name: SEC EDGAR API FinOps
description: >
  Financial operations guidance for integrating with the SEC EDGAR API.
  Because the EDGAR API is a free government public service with no usage
  fees, direct API cost is zero. FinOps considerations center on
  infrastructure costs for consuming, storing, and processing the data,
  and on compliance with the SEC Fair Access policy to avoid service
  disruption.
specificationVersion: '1.0'
url: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/sec-api-documentation

costs:
  directAPICost:
    amount: 0.00
    currency: USD
    description: >
      The SEC EDGAR API has no usage fees, subscription costs, or per-request
      charges. It is a free public service of the U.S. federal government.

  infrastructureCosts:
    - category: Compute
      description: >
        Server or serverless compute for running API consumers, data
        transformation pipelines, and scheduled jobs that poll EDGAR
        for new filings.
      estimationNote: >
        Highly variable based on polling frequency and data volume.
        Use bulk DERA downloads for large historical datasets to reduce
        compute costs compared to real-time API polling.

    - category: Storage
      description: >
        Object storage, database, or data lake costs for persisting EDGAR
        filing documents, XBRL financial data, and processed datasets.
      estimationNote: >
        EDGAR hosts tens of millions of filings. Selective storage of
        relevant form types (10-K, 10-Q, 8-K) significantly reduces cost.

    - category: Egress / Transfer
      description: >
        Network data transfer costs if consuming EDGAR data in a cloud
        environment and transferring to other regions or services.
      estimationNote: >
        Prefer co-located compute near SEC data endpoints or use bulk
        downloads rather than per-request streaming for large ingestions.

optimization:
  - name: Use Bulk Downloads for Historical Data
    description: >
      The SEC DERA bulk download ZIP archives (quarterly XBRL financial
      datasets) are the preferred method for obtaining large volumes of
      historical data and avoid high request counts against the live API.
    url: https://www.sec.gov/dera/data

  - name: Respect Rate Limits to Avoid Disruption
    description: >
      Staying within the 10 req/s limit prevents IP blocks that would
      force fallback to alternative (potentially paid) data sources.
      Implement exponential backoff and client-side rate limiting.

  - name: Cache CIK Mappings
    description: >
      The company_tickers.json bulk file providing ticker-to-CIK mappings
      should be cached locally and refreshed periodically rather than
      fetched per-lookup. This reduces unnecessary API traffic.

  - name: Selective Form-Type Filtering
    description: >
      Use the submissions API to identify relevant form types before
      downloading full filing documents, reducing storage and transfer
      costs for targeted use cases.

compliance:
  - name: SEC Fair Access Policy
    url: https://www.sec.gov/about/developer-resources
    description: >
      Callers must comply with the SEC Fair Access policy, which includes
      the 10 req/s rate limit, mandatory User-Agent identification, and
      prohibition on systematic downloading of all filings. Commercial
      redistribution of EDGAR data is generally permitted as the data
      is in the public domain.