Found a Python library that does all the heavy lifting for working with SEC EDGAR API - EdgarTools from Dwight Gunning
Published: February 2, 2026
He has solved some really hard problems there.
I am building a tool to compare quarterly financials across companies - Microsoft vs Google vs Amazon, last 12 quarters, custom views (side-by-side, QoQ, YoY, ratios and charts exactly the way I want it in terms of formats and computations).
The problem: SEC EDGAR has a great data API. But still a bit of pain and time-consuming to parse, standardize and organize things even with AI Coders (I use Claude Code).
Asked Claude Code to find existing solutions. Don't reinvent the wheel.
EdgarTools came up. Now using it as the backbone for a FastAPI backend - wrapping the library functions as API endpoints, React frontend pulls the data.
- XBRL standardization is built-in. You can compare Revenue, Net Income, Cash Flow across companies without manually mapping different tags.
- 10-30x faster than alternatives. Uses PyArrow and lxml. Data comes back as pandas DataFrames.
- Respects SEC rate limits automatically - self-throttles to 9 requests per second. Proxy support if needed.
- Covers 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K filings, 13F fund holdings, Form 4 insider transactions, full financial statements.
- Built-in MCP server and AI Skills for Claude Code if you're doing SEC analysis with AI tools.
I'm using this for my own quarterly analysis first. Once I get the format right, I'll publish the tool - open source like my other apps.
If you work with SEC filings and don't want to spend time on parsing and standardization, use this library. It does the heavy lifting.