The Form 144 Files Dataset contains every Form 144 and Form 144/A filing submitted through SEC EDGAR, beginning in March 1996. Each record represents a single notice of proposed sale of restricted or control securities under Rule 144 of the Securities Act of 1933, filed by an affiliate or restricted-security holder at the time a sell order is placed with a broker or market maker. Records are packaged as subfolders within monthly ZIP archives, each containing a structured JSON metadata file, the raw XML source document, an XHTML rendering, and — in a small minority of filings — optional exhibit attachments. The dataset covers form types 144 (original notices) and 144/A (amendments) and spans from March 1996 to the present, with substantially complete coverage of reporting-issuer securities from April 2023 onward when electronic EDGAR filing became mandatory.
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The Form 144 Files Dataset is built from SEC Form 144 — a notice filing, not a periodic disclosure or registration statement. Form 144 is a concise, structured announcement that an affiliate of a public company, or a holder of restricted securities, intends to sell a specified quantity of securities under Rule 144's safe-harbor conditions. The form collects a fixed set of factual data points: the identity and address of the seller, the seller's relationship(s) to the issuer, the issuer's identity and contact information, a description of the securities to be sold (class, quantity, market value, exchange), the acquisition history of those securities, a summary of sales by the same seller in the preceding three months, and a dated signature. There is no narrative management discussion, no financial statements, and no exhibits beyond occasional supplementary schedules.
The dataset covers the entire population of Form 144 and Form 144/A filings accepted by EDGAR. Before April 13, 2023, paper filing was permitted and common, so EDGAR data from that earlier period undercounts actual Form 144 activity. From April 13, 2023 onward, electronic EDGAR filing became mandatory for sales of securities of Exchange Act reporting issuers, making coverage substantially complete for that population. Notices for securities of non-reporting issuers may still be filed on paper and may not appear in this dataset. Each record is distributed as a subfolder within a monthly ZIP container, and the dataset's file types include TXT, JSON, HTML, PDF, and XML.
A single record in the Form 144 Files Dataset is one SEC Form 144 or Form 144/A filing, identified by a unique accession number. The record is stored as a subfolder within a monthly ZIP archive and contains a structured JSON metadata file, the raw XML source document, an XHTML rendering of the form, and — in a small minority of filings — optional exhibit attachments (typically PDFs). Each record captures a notice of proposed sale of restricted or control securities under Rule 144 of the Securities Act of 1933.
Each record occupies a subfolder within a monthly ZIP archive. The subfolder name is an 18-digit zero-padded accession number with dashes removed (e.g., 000196186325000121 for accession number 0001961863-25-000121). The standard contents are:
metadata.json — EDGAR index-level metadata for the filing.primary_doc.xml — The raw structured XML source document at the folder root.xsl144X01/primary_doc.xml — An XHTML rendering produced by the SEC's XSL stylesheet, in a subfolder named xsl144X01.EX-99 exhibits (e.g., TTAN_Table_II.pdf). These appear at the folder root alongside metadata.json and primary_doc.xml.Image files from the original EDGAR submission are excluded.
A JSON object containing EDGAR index-level information about the filing. It does not duplicate the substantive form content but provides the structural envelope for identification, classification, and linking.
Identification fields:
id: 32-character hexadecimal hash, unique within the dataset.accessionNo: SEC accession number in dashed format (e.g., "0001961863-25-000121").formType: "144" for original notices or "144/A" for amendments.description: Human-readable label such as "Form 144 - Report of proposed sale of securities" or "Form 144/A - Report of proposed sale of securities: [Amend]".filedAt: ISO 8601 timestamp with timezone offset recording when EDGAR accepted the filing.Link fields:
linkToFilingDetails: URL to the XHTML rendering on SEC.gov (the xsl144X01/primary_doc.xml path).linkToTxt: URL to the complete submission text file on EDGAR.linkToHtml: URL to the EDGAR filing index page.linkToXbrl: Always an empty string; XBRL tagging does not apply to Form 144.Document inventory (documentFormatFiles):
An array listing every document in the filing. Each entry has a sequence number, file size, SEC.gov URL, and document type (e.g., "144", "144/A", "EX-99"). The XHTML rendering and the raw XML both appear as sequence "1" entries, distinguished by URL path; the XHTML entry has a blank size field while the raw XML entry carries the actual byte count. The complete submission text file appears as a special entry with blank sequence and type fields. Exhibit attachments, when present, appear with their own sequence numbers and an "EX-99" type.
