| SEC Info is the first (earliest) non-governmental recipient of Filings from the SEC’s EDGAR Filings System↓. Using our sophisticated proprietary software, we get, disseminate and publish Filings quicker than anyone else. Our software enables us to offer an EDGAR Filings Feed that is faster and cheaper than the SEC’s own PDS. Here’s how it works... |
Since the mid-’90s, the SEC has “pushed” new Filings in real-time to subscribers and websites, such as ours (in 1997), through their PDS system. Independent companies (currently Maximus, Inc., for the PDS) have always run the SEC’s EDGAR and PDS systems on a contract basis separate from the SEC website, which SEC internal staff run. Prior to 2015, the old Filings-flow operated in this manner:
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| | SEC Contractors | Peers: | SEC Website | | Our Website |
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| New Filings | ⇒ EDGAR ⇒ PDS ⇒ | Subscribers ( | www.sec.gov | , | www.secinfo.com | , et al.) ⇒ The Public
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As such, each subscriber would receive the Filings from the PDS system and do their own processing of them prior to the public being able to view the Filings. As stated under SEC website FAQs, its processing of each Filing has always taken 1-3+ minutes (really!), depending on the type and size of the Filing, between when the EDGAR system “accepts” a Filing and when the Filing shows up on ‘www.sec.gov’ for public viewing. Further slowing public access to the Filings, the SEC website uses yet another contractor for security and scaling purposes (Akamai Technologies, who in turn uses Amazon Web Services) to receive the Filings and deliver them to the public, so that the public never really “touches” the SEC’s Web servers. This obviously gave quicker subscribers, such as us and other institutional ones, an advantage over the public in terms of more-timely access to the information in Filings. Someone in the public eventually noticed this and complained, so an appearance of “unfairness” caused Congress in 2014 to have the SEC change this situation, whereby the slower SEC website no longer functions as a peer to other subscribers of the PDS feed. As stated on the SEC website in 2015, the PDS system “was updated to reflect modifications to the EDGAR system to ensure that EDGAR filings are available to the public on the SEC website before such filings are made available to the public dissemination system [sic] (PDS).” The new Filings-flow now operates in this manner: [ see the EDGAR Filings System↓ ]
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| | | | 1st | | 2nd | | 3rd | | 4th | | New Filings | ⇒ | EDGAR | ⇒ | www.sec.gov | ⇒ | The Public | ⇒ | PDS | ⇒ | Subscribers (www.secinfo.com, et al.) |
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We at SEC Info saw this as an opportunity to offer to PDS subscribers something closer to the way it used to be. We modified our system to directly “hit” the SEC website multiple times per second for new Filings. (The SEC permits this for users’ browsers, search engines and other “robots & bots” like us, and we are extremely careful in operating by the SEC’s published rules concerning this.) This enables us to therefore “pull” new Filings faster (asynchronously) than waiting for the delayed communication from the SEC website back to the PDS system, after a Filing is publicly viewable, and then pushed out by the PDS system to subscribers. Furthermore, the PDS system has always been inherently “slow,” as we have been told that the Filings are pushed out to subscribers serially (non-asynchronously) in random order, to not give any one PDS subscriber a systematic time advantage over another. In contrast, our quicker system now works like this, in parallel to the now-delayed PDS system:
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| New Filings ⇒ EDGAR ⇒ | www.sec.gov ⇒ The Public ⇒ PDS ⇒ Subscribers of the SEC’s “push” PDS
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| [ see Option 1 below ] | www.sec.gov ⇔ www.secinfo.com ⇒ Subscribers of our “push” Filings Feed
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| [ see Option 2 below ] | www.sec.gov ⇔ Subscribers using our “pull” Filings Feed software |
Therefore, users of our website can see new Filings and receive e-mailed new-Filing notifications within seconds of their appearance on the SEC website, and we can deliver to subscribers of our EDGAR Filings Feed service what we believe is a better (faster and cheaper) service than the PDS. Because we are pulling the Filings as soon as the SEC releases them on its site, instead of waiting for them to be pushed to us, we have most Filings within 1-2 seconds (in the same second for small ones!) of when they become publicly viewable. Since we’re querying the SEC website for new Filings in real-time, and the PDS system isn’t supposed to transmit them to subscribers until the public (including us) can get them from the SEC website, then the new Congressionally-mandated Filings-flow would be “broken” if the PDS system pushed a Filing to subscribers before we had it, by definition. |
