When a news article quotes a company’s revenue, or a stock app shows its P/E ratio, that number almost always traces back to one place: a filing on SEC EDGAR. Understanding that chain is the key to trusting financial data — including the data on this site.
The answer first
US public companies must file their financial reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission through a system called EDGAR. Inside each filing, the numbers are tagged in XBRL, a machine-readable format that attaches a standard label and time period to every figure. The SEC then republishes those tagged facts through a free company facts API. That API is the upstream source for data vendors, financial terminals and FilingFacts alike.
The chain, step by step
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1. Company files | A 10-K (annual) or 10-Q (quarterly) is submitted to the SEC. |
| 2. EDGAR publishes | The filing becomes public on EDGAR, usually within minutes. |
| 3. XBRL tags the numbers | Each figure carries a concept (e.g. Revenues), a value, a period and a unit. |
| 4. SEC exposes an API | The companyfacts endpoint serves every tagged fact as JSON. |
| 5. Sites consume it | Vendors and tools read the API and present the data. |
What XBRL tags look like
XBRL turns a line on a printed statement into a structured record. A revenue figure might be tagged as the concept RevenueFromContractWithCustomerExcludingAssessedTax, with a value, a fiscal period (FY), a form (10-K) and a date range. That structure is what lets a computer reliably pick “annual revenue for fiscal 2025” out of thousands of facts — and it’s exactly how this site builds its dataset. The catch is that the same concept can be tagged under different labels by different filers, which is why robust extraction has to try several concepts. See our methodology for the precise concepts we use.
Using EDGAR yourself
You don’t need any special access:
- Read a filing: search a company on SEC EDGAR and open its latest 10-K.
- Get the data: the SEC’s company facts API returns every XBRL fact for a company as JSON, keyed by its Central Index Key (CIK).
- Be a good citizen: the SEC asks you to send a descriptive User-Agent and keep requests under about 10 per second.
Why this matters for trust
Because the original source is public, any figure can be verified. Every company page here links to that company’s EDGAR filing list, and every ranking is built from the same public facts. If a number looks wrong, you can always check it against the primary filing — which you should, because data extraction is never perfect.
Keep reading
Now that you know where the data comes from, learn to read the document it lives in: how to read a 10-K.
Figures here are factual data compiled from SEC filings — not investment advice; figures may contain errors or lag the original filing; verify on SEC EDGAR before relying on them.