Best SEC EDGAR MCP Servers (2026): Hosted vs Open Source
Compare EdgarTools, edgar.tools, and AlphaCreek by deployment, pricing, tools, and citation quality. Pick the right SEC filing MCP for your AI agent.
Best SEC EDGAR MCP Servers for AI Agents
Table of contents
- Short answer
- What is an SEC EDGAR MCP server?
- Quick comparison: EdgarTools open source vs edgar.tools vs AlphaCreek
- Open-source EdgarTools MCP: best free alternative
- edgar.tools hosted: best for broader tools and enriched signals
- AlphaCreek hosted: best for answer verifiability and filing-aware agents
- Hosted MCP benchmark: AlphaCreek vs edgar.tools vs SEC API
- Open source vs hosted: how should you choose?
- What most SEC EDGAR MCP comparisons get wrong
- Recommended setup by use case
- FAQ
- Methodology and update context
- Final takeaway
Short answer
If you are choosing an SEC EDGAR MCP for an AI agent, the best option depends on what you want the agent to do.
Use open-source EdgarTools MCP if you want the best free, self-hosted way to give Claude, Cursor, or another MCP client access to SEC data. Use edgar.tools hosted if you want broader MCP tools, form-aware analysis, live filing monitoring, watchlists, webhooks, and enriched signals such as insider sentiment, classified 8-K events, and financial health scores. Use AlphaCreek hosted if you want an agent to understand the whole filing through a custom-built table of contents, read targeted nodes from that map, and return verifiable answers with citation URLs to exact filing passages.
Practical takeaway: do not compare these only by tool count. EdgarTools open source is strongest for free developer control. edgar.tools hosted is strongest when the user wants a broader SEC intelligence workstation with monitoring and signals. AlphaCreek is strongest when answer verifiability matters: help the agent choose the right filing, inspect a filing-specific map, read the relevant node, and cite the exact source passage behind each material claim. For hosted-provider evidence on citations and retrieval paths, see our SEC EDGAR MCP benchmark (July 2026).
| If you need... | Best pick |
|---|---|
| Free, self-hosted SEC data in Claude, Cursor, or another MCP client | Open-source EdgarTools MCP |
| Broader tools, monitoring, watchlists, and enriched SEC signals | edgar.tools hosted |
| Answer verifiability and agents that understand the whole filing via a custom-built TOC | AlphaCreek hosted |
EdgarTools OSS = free self-hosting · edgar.tools = hosted SEC intelligence · AlphaCreek = citation-backed filing retrieval. Hosted evidence: SEC EDGAR MCP benchmark.
What is an SEC EDGAR MCP server?
An SEC EDGAR MCP server is a Model Context Protocol server that lets an AI agent call tools for SEC filing data instead of relying on model memory or manual web browsing. In practice, the MCP server sits between the model and SEC data sources. The agent can ask for company filings, read a 10-K or 10-Q section, pull XBRL financial facts, search disclosure text, or retrieve filing context for an answer.
For financial AI, that matters because SEC filings are source-sensitive documents. A useful answer often depends on the exact filing period, form type, section, table, note, and wording. The buyer question is broader than setup: should you self-host a free MCP, use a hosted SEC intelligence platform with monitoring and signals, or use hosted filing retrieval built around a custom filing map and verifiable citations? For the architecture behind navigation-first retrieval, start with AI agents over SEC filings: RAG vs navigation.
Quick comparison: EdgarTools open source vs edgar.tools vs AlphaCreek
The three options overlap because all of them connect AI agents to SEC filings. They differ in product shape.