Our latest analysis of this (on 3/9/23, with a prospective client) showed that we processed all randomly-sampled Filings 35 to 11 (16.6 ave.) seconds quicker! Having dealt with SEC Filings for over 25 years, we can further guarantee that the Filings we deliver are an exact match to those available on the SEC website and from the PDS system. Additionally, we can include the time stamp (down to the second) that each Filing became publicly viewable on the SEC website, a data item in our extensive database that no one else has, including the SEC (because they lose that file-system metadata when they replace their Web servers every few years or so). |
We offer three ways that new Filings can be delivered to subscribers of our EDGAR Filings Feed service:
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| • Option 1: Push to you... | We can push the Filings to you, just as the PDS system does, but in the same second that we pull each from the SEC. The easiest way is by using the (S)FTP protocols. Also, since we have the Filings before pushing them to you, we can do specialized processing of them, such as normalizing the binary content to make it easier for you to parse them, or adding time stamps metadata to them (such as when a Filing was placed on the SEC website or when it was first publicly viewable) or filtering out Filings you’re not interested in. Customized services such as these are not available from the PDS, because the SEC does not allow their PDS contractor to offer any. Without filtering, 3,000 Filings and 5 GBs are filed on an average day, and up to 12,000 Filings (every 2/14/yy) or 34 GBs (11/27/19) on high-volume days. The average Filing size is 2.1 MBs and the largest Filing has been 536 MBs. To ensure that you receive all Filings, our end-of-day processing finds other Filings (mostly low-priority delayed-release ones) that got onto the SEC website outside of their real-time new-Filings subsystem, and they will be sent to you the same second we have them for our own website. To see an example of the files you would have received on an average day, download our .zip Folder (1.1 GBs!) containing 11/4/19’s 3,237 Filings. The documentation for the Filings’ content is on the SEC website in the EDGAR Public Dissemination Service (PDS) Technical Specification (PDF), but be aware that it contains many mistakes on almost every page. With Option 1, we keep a one-week backup of all Filings pushed to you, for easy FTP access in case your server goes down and you don’t receive all Filings we attempt to push. (The PDS only retains the most-recent two days of Filings.)
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| • Option 2: Pull from SEC... | We can have you run the same software that we wrote and run to pull the real-time new Filings from the SEC. It queries the SEC website’s new-Filings subsystem that tracks the most-recent Filings filed, so it retrieves 100% of the Filings that flow through that subsystem. They represent 99±% of all Filings, since that subsystem doesn’t report the low-priority delayed-release ones (such as SEC Filing-deletion notices). Our software runs only on Windows. Having coded parts of Windows for Microsoft as Finnegan O’Malley & Company Inc. (our software development company), we’re a Windows shop, and we can tell you how to see Fran Finnegan’s (owner of SEC Info) name hidden in every version from Windows 95 through Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022.
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| • Option 3: Options 1 & 2... | You can get the best features of both Options 1 and 2, plus redundancy. For backup purposes, this is like buying both a primary feed and a secondary feed from the PDS. With Option 3, you can use Option 1 to have us push Filings to one server (running Windows or another OS) and use Option 2 to pull Filings to a different server (running Windows). The redundancy is attained by having two sites (ours, pushing Filings to you, and yours, pulling Filings from the SEC) and optionally by you having two Filings-receiving servers.
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| | | Options Comparison: | | | Quickness of Receiving Filings | | Filings Received | | Time Stamps |
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The PDS: | | Slow, because it’s designed to be | | 100% | | EDGAR Acceptance |
Option 1: | | Fast, because of fewer server hops | | 100% | | Up to three are added |
Option 2: | | Faster, because you’re pulling them | | 99±% | | EDGAR Acceptance |
Option 3: | | Fastest, because of the redundancy | | 100% | | Up to three are added |
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In terms of pricing...
