SEC EDGAR Filing Diff & Section-Level Redline Monitor

Monitor SEC EDGAR filings (10-K, 10-Q, 8-K) for changes between versions. Detects new filings as they appear, automatically fetches the previous and current filing text, and computes section-level redline diffs — added passages, removed text, and changed sections — all via the SEC's official data.sec.gov APIs. No login, no paywall, structured JSON output.

What it does

• CIK resolution: supply a stock ticker (AAPL), get the company's full filing history via the SEC's official ticker→CIK mapping.
• Filing discovery: scans the submissions API (data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK…) and efts.sec.gov search feeds for new 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings within a configurable lookback window (default 90 days).
• Section parsing: automatically extracts sections (Item 1. Business, Item 1A. Risk Factors, Item 2. …) from HTML or plain-text filings.
• Section-level redline diff: compares each section against the previous version of the same form type. Returns added, removed, and changed passages per section.
• Stateful persistence: uses Apify's key-value store to remember last-seen filing accession numbers and content hashes between runs — so you only pay for what's new.
• Pay-per-event pricing: you only pay for filings actually checked and diffs computed.

Use cases

1. SEC filing change monitoring: get alerted when a company amends its 10-K or files a new 10-Q with material changes.
2. Risk factor tracking: track changes to Item 1A Risk Factors between quarterly filings.
3. Competitive intelligence: monitor competitor filings for changes in business description (Item 1), MD&A (Item 7), or financial disclosures.
4. Compliance automation: pipe section-level redlines into compliance workflows or alerts.
5. RAG / LLM context: feed structured filing diffs into a vector store or prompt for AI analysis of SEC disclosure changes.

Example input

{
  "tickers": ["AAPL"],
  "formTypes": ["10-K", "10-Q"],
  "lookbackDays": 365,
  "sections": true
}

Example output item (section diff)

{
  "ticker": "AAPL",
  "companyName": "Apple Inc.",
  "cik": "0000320193",
  "form": "10-K",
  "filedDate": "2024-11-01",
  "accessionNumber": "0000320193-24-000123",
  "previousAccessionNumber": "0000320193-23-000108",
  "isNewFiling": true,
  "section": "Item 1A. Risk Factors",
  "diffType": "changed",
  "changesCount": 42,
  "additionsCount": 28,
  "removalsCount": 14,
  "diffLines": [
    { "type": "unchanged", "text": "Our business is subject to various risks…" },
    { "type": "added", "text": "New risk: artificial intelligence regulation may impact…" },
    { "type": "removed", "text": "Previous risk: pandemic-related supply chain disruptions…" }
  ],
  "filingUrl": "https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019324000123/aapl-20240928.htm"
}

Pricing & cost math

Pay-per-event model:

Event	Price	When charged
actor-start	$0.01	Once per run (synthetic start event — covers fixed compute)
filing-checked	$0.003	Per filing checked for changes (no diff found / same content hash)
section-diffed	$0.01	Primary event — per section with a meaningful redline difference between old and new versions
new-filing-alert	$0.005	Per new filing detected (first time seeing this accession number)

Worked example: monitoring AAPL 10-K over 1 year (1 filing found, 2 new sections changed)

• 1 × actor-start = $0.01
• 1 × filing-checked = $0.003 (discovering and fetching the filing)
• 1 × new-filing-alert = $0.005 (new filing detected)
• 2 × section-diffed = $0.02 (2 sections with meaningful changes)
• Total: $0.038

At platform compute cost of ~$0.002/run (low memory, fast API calls), the margin is >94%.

Set ACTOR_MAX_TOTAL_CHARGE_USD in the run input to cap total spend.

Rate limits

The SEC's data.sec.gov and efts.sec.gov APIs allow up to 10 requests/second. This actor stays well under at ~8 req/s with a minimum 120ms gap between requests. No proxy needed for normal workloads.

Related tools

If you also need XBRL financial fundamentals (Revenue, Net Income, EPS, Assets) from SEC filings, check out the sibling actor EDGAR XBRL Fundamentals Extractor — it extracts structured financial data from the same SEC data sources.

Integrations

• Apify API: call via REST, schedule via cron, or chain as a webhook target.
• Make / n8n: use the Apify module with the actor ID and JSON input above.
• MCP: expose as an MCP tool via Apify's built-in MCP server for LLM agents.
• Webhooks: trigger on SUCCEEDED to pipe filing diffs to Slack, Notion, or a database.

FAQ

How does the actor know which filings to compare? When first run for a ticker+form type, it discovers the most recent filing and stores its accession number and content hash. On subsequent runs, new filings are detected by comparing the latest accession number against the stored state. The previous filing's full text is cached in the key-value store for diffing.

What happens if a filing is amended (e.g. 10-K/A)? Amendments are treated as new filings with a different accession number. The actor will diff the amendment against the original filing's cached content.

How are sections identified? The actor scans filing text for standard SEC item headers (Item 1., Item 1A., Item 2., Item 7., Item 8., Part I, Part II, etc.) and splits content accordingly. For HTML filings, text is extracted before section parsing.

Can I monitor many tickers in one run? Yes. Pass an array of tickers (e.g. ["AAPL", "MSFT", "GOOGL", "AMZN"]). Each ticker is processed sequentially to stay within SEC rate limits.

What happens if a filing's text changes but the accession number doesn't? The actor compares content hashes even for the same accession number. If the hash differs (e.g. an amended filing with the same accession), a diff is computed.

Limitations

• First run baseline: the first run for any ticker will detect the latest filing but cannot produce a section diff until a previous filing exists in the local state (second run onwards).
• Lookback window: filings outside the configured lookbackDays window are not scanned. Set this high (e.g. 1095 for 3 years) for comprehensive coverage.
• Section parsing accuracy: while the actor uses standard SEC item header patterns, unusual formatting or non-standard filing structures may result in sections being merged under a single header. The __entire_filing__ fallback covers these cases.
• HTML vs plain-text: HTML filings yield cleaner section extraction. Plain-text filings are also supported but section header detection may be less reliable.
• SEC document fetch failures: very old filings or filings with non-standard primary documents may fail to fetch. The actor reports these as error items and continues.

Legal / attribution

Data is sourced from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's public data APIs (data.sec.gov, efts.sec.gov, www.sec.gov). The SEC explicitly grants free programmatic access for this purpose (see SEC EDGAR API documentation and SEC Fair Access policy). This actor is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the SEC.

Keywords: sec filing monitor, edgar filing diff, sec 10-k changes, sec filing redline, sec filing comparison tool, edgar section diff, 10-k diff, 10-q diff, 8-k alert, sec filing change tracker