Entity information (entities):
Two entity objects accompany each filing, though their ordering in the array is not guaranteed:
"(Subject)" suffix on companyName. Carries the issuer's CIK, SEC file number (fileNo), IRS number, state of incorporation, SIC code with sector description, fiscal year end, act (typically "33" for the Securities Act), and a filmNo."(Reporting)" suffix on companyName. Typically carries only CIK, company name, and type. Institutional reporters may also carry fiscal year end and IRS number fields.The dataFiles and seriesAndClassesContractsInformation arrays are always empty for Form 144 filings.
The machine-readable source document, structured under the SEC EDGAR ownership XML namespace (http://www.sec.gov/edgar/ownership). The root element is <edgarSubmission>, which contains two top-level children: <headerData> and <formData>.
<headerData> contains submission-level metadata within a <filerInfo> wrapper:
<submissionType>: "144" or "144/A".<previousAccessionNumber>: Present only in amendment filings (144/A), referencing the accession number of the original filing being amended.<filer> / <filerCredentials>: The filer's CIK and a confirmation code (<ccc>, always masked as XXXXXXXX in public filings).<liveTestFlag>: Always "LIVE" in production filings.<formData> contains the substantive notice content, organized into the following sections in document order:
Issuer information (<issuerInfo>): The issuer's CIK (<issuerCik>), company name (<issuerName>), SEC file number (<secFileNumber>), full mailing address (<issuerAddress> with <com:street1>, optional <com:street2>, <com:city>, <com:stateOrCountry>, <com:zipCode>), contact telephone number (<issuerContactPhone>), the name of the person proposing to sell (<nameOfPersonForWhoseAccountTheSecuritiesAreToBeSold>), and one or more relationship designations (<relationshipsToIssuer> containing <relationshipToIssuer> elements). Relationship values include Director, Officer, 10% owner, and Other; a single person may hold multiple simultaneously.
Securities information (<securitiesInformation>): The class of securities (<securitiesClassTitle>, e.g., "Class A Common"), broker or market maker details (<brokerOrMarketmakerDetails> with name and address), number of units to be sold (<noOfUnitsSold>), aggregate market value (<aggregateMarketValue>), total units outstanding for the class (<noOfUnitsOutstanding>), approximate sale date (<approxSaleDate>), and the securities exchange (<securitiesExchangeName>, e.g., "NYSE", "NASDAQ").
Securities to be sold (<securitiesToBeSold>): One or more occurrences at the <formData> level, each describing a tranche of securities the seller proposes to dispose of. Each entry specifies the class title (<securitiesClassTitle>), date acquired (<acquiredDate>), nature of the acquisition transaction (<natureOfAcquisitionTransaction> — values include "Private purchase", "Stock Option Exercise", "Restricted Stock Vesting", "Open Market Purchase", etc.), the person from whom acquired (<nameOfPersonfromWhomAcquired>), whether the acquisition was a gift (<isGiftTransaction>: "Y" or "N"), amount acquired (<amountOfSecuritiesAcquired>), payment date (<paymentDate>), and nature of payment (<natureOfPayment> — values include "Cash", "Compensation", etc.). Multiple <securitiesToBeSold> elements appear when securities were acquired in separate tranches at different times or through different means.
Prior-sales flag and entries: The flag <nothingToReportFlagOnSecuritiesSoldInPast3Months> sits at the <formData> level (not nested inside any sub-element). When set to "Y", no prior-sale entries follow. When "N", one or more <securitiesSoldInPast3Months> elements appear, each recording seller details (<sellerDetails> with name and address), the class title, date of sale (<saleDate>), amount sold (<amountOfSecuritiesSold>), and gross proceeds (<grossProceeds>). Note: the flag and the remarks may be inconsistent — a filing can set the flag to "Y" while the remarks reference an attached schedule of prior sales.
Remarks (<remarks>): An optional free-text field at the <formData> level. Many filings leave it empty. When populated, it may contain clarifications about the securities, the selling arrangement, the nature of an amendment, or pointers to attached exhibits (e.g., "Please see attached for securities sold during the past 3 months.").
Notice signature (<noticeSignature>): The date of the notice (<noticeDate>) and the electronic signature (<signature>). Signatures may be the reporting person's own name or a longer attorney-in-fact designation (e.g., "/s/ Gary Redman, as a duly authorized representative of Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, as attorney-in-fact for Robin S. Sellers").