Option 1 (Single): We can provide fast Option 1 service to you for 20% off the $2,149 price that the PDS charges for a slower single feed, so $1,719 per month, saving you $5,158 per year (2023 PDS pricing).
Option 1 (Double): We can provide fast Option 1 service for two feeds (to your primary and backup servers) for the same price that the PDS charges for a slower single feed, so $2,149 per month, which is 25% less than the $2,875 the PDS charges for two slower feeds, saving you $8,712 per year (2023 PDS pricing).
Option 2: We can provide faster Option 2 service to you for the same price that the PDS charges for a much slower single feed, so $2,149 per month, allowing you to get the Filings the second they are made public instead of waiting during the 15+ seconds delay from the PDS. If timing is important to you, nothing is faster!
Option 3: We can provide Option 3 redundant service to you for 25% off our combined Option 1 & 2 prices, so $2,899 per month, which is about the same price the PDS charges for two much slower feeds. |
For historic SEC Filings (all since 1994, even further back than the PDS’s 1996 cut-off), we offer all the same file subsets that the PDS does, plus any other customized subset you might want, and we also sell them for 20% off of what the PDS charges, which would save you thousands of dollars. Here are recent full-year quantities: |
| | 2022 | | 2021 | | 2020 | | 2019 | | 2018 | | 2017 | | 2016 | | 2015 | | 2014 | | 2013 | | 2012 | | 2011 | | 2010 | | 2009 | | 2008 | | 2007 |
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| Files: | | 766K | | 798K | | 715K | | 644K | | 637K | | 640K | | 631K | | 650K | | 656K | | 643K | | 629K | | 633K | | 627K | | 610K | | 670K | | 729K |
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| Size: | | 1,576G | | 1,526G | | 1,351G | | 1,102G | | 863G | | 679G | | 581G | | 583G | | 627G | | 686G | | 492G | | 350G | | 246G | | 187G | | 180G | | 197G |
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We deliver the historic data on external USB disks. Ours is a true set of Filings in the same binary format that flows out of the EDGAR system to the PDS, unlike the Filings you would get if you downloaded the historic daily .zip files from the SEC website, an incredibly slow process due to SEC-imposed bandwidth restrictions. Remember that the SEC website gets the original Filings before they allow the PDS to release them, and that they then do their own processing of the Filings that alters them for compactness before they zip them, so their zipped Filings are indeed different (e.g., no PDS Control Block nor EDGAR Acceptance Timestamp) than those you would get from the PDS or us. You would have to write separate software (an added cost) to process the files in the .zip folders, which are binarily different than the format the PDS and we disseminate. |
If price is not an issue and you’re still thinking of using the more-expensive SEC PDS contractor, please be aware that there’s nothing proprietary (they didn’t write the PDS software) nor “official” (they’re not the SEC) about them, because they’re just a government contractor in Washington, DC. They were simply the winning bidder in the last contracting cycle to manage the off-the-shelf software that the PDS uses, and there have been many of them since EDGAR was created: TRW, Systems and Information Technology Group, Digital Island, Keane Federal Systems, NTT DATA, Attain and now Maximus, Inc. (since 2021). The SEC allows them to directly charge subscribers for their PDS feed, at SEC-mandated prices, to get a lower bid from them to run the PDS system. They’re not selling you any SEC Filings content that is different than what we have. |
If our lower price is still an issue and you find another Filings-feed supplier (there used to be some out there), they would be offering you what is the riskiest and slowest possible way to receive real-time new Filings. That’s because they would be operating as a “PDS reseller,” meaning that they would be inserting themselves between the PDS (or another PDS reseller!) and you, doing exactly what the PDS does software-wise:
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| New Filings ⇒ EDGAR ⇒ | www.sec.gov ⇒ The Public ⇒ PDS ⇒ PDS reseller(s) ⇒ Subscriber (you)
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Since that is risky (multiple points of possible failure) and slow (multiple identical delaying server hops), the only reason you would use them is because of their price. If you show us their quote, we’ll provide a better service for 20% off of their price (or, if theirs is below ours, a negotiated price lower than theirs), because...