Open-source EdgarTools MCP is a free local MCP over the EdgarTools Python library. edgar.tools hosted is the commercial platform around the same ecosystem. AlphaCreek is a separate hosted SEC filing retrieval layer built around filing maps, node reads, and citations.
| Dimension | Open-source EdgarTools MCP | edgar.tools hosted | AlphaCreek hosted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best one-line description | Free self-hosted SEC data tooling | Hosted SEC intelligence platform | Hosted filing-context retrieval layer |
| Deployment | Local or self-hosted server | Hosted MCP, API, and web app | Hosted remote MCP |
| Self-serve pricing | Free (MIT); you pay infra and SEC ops | Free $0 → Pro $24.99/mo → Analyst $79.99/mo | Free $0 → Pro $9.99/mo → Team $79.99/mo (non-commercial self-serve) |
| Best for | Developers who want free SEC access and control | Users who want broader tools, monitoring, and enriched signals | Users who value answer verifiability and filing-aware agent reads |
| Tool count | 13 MCP tools in the public announcement | Tiered tool set; public docs describe roughly 4, 17, and 23+ tools by tier | 4 read-only tools |
| Tool philosophy | Broad data access through the EdgarTools library | Broad hosted intelligence, monitoring, and workflows | Narrow filing workflow: list, latest, custom TOC, read |
| Filing model | Company, filing, section, XBRL, ownership, funds, proxy data | Form-aware analysis, monitoring, events, enriched intelligence | Custom-built filing TOC, node reads, passage citations |
| How agents understand filings | Section extraction and structured data objects | Form-aware analysis plus enriched outputs | Inspect a filing-specific map before reading targeted nodes |
| Monitoring story | Local edgar_monitor if you run and maintain it | User-facing monitoring, alerts, watchlists, webhooks, live streams | Constant SEC EDGAR monitoring to keep latest filings available for retrieval |
| Citations | Real SEC data; verification depends on implementation and source metadata | sec.gov filing index links in our benchmark Q1; accession/source oriented | Passage-level CITATION_URL per node; only hosted provider with unique URL per claim in benchmark Q1 |
| SEC rate-limit burden | User manages SEC fair-access limits, caching, retries, and scaling | Vendor abstracts upstream SEC access within account limits | Vendor abstracts upstream SEC access within account limits |
| Strongest coverage | XBRL, Form 4, 13F, funds, proxy, filing data | XBRL, events, ownership, monitoring, enriched analysis | 10-K, 10-Q, 20-F, 6-K, 8-K filing context |
| Main weakness | Production operations are on you | Broader than a pure retrieval need | Narrower than a full SEC data platform |
The important point: more MCP tools do not automatically mean better agent answers. edgar.tools is the better fit when the user wants a broader toolkit plus monitoring and enriched signals. AlphaCreek is the better fit when the agent needs to understand the filing itself through a custom-built table of contents, not just retrieve a section label or a precomputed summary. AlphaCreek's four-tool design is narrower on purpose: list filings, inspect the filing map, read nodes, cite. For why navigation and citation granularity matter in practice, see how to parse SEC 10-K filings into sections and AI agents over SEC filings: RAG vs navigation.
Open-source EdgarTools MCP: best free alternative
Open-source EdgarTools MCP is the best free alternative if you are comfortable hosting the MCP server yourself. It is part of the EdgarTools ecosystem, a Python library for SEC EDGAR data, and the EdgarTools MCP announcement describes a free server with 13 tools for MCP-compatible clients such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and internal applications.
The strongest reason to start here is control. There is no hosted vendor between your MCP client and SEC data. You run the server, configure EDGAR_IDENTITY, and decide how to cache, deploy, secure, and extend it.
What it covers
The open-source MCP is broad. The EdgarTools MCP announcement groups its tools around analyst intent:
- Discover: company profiles, company search, screeners, full-text filing search, and recent filing monitoring.
- Examine: filing parsing and section reads through tools such as
edgar_read. - Analyze: financial trends, company comparison, insider and institutional ownership, funds, and proxy compensation.
That breadth is a real advantage. If you want a free MCP for company data, XBRL financials, insider activity, 13F holdings, funds, proxy statements, and filing sections, open-source EdgarTools is hard to ignore.
Where the free option becomes expensive
Free does not mean operationally free. With a self-hosted SEC EDGAR MCP, your infrastructure talks to SEC endpoints directly. SEC fair-access guidance limits automated access to a current maximum of 10 requests per second and asks automated tools to identify themselves with a user agent. For a product with many users and agents, you need shared caching, persistent storage, request deduplication, backoff, monitoring for 403 or 429 responses, and queueing across all agent traffic.