A full HTML document produced by applying the SEC's xsl144X01 stylesheet to the raw XML. It presents the identical data in a tabular, human-readable layout that mirrors Form 144 as displayed on SEC.gov. The rendered document uses HTML tables, inline CSS, and labeled form fields. It contains no data beyond what appears in the root-level XML; its purpose is presentation. This is the file a browser displays when navigating to the filing on SEC.gov.
A small fraction of filings include supplementary documents beyond the standard three files. In practice, these are PDF attachments classified as EX-99 exhibits, containing trade addendum schedules, supplementary tables, or broker-related documentation. File names vary by filer (e.g., TTAN_Table_II.pdf, FT_C5_Trade_Addendum.pdf) and are not standardized. These exhibits are included in the dataset folder alongside the metadata and XML files.
Included: Each record contains the metadata.json file, the raw XML source document, the XHTML rendering, and any non-image exhibit attachments from the original EDGAR submission.
Excluded: Image files (PNG, JPG, GIF) from the EDGAR submission are excluded. The complete submission text file (the monolithic SGML-wrapped concatenation stored by EDGAR as a single .txt file) is not included as a separate file, though its URL appears in the metadata. XBRL data files are not applicable to Form 144 and are absent.
Form 144 has undergone a significant format change within the dataset's coverage period.
Plain-text era (1996 through early 2023): For most of the dataset's history, Form 144 was filed as flat text or simple HTML. These filings did not use the structured XML schema. Form content was embedded in free-text or lightly formatted layouts, and machine extraction of individual fields required heuristic parsing across variable, filer-specific formatting. Many filings from this era were originally submitted on paper and only partially digitized by the SEC. The folder contents for these older filings may consist of a .txt or .html primary document rather than the XML/XHTML pair, with correspondingly different internal structure.
Structured XML era (mid-2023 onward): In February 2023, the SEC mandated electronic filing of Form 144 through EDGAR using the structured XML schema. This produced the consistent primary_doc.xml plus xsl144X01/primary_doc.xml pattern. Filings from this era are highly uniform and reliably machine-parseable.
Amendment semantics: Form 144/A filings are complete restatements, not incremental patches. The XML header of an amendment includes a <previousAccessionNumber> element referencing the original filing. The remarks field often explains the reason for the amendment (e.g., "The Issuer CIK has been corrected."). Amendments carry formType "144/A" in the metadata and submissionType "144/A" in the XML.
Entity identification: The two-entity structure in the metadata reflects the dual-party nature of Form 144. The Subject entity is always the issuer; the Reporting entity is the insider or restricted-security holder proposing to sell. These have separate CIKs. Reporting persons may be individuals (with a personal CIK) or institutional holders. The ordering of the two entity objects in the entities array is not fixed — either may appear first.
Relationship multiplicity: A single reporting person may simultaneously hold multiple relationships to the issuer (e.g., both Officer and Director, or Director and 10% owner). The XML schema accommodates this through multiple <relationshipToIssuer> elements within <relationshipsToIssuer>.
Tranche granularity: The <securitiesToBeSold> section can contain multiple elements when the securities being sold were acquired in separate tranches — for example, some shares acquired through option exercises and others through restricted stock vesting. Each tranche is documented individually with its own acquisition history.
Prior-sales flag inconsistency: The <nothingToReportFlagOnSecuritiesSoldInPast3Months> flag and the <remarks> field can be inconsistent. A filing may set the flag to "Y" (nothing to report) while simultaneously referencing an attached PDF schedule of prior sales. Consumers should check both the flag and any exhibit attachments.
Machine extraction: For structured XML filings (2023 onward), field extraction is straightforward using standard XML parsing against the http://www.sec.gov/edgar/ownership namespace. For older plain-text or HTML filings, extraction requires pattern-based or heuristic parsing that accommodates substantial formatting variation across filers and time periods.
Form 144 is filed by the person or entity proposing to sell restricted or control securities under the Rule 144 safe harbor (Securities Act of 1933). The filer is always the selling security holder, not the issuer.
Two categories of filers predominate, and they sometimes overlap:
Affiliates (control persons). Officers, directors, significant shareholders (typically 10%+ holders), and entities they control. An affiliate selling any securities of the issuer — whether restricted or freely tradeable — must comply with Rule 144 conditions, including the Form 144 notice, because those are control securities by definition.
Holders of restricted securities. Persons or entities that acquired securities in unregistered transactions — private placements (Regulation D), compensatory grants, mergers, or Regulation S offerings resold domestically. Non-affiliates holding restricted securities must file Form 144 when selling under Rule 144, subject to the threshold and holding-period rules described below.
The filer may be a natural person (officer, director, employee, outside investor) or an entity (trust, partnership, LLC, corporation, estate). Joint filers appear occasionally for co-owned securities.