We are the lowest-cost provider! |
If interested in subscribing to our EDGAR Filings Feed service, please contact us via our Help page. |
| • | This Usage Agreement is between Fran Finnegan & Company LLC (the “Company”),
owner of this Web site and its underlying technology and data (“SEC Info”), and you, the user of SEC Info.
You agree that all personal user information provided by you is true, i.e.,
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Your personal user information will not be sold to other parties by the Company.
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| • | You will not use SEC Info, nor will you copy features of SEC Info, in any way
to develop (or manage) or while developing (or managing) a competing service,
either as an employee or contractor of such competitor or any of their parents or subsidiaries.
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| • | You will not save or copy any pages of SEC Info, in their original or an altered form, for the purpose of
redistributing them to another party or republishing them at a Web site or in an information service.
All content of SEC Info is owned and copyrighted, and all rights to it are reserved, by the Company.
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| • | You may access SEC Info only with a Web browser.
You will not access SEC Info in an automated way, such as by using computer software scripts
or any other programmatic means, for the purpose of obtaining copies of our content (which we sell).
The only exception to this provision is for publicly-accessible search engines.
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you will credit SEC Info, in a way that is customary or appropriate in your profession and as you would
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if doing so electronically, with it being a Web link to SEC Info.
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To help the Company keep such potential fees low by having a large number of users,
you agree that, while you use SEC Info, you will tell your friends and associates about it.
The Company reserves the right to determine to whom it will provide access to SEC Info, either for free or for charge.
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for the accuracy of the information contained in SEC Info, or for delays or omissions therein.
None of the foregoing parties shall be liable to any third-party for claims or losses of any nature,
including but not limited to, lost profits, punitive or consequential damages.
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and you may not assign your rights or obligations to anyone.
This Agreement, all intellectual property issues, and your rights and obligations shall be governed by the laws of
the USA and the State of California governing contracts wholly entered into and wholly performed within California,
regardless of your location.
You agree to resolve any legal disputes via arbitration within the San Francisco Bay Area in the State of California, USA.
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If any provision of this Agreement is invalid or unenforceable under applicable law,
the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect.
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| The SEC is... | | • |
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission |
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The federal agency responsible for enforcing
U.S. Securities Laws |
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| EDGAR is... | | • |
The SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval system, which went “beta” in July 1992 and fully-operational on 5/6/96 |
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The document-management system used by the SEC to receive, store and disseminate Filings mandated by U.S. securities laws |
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A registered trademark of the SEC |
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| SEC Info is... | | • |
Securities Information & Business Intelligence |
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The most sophisticated SEC EDGAR
database service, with billions of links added to SEC filings whose data has been organized
to minimize the time and effort required to find what you’re looking for —
Business intelligence for sophisticated business professionals
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The 2nd-oldest SEC EDGAR database site, in “beta” on 9/5/97
and fully-operational in March 1999 —
Designed and run by Fran Finnegan, a former Wall Street investment banker
who worked in New York City for 12 years at E.F. Hutton and First Boston |
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Located in the largest Internet data center in San Francisco , California, U.S.A.,
at the north end of Silicon Valley, the software center of the universe |
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| A service mark of Fran Finnegan & Company LLC (FFC) —
FFC is a sister company of Finnegan O’Malley & Company Inc. (FOC), a software-development company that has written software for numerous clients,
including American Airlines, Charles Schwab and Microsoft —
FOC software is in every version of Windows from Windows 95 through Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022 |
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Neither affiliated with nor endorsed by the SEC, but we’re good friends —
Fran Finnegan’s Corporate Finance department head on Wall Street was Chairman of the SEC when EDGAR was created |