Open-source EdgarTools MCP is therefore the best free developer path, not the easiest production path. It gives you a strong foundation. It does not remove the work of operating SEC retrieval at scale.
Best fit
Choose open-source EdgarTools MCP if you want free local SEC access, broad data coverage, and control over your stack.
edgar.tools hosted: best for broader tools and enriched signals
edgar.tools hosted is the commercial platform around the EdgarTools ecosystem. The open-source project gives you local access to SEC data. The hosted platform adds OAuth, account tiers, API access, hosted MCP, live filing streams, webhooks, precomputed intelligence, and higher-level workflows.
This makes edgar.tools the strongest option if you want a broader SEC intelligence product rather than a narrow filing-retrieval layer.
What the hosted platform adds
The hosted platform is broader than a simple SEC filing reader. Public materials describe tools and workflows around company briefs, filing analysis, financial snapshots, statements, trends, comparisons, notes, disclosure search, full-text filing search, insider activity, institutional ownership, material events, live filings, funds, advisers, and aggregation tools. It also adds enriched interpretation such as insider sentiment scoring, AI-classified 8-K events, financial health scores, trend classification, and prospectus deal extraction.
That is the core edgar.tools value: broader tools plus enriched signals. If the user wants a fast research view with monitoring, event classification, ownership context, and workflow prompts, edgar.tools is closer to a hosted SEC workstation than a filing-context API.
edgar.tools is especially strong for user-facing monitoring. If the question is "what important 8-Ks came out today?" or "watch this company and alert me when something changes," the hosted platform is built for that workflow through live filing streams, Sentinels, webhooks, and event-oriented tools.
Where edgar.tools is less focused
The tradeoff is product shape. edgar.tools is broader and more signal-oriented. That is a strength when the user needs financials, ownership, monitoring, events, and workflows. It is less focused when the agent must understand the filing as a navigable document and cite the exact passage behind each claim.
In our July 2026 hosted MCP benchmark, edgar.tools succeeded on all three filing questions but repeated the same sec.gov filing index URL for every NVDA risk claim on question 1 — correct filing provenance, but no scroll-to-passage. We ran edgar.tools on Professional because the free tier did not expose full 10-K section text via MCP in our tests; see the benchmark for tier and OAuth setup notes.
The other distinction is filing understanding. edgar.tools can analyze filings form-by-form and return enriched intelligence. AlphaCreek goes deeper on one specific problem: giving the agent a custom-built table of contents for each filing so it can orient inside the document before reading.
Best fit
Choose edgar.tools hosted if you want broader MCP tools and enriched signals: financial snapshots, XBRL statements, insider activity, ownership, live filings, 8-K event classification, watchlists, webhooks, and research workflows.
AlphaCreek hosted: best for answer verifiability and filing-aware agents
AlphaCreek hosted is not trying to be the broadest SEC data platform. It is a focused SEC filing retrieval layer for AI agents. The product gives agents hosted MCP access to ingested, structured SEC filings so they can understand the filing, retrieve original disclosure context, and cite the passages used in an answer.
The workflow is intentionally simple:
list_filingsfinds available filings by ticker, form type, and period.get_latest_filinggets the newest matching filing when "latest" is the right intent.get_filing_tocreturns a custom-built filing table of contents with node IDs.read_node_contentreads selected nodes and returns source text withNODE_IDandCITATION_URL.
Those four read-only tools are the public AlphaCreek MCP surface. That narrowness is a product choice.
Why a custom-built table of contents matters
Many SEC MCP servers can return a filing section or a structured summary. AlphaCreek is built around a different idea: each filing gets its own navigable map.
When an agent calls get_filing_toc, it does not just learn that Item 1A exists. It sees a filing-specific hierarchy: major Items, issuer sub-headings, tables, notes, and approximate token sizes per node. That helps the agent understand where it is inside the filing before it reads anything.
This matters because SEC filings are not flat text. A 10-K is a structured document with nested disclosures. If the agent can inspect the whole filing map first, it can choose a smaller titled node such as a specific risk factor, MD&A subsection, segment table, or note instead of loading an entire Item or relying on similarity search.
