filings, side-by-side comparisons, and clean export of tables. This is where something like BamSEC earns its money.
• You need everything in one place: market data, news, broker research, filings, transcripts. In a professional role, a terminal (Bloomberg, Refinitiv) might be a standard line item.
• Time is more expensive than software. If a paid tool saves you hours every week and analysis is your job, the ROI is straightforward.

If you're managing your own money, still learning, or running lean, there's no reason to start with paid tools. In 2025, the free stack is genuinely good.

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The $0 SEC Research Stack

A simple, effective combination:

Purpose	Tool	Why It's in the Stack
Real-time monitoring	Earnings Feed	Fast alerts, watchlists, works great on mobile
Official archive	SEC EDGAR	Canonical source, full filing history
Insider tracking	OpenInsider	Deep Form 4 screening and history
Fundamentals & exports	Last10K	Clean financial tables and Excel-ready data
Alternative/political data	QuiverQuant	Congress trades, contracts, and other edge datasets

Total cost: $0. The only investment is learning to use each tool for what it's best at.

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Get Started

If you want to put this into practice:

1. Create a free Earnings Feed watchlist with your portfolio and watchlist names.
2. Bookmark SEC EDGAR for when you need the original document.
3. When you see insider activity in Earnings Feed's insider hub, check OpenInsider to see the bigger pattern.

The filings are public. The tools are free. The edge comes from actually paying attention.