Questions / How to read a filing
Where to find insider, Congress, contract and lobbying data for free: the official sources
By OQRO. Published . 3 min read. Last reviewed .
The short answer
Every dataset OQRO uses starts as a free public record: SEC EDGAR for insider trades, planned sales, fund holdings and 5% stakes; the House Clerk and Senate eFD sites for Congress trades; USAspending.gov for federal contracts; and the House and Senate lobbying databases. OQRO, a paid tracker of these disclosures, adds plain-language lines, matching to companies and alerts. It does not replace the official filings, which remain the authority.
The sources
| Data | Official source | What you can do there |
|---|---|---|
| Insider trades (Forms 3, 4, 5), planned sales (Form 144), 5% stakes (13D and 13G), fund holdings (13F) | SEC EDGAR | Search filings by company, person or form, including full-text search of filings |
| The same insider data in bulk | SEC Insider Transactions Data Sets | Download flattened tables extracted from Forms 3, 4 and 5, quarterly |
| 13F holdings in bulk | SEC Form 13F Data Sets | Download flattened tables extracted from 13F submissions, quarterly |
| House member trades | Clerk of the House, financial disclosure | Search and download periodic transaction reports and annual forms |
| Senate member trades | Senate electronic financial disclosure | Search Senate reports (the site refused automated requests when we tried, so open it in a browser) |
| Federal contracts | USAspending API | Query awards and recipients through an API that needs no authorization |
| Lobbying reports | Clerk of the House, lobbying disclosure | Read the guidance and filed LD-1 and LD-2 reports |
All were opened on 9 October 2026 except where noted.
What each one is good for
EDGAR is the primary record for everything the SEC receives. Its data-access page says anyone can access and download the information for free, and sets a current maximum request rate of 10 requests per second, asking users to moderate requests. The SEC's data sets page says its insider data sets are presented without change from the as-filed submissions and cover January 2006 to September 2026, and warns that they are not a substitute for the filings. The 13F data sets run from July 2013 to August 2026 and carry the same warning.
The House and Senate sites publish the reports as the members filed them. The House Ethics Committee's form instructions say what must be reported, as covered in how to read a periodic transaction report. Some filings are scans of paper, which a search cannot read as data.
USAspending is a federal website with the contract records, and how to find a public company's contracts explains why a search by ticker will not work.
Lobbying reports are filed with both chambers. See what an LD-2 contains.
What you have to do yourself
Working directly from the sources takes some assembly:
- Match names to companies. A person, a fund or a subsidiary appears as a name, and the same company may appear under several.
- Decide what each record is. A Form 4 line may be a purchase, a grant or a tax withholding, as the transaction codes show.
- Keep dates apart: the transaction date, the filing date and, for a 13F, the quarter end are different things.
- Watch for amendments, which replace earlier filings.
- Check back often, since new filings arrive every business day.
None of this is hard for one company and one form. It becomes work across thousands of companies and five kinds of record.
What OQRO adds
OQRO is a paid service that reads these same sources. In its coverage page, counted on 9 October 2026, it lists 4,963 US-listed companies, 31,595 people, 516 funds and about 409,733 disclosure records. It adds:
- One plain sentence for each filing, with the official document linked beside it.
- Matching of people, funds and contract recipients to companies, with the method in the methodology.
- Alerts when a new filing arrives for a company or person a reader follows.
- The four dates kept separate, and ranges kept as ranges.
It also has limits, listed on the coverage page: it follows a selected set of funds, reads no scanned paper filings, and has no options flow or price targets. Every record links to the original, which is the authority if anything differs.
Which to use
For one company and one form, the official site is enough and free. For tracking many names, comparing sources side by side or getting alerts, a tracker saves the assembly. OQRO describes what was filed and does not predict or recommend. For how it compares with other trackers, see OQRO and other public-disclosure trackers.
Sources
- SEC EDGAR full-text search (opened October 9, 2026)
- SEC: accessing EDGAR data (opened October 9, 2026)
- SEC Insider Transactions Data Sets (opened October 9, 2026)
- SEC Form 13F Data Sets (opened October 9, 2026)
- Office of the Clerk, US House of Representatives, financial disclosure reports (opened October 9, 2026)
- Senate electronic financial disclosure search (refused automated requests; open it in a browser) (opened October 9, 2026)
- House Ethics Committee, Periodic Transaction Report form and instructions (opened October 9, 2026)
- USAspending API documentation (opened October 9, 2026)
- Lobbying Disclosure, Office of the Clerk, US House of Representatives (opened October 9, 2026)
- OQRO coverage page (opened October 9, 2026)
- OQRO methodology (opened October 9, 2026)
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This explains public filings in plain words. It is not legal or investment advice. Corrections: contact page.