That is the core AlphaCreek advantage over broader SEC intelligence tools: not more signals, but better filing understanding for source-sensitive answers.
Fresh filings through constant SEC EDGAR monitoring
edgar.tools is strong at user-facing monitoring: live streams, watchlists, alerts, and enriched event interpretation. AlphaCreek solves a different monitoring problem.
AlphaCreek continuously monitors SEC EDGAR so the latest covered filings are ingested, structured, and available for agent retrieval. AlphaCreek's public product materials describe filing freshness under five minutes, and AlphaCreek's ingestion pipeline is built to keep up with new 10-K, 10-Q, 20-F, 6-K, and 8-K submissions as they land on EDGAR.
That means an agent asking for the latest filing is not depending on a one-off fetch or a stale cache. The retrieval layer is kept current in the background. AlphaCreek does not position itself as a watchlist or alerting product, but it does ensure that when an agent needs the newest filing, the structured filing map and node reads are already there.
Why four tools can be an advantage
In an MCP workflow, tool definitions are part of the model's available context. A large tool set can be powerful, but it also creates more schema text and more choices for the model. AlphaCreek's four-tool surface is designed around one path: choose the filing, inspect the custom filing map, read the relevant node, cite the output.
That smaller tool surface should reduce tool-schema overhead in theory, especially in multi-turn agent loops. The larger token savings come from targeted node reads instead of whole filings, whole Items, or oversized RAG chunks.
Why citations are the core wedge
Financial users do not only need an answer. They need to verify it. If an agent says a company disclosed weaker demand, changed its risk language, or reported a segment trend, the user should be able to click through to the place in the filing that supports the claim.
AlphaCreek is built around that loop. read_node_content returns node text with CITATION_URL, and the recommended answer style is to place those links next to material claims. In our hosted MCP benchmark, AlphaCreek was the only provider that linked each NVDA risk claim to a unique reader URL with doc_id and node_id — for example, NVIDIA export-controls risk.
AlphaCreek is not the right tool if you need Form 4 insider sentiment, 13F ownership, fund data, adviser data, screening, broad financial ratios, or user-facing alerting workflows. It is the right tool when your agent needs original 10-K, 10-Q, 20-F, 6-K, or 8-K language in a verifiable way.
Best fit
Choose AlphaCreek hosted if you are building a financial AI product, research copilot, diligence workflow, or analyst assistant that needs answer verifiability, a custom-built filing map, and citation-backed SEC filing context.
For the underlying architecture, see Build with AlphaCreek MCP, how to build an SEC filing agent without naive RAG, and AI agents over SEC filings: RAG vs navigation.
Hosted MCP benchmark: AlphaCreek vs edgar.tools vs SEC API
Open-source EdgarTools MCP is not in this hosted comparison — it is covered above. If you are choosing among hosted SEC EDGAR MCP servers, desk research is not enough. We ran the same agent loop, model (gpt-5.4-mini), and three filing questions against AlphaCreek (Free), edgar.tools (Professional), and SEC API (Free) on July 9, 2026. Full methodology, tool traces, and reproduction steps: SEC EDGAR MCP benchmark · GitHub repo.
| Question | AlphaCreek | edgar.tools | SEC API |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 — NVDA risks (with per-claim citations) | Success | Success | Success |
| Q2 — TSLA strategy (5×10-K) | Success | Success | Failed (session terminated) |
| Q3 — AAPL revenue segments | Success | Success | Failed (HTTP 503) |
Balanced read: Where runs completed, answers and LLM costs (~$0.04–0.10 per question) were comparable. The decision driver was citation granularity and retrieval style, not answer quality alone. AlphaCreek read the filing TOC then targeted sub-nodes; edgar.tools and SEC API typically pulled whole sections. On Q1, only AlphaCreek met “cite each claim” with passage-level URLs. edgar.tools repeated a sec.gov index link; SEC API repeated a sec.gov .txt link. SEC API’s Q2/Q3 failures are inconclusive — they may reflect free-tier limits, tool-catalog size (87 tools), or transient errors, not a final capability verdict.