Form 144 is event-driven, not periodic. The trigger is placing (or intending to place) a sell order with a broker or market maker for restricted or control securities under Rule 144. The notice must be filed concurrently with placing the order — there is no grace period.
Threshold. The notice requirement applies only when proposed sales during any three-month period exceed either 5,000 shares or $50,000 in aggregate sale price, whichever threshold is reached first. Sales below both thresholds are exempt from the Form 144 requirement, though the seller must still satisfy all other Rule 144 conditions.
Validity window. A filed notice is valid for three months. If the sale is not completed in that window, a new notice (or amendment, Form 144/A) must be filed before any further Rule 144 sale.
Non-affiliates after one year. Since the 2008 Rule 144 amendments, a non-affiliate who has held restricted securities for at least one year is fully exempt from the Form 144 filing requirement (and from volume, manner-of-sale, and public-information conditions). This significantly narrowed the non-affiliate filing population.
Form 144 vs. Form 4. Form 144 is a prospective notice of intent to sell, filed under the Securities Act at the time the sell order is placed. Form 4 is a retrospective report of a completed transaction, filed under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act. A single insider sale may generate both filings, but they serve different statutes, have different deadlines, and carry different content. Not all Form 144 filers are Section 16 persons, and not all Section 16 sellers file Form 144.
Rule 144 vs. Rule 144A. Rule 144A governs resales to qualified institutional buyers and does not involve Form 144. The two rules address different markets and should not be confused.
10b5-1 trading plans. Pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plans do not eliminate the Form 144 obligation. Affiliates selling under such plans must still file Form 144 if relying on Rule 144. Since the 2022 amendments (effective April 2023), Form 144 includes a checkbox indicating whether the sale is pursuant to a 10b5-1 plan.
Amendments (144/A). Amendment filings correct errors, update share counts or prices, or renew an expired three-month notice. They are procedural updates, not a separate regulatory obligation.
Form 144 is a notice-of-intent filing: a forward-looking announcement that a sale of restricted or control securities is planned under Rule 144. It captures a proposed sale at the moment the sell order is placed, before execution. The comparisons below cover the SEC datasets most likely to be confused with the Form 144 Files Dataset or used alongside it.
Form 4 is the closest comparison target. Both filings name the reporting person, the issuer, and the securities involved, and both frequently appear in the same transaction window for the same individual.
Where they differ:
| Dimension | Form 144 | Form 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Timing | Filed when the sell order is placed (pre-trade) | Filed within two business days after the transaction settles (post-trade) |
| Content | Proposed sale quantity, manner of sale, sell-order date, three-month aggregate sales | Actual transaction price, shares transacted, post-transaction holdings, transaction codes |
| Transaction scope | Only proposed sales of restricted or control securities under Rule 144 | All ownership changes: purchases, sales, option exercises, gifts, grants, and other dispositions |
| Filer population | Any person selling restricted or control securities above the Rule 144 threshold, including non-Section-16 holders | Officers, directors, and ten-percent beneficial ownership under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act |
| Structure | Often flat text or HTML; field layout varies across filing periods | Structured XML with standardized transaction tables |
A Form 4 dataset cannot replace the Form 144 Files Dataset when the research question involves planned but unexecuted sales, or when tracking restricted-stock holders who fall outside Section 16 reporting obligations. Conversely, Form 144 does not confirm whether or how much of the proposed sale was actually completed.
A Schedule 13D or Schedule 13G amendment sometimes accompanies a Form 144 notice when a five-percent holder begins selling. Both can signal large-holder dispositions, creating surface-level overlap.
The filings differ sharply in purpose and content. Schedules 13D/G are triggered by crossing the five-percent ownership threshold and focus on accumulation, voting intent, and plans to influence the issuer. Schedule 13D in particular requires narrative disclosure of acquisition purpose and control intentions. Form 144 is narrower and purely mechanical: it notices a specific proposed sale quantity, the date the order was placed, and the manner of sale. It carries no narrative about purpose or control.
The filer populations overlap only at the margin. Most Form 144 filers hold well below five percent and never file a Schedule 13D/G. Schedule 13D/G filers disposing of shares may never file a Form 144 if their securities are not restricted or if the sale does not rely on Rule 144.
Issuers sometimes disclose the adoption or termination of Rule 10b5-1 trading plans via Form 8-K. These disclosures describe a plan's existence or broad parameters, not individual sell orders.