Where SEC API fits: secapi.ai is a broad financial data platform (filings, facts, macro, factors, portfolio) with a large MCP surface. It can return full Item 1A text in one call — fast on Q1 in our run — but citation and agent-configuration burden are on you. Treat SEC API as a hosted option when you need wide financial data APIs and will allowlist tools and design citation UX yourself. Our benchmark used the free tier; paid tiers may change quotas and reliability.
Open source vs hosted: how should you choose?
The practical choice is less about "which MCP has the most tools?" and more about which burden you want to own.
| Your goal | Best fit |
|---|---|
| Free local SEC access for personal research | Open-source EdgarTools MCP |
| Build your own SEC data platform | Open-source EdgarTools MCP |
| XBRL financials, Form 4, 13F, funds, proxy compensation | EdgarTools MCP or edgar.tools hosted |
| Live filing alerts, watchlists, webhooks, and event monitoring | edgar.tools hosted |
| Broader tools with enriched signals and form-aware analysis | edgar.tools hosted |
| Embed cited filing retrieval in a financial AI product | AlphaCreek hosted |
| Help an agent understand the whole filing through a custom-built TOC | AlphaCreek hosted |
| Compare risk factors or MD&A across periods with passage citations | AlphaCreek hosted |
| Keep latest SEC filings continuously available for agent retrieval | AlphaCreek hosted |
| Avoid direct SEC rate-limit and ingestion operations | edgar.tools hosted or AlphaCreek hosted |
| Minimize agent tool-schema overhead for filing reads | AlphaCreek hosted |
| Wide hosted financial data MCP (filings + facts + macro) with your own tool allowlist | SEC API — see benchmark caveats |
If you are a developer experimenting with Claude Desktop, start with open-source EdgarTools MCP. If you want broader tools, monitoring, and enriched SEC signals, explore edgar.tools hosted. If you are building an agent that must understand filings through a custom map and cite original passages in a product workflow, use AlphaCreek hosted. Before you commit to a hosted MCP, read the benchmark evidence on what “cite the source” actually means per provider.
What most SEC EDGAR MCP comparisons get wrong
- More MCP tools = better agent. Tool schema size adds token overhead every turn; workflow clarity often matters more than breadth for filing Q&A.
- SEC access = filing understanding. Raw EDGAR access still leaves parsing, section boundaries, table context, and citation design to you (OSS) or the vendor (hosted).
- Section extraction = navigation. Reading all of Item 1A in one
filing_sectionorsections.getcall differs from inspecting a TOC and reading specific risk-factor nodes — our benchmark tool traces show that gap clearly. - Accession or filing citations = verifiable answers. Pointing to a filing index or
.txtblob is not the same as linking to the sentence or table cell behind the claim. - Free OSS has no cost. At scale you pay in engineering for caching, SEC fair-access limits, monitoring, and agent workflow design.
Recommended setup by use case
Free SEC data in Claude Desktop or Cursor — Install open-source EdgarTools MCP. Set EDGAR_IDENTITY. Start with edgar_company and edgar_read. Example: uvx --from edgartools[ai] edgartools-mcp.
Financial ratios, insider activity, live filings, and signals — edgar.tools hosted. MCP requires OAuth (not the Settings REST key alone). Budget for tier limits; full 10-K section reads may need Professional.
Financial AI product with cited filing answers — AlphaCreek hosted MCP. Workflow: list_filings → get_filing_toc → read_node_content → cite CITATION_URL. See how to build an SEC filing agent without naive RAG.
Structured financials plus original filing language — Use EdgarTools or edgar.tools for XBRL and metrics; use AlphaCreek when the answer must quote and link to the exact disclosure passage.
Evaluating hosted MCPs with evidence — Reproduce our SEC EDGAR MCP benchmark on GitHub before choosing on marketing copy alone.
FAQ
What is the best SEC EDGAR MCP server?
There is no single best SEC EDGAR MCP server for every workflow. Open-source EdgarTools MCP is best for free self-hosted access. edgar.tools hosted is best for broader tools, monitoring, and enriched signals. AlphaCreek hosted is best for answer verifiability, custom-built filing maps, and citation-backed retrieval inside AI agent pipelines.
Is EdgarTools MCP the same as edgar.tools?
No. Open-source EdgarTools MCP is the free, self-hosted MCP server built around the EdgarTools Python library. edgar.tools is the hosted commercial platform around the same ecosystem, with hosted MCP, API access, monitoring, webhooks, enriched intelligence, and a web app.
Why does AlphaCreek only have four MCP tools?
AlphaCreek exposes four read-only tools because the product is focused on one filing-retrieval workflow: find filings, choose the right filing, inspect the table of contents, read targeted nodes, and cite the returned source URLs. In theory, a smaller tool surface can also reduce tool-schema token overhead.
Which option is best for citation-backed SEC filing answers?
AlphaCreek is the strongest fit if the answer must cite exact filing passages. read_node_content returns NODE_ID and CITATION_URL, so the model can place source links next to material claims. In our July 2026 benchmark, edgar.tools and SEC API pointed to filing-level sec.gov resources on Q1; only AlphaCreek linked each claim to a unique passage URL.
Can Claude access SEC filings through MCP?
Yes — via open-source EdgarTools MCP, edgar.tools hosted, AlphaCreek hosted, or other SEC MCP servers. Setup differs: local EDGAR_IDENTITY for OSS, OAuth for edgar.tools MCP, API key or OAuth for AlphaCreek. See Recommended setup by use case.
Are SEC EDGAR MCP servers free?
EdgarTools open source is free (you pay infra and SEC ops). Hosted options have free tiers with quotas. edgar.tools free tier may not expose full 10-K section text via MCP; our benchmark used Professional for edgar.tools. AlphaCreek and SEC API ran on free tiers in the benchmark.
Did you benchmark these MCPs?
Yes. We published a hosted MCP benchmark (AlphaCreek, edgar.tools, SEC API) with open scripts on GitHub. EdgarTools open source was not included — it is self-hosted and covered separately in this guide.
Does AlphaCreek monitor SEC EDGAR for new filings?
Yes. AlphaCreek continuously monitors SEC EDGAR so the latest covered filings are ingested, structured, and available for retrieval. That is different from edgar.tools' user-facing monitoring story. edgar.tools is stronger for alerts, watchlists, and enriched event interpretation. AlphaCreek focuses on keeping the retrieval layer current so agents can access the newest filing through list_filings, get_latest_filing, and the custom-built filing TOC.
Methodology and update context
This comparison is based on the EdgarTools MCP announcement, edgar.tools public product pages, SEC EDGAR fair-access guidance, AlphaCreek MCP documentation, AlphaCreek product materials, competitive research completed in July 2026, and the July 9, 2026 hosted MCP benchmark (GitHub report 084202). Tool counts, pricing, usage limits, and MCP setup details can change quickly. The article focuses on practical buyer paths rather than every GitHub SEC MCP repository because the decision here is mostly about deployment model, citation behavior, and retrieval design.
This article is about technical infrastructure for SEC filing access and financial AI workflows. It is not investment advice.
Final takeaway
The best SEC EDGAR MCP server depends on the job.
Open-source EdgarTools MCP is the best free alternative if you want broad SEC data and can self-host. edgar.tools hosted is best when you want broader tools, monitoring, and enriched signals. AlphaCreek hosted is best when your agent needs answer verifiability, a custom-built filing map, continuously available latest filings, and citation URLs.
The winning question is not "which MCP has the most tools?" It is "which MCP gives my agent the right source context for the answer I need?"
For broader SEC intelligence and signals, choose edgar.tools. For filing-aware agents and verifiable answers, choose AlphaCreek. For evidence on hosted citation behavior, see the SEC EDGAR MCP benchmark.
AlphaCreek gives agents hosted MCP access to structured SEC filings, navigation trees, targeted node reads, and citation URLs.
Build with AlphaCreek MCP · View MCP developer docs · Read the SEC filing agent guide · SEC EDGAR MCP benchmark