The critical differences: Form 8-K is filed by the issuer, is often discretionary, and describes a plan framework. Form 144 is filed by the selling person, is mandatory when thresholds are met, and specifies a particular sell order being placed under that plan. A single 10b5-1 plan disclosed in one Form 8-K may generate dozens of Form 144 notices over subsequent months.
Form 144/A filings amend previously filed Form 144 notices and are included in this dataset. Amendments may correct errors or update the proposed sale quantity. Unlike Form 4/A, which corrects a report of a completed transaction, Form 144/A modifies a forward-looking notice. The amendment rate is low, and most researchers treat original and amended filings as a single logical unit per planned sale.
Form 144 is the only SEC filing that captures proposed-sale intent at order-placement time. No other dataset provides this pre-trade, order-level signal for restricted and control securities:
Form 144 sits between the decision to sell and the completed transaction. Its filer population also extends beyond Section 16 insiders to any holder of restricted or control securities meeting the filing threshold, giving it broader coverage than the Forms 3/4/5 family for holders who are not officers, directors, or ten-percent owners.
Form 144 filings capture declared intent to sell restricted or control securities before the sale executes. This forward-looking quality makes the Form 144 Files Dataset valuable to teams that track insider disposition behavior, enforce Rule 144 compliance, or build quantitative signals from selling patterns.
Quant teams use Form 144 as an early selling-pressure indicator, often surfacing disposition intent before the corresponding Form 4 appears. Key fields: proposed share count, order-placement date, securities class, and aggregate prior-three-month sales. These feed signals that measure abnormal insider disposition volume and test whether filing clusters predict short-term price moves. Coverage back to 1996 supports long-horizon backtesting.
Fundamental analysts flag filings where officers or directors signal intent to liquidate meaningful positions, using the reporting person's identity, share count, and manner of sale to distinguish routine diversification from potentially informative selling. Event-driven analysts layer Form 144 data against lockup expirations, earnings dates, and corporate actions to detect unusual insider selling around material events.
Attorneys advising insiders on Rule 144 compliance review the dataset to benchmark filing practices, confirm timing and threshold obligations, and examine how peer filers structure notices. They focus on manner-of-sale descriptions, volume and holding-period details, and amendments (Form 144/A). Disclosure counsel at issuers reference peer filings when preparing proxy statements or responding to SEC comment letters on insider selling.
Compliance teams at broker-dealers cross-reference Form 144 notices against their own order records to verify that required filings were made before or concurrent with order placement. At issuers, compliance officers monitor filings by their affiliates to enforce trading policies, pre-clearance rules, and Rule 144 volume limits. The aggregate prior-three-month sales field is critical for confirming volume caps.
Governance analysts at institutional asset managers track persistent or large-scale insider selling that may warrant board engagement or influence say-on-pay and director-election votes. Activist-monitoring teams at corporate advisory firms watch filings by holders of control securities for signals of ownership shifts or pending block trades. Key fields: reporting person identity, securities class, and proposed sale size.
Data engineering teams at financial data vendors, investment firms, and research platforms ingest the full dataset to build normalized insider-activity tables. They parse JSON metadata alongside TXT, HTML, and XML documents, extracting person identifiers, issuer CIKs, share counts, and sale dates. Engineers reconcile Form 144 records with Form 3, 4, and 5 filings to construct unified insider-activity views and flag discrepancies such as notices without a subsequent transaction report.
Forensic teams reconstructing insider-selling timelines around alleged fraud or trading violations rely on the order-placement date, proposed volume, and aggregate prior sales to distinguish routine from anomalous selling. Amendments receive particular scrutiny for changes to quantity or timing that may suggest awareness of forthcoming disclosures. Historical filings establish behavioral baselines for comparison against contested periods.
Due diligence analysts review Form 144 filings by a target's insiders in the period before a transaction announcement. Unusual pre-deal selling by officers or directors can raise regulatory or reputational flags. Buy-side acquirers also check whether target insiders have been systematically reducing stakes, which may inform valuation or retention negotiations.
Teams building retrieval-augmented generation systems for financial analysis use the Form 144 Files Dataset as a structured source for insider-selling queries. The mix of JSON metadata and full-text documents supports both structured filtering and semantic search. The formulaic structure of Form 144 filings makes them well-suited for extraction pipelines feeding question-answering or summarization models.
Quantitative teams extract the proposed share count, order-placement date, and securities class from the XML <securitiesInformation> and <securitiesToBeSold> elements to construct a disposition-intent signal that surfaces before the post-trade Form 4 appears. Clustering multiple Form 144 notices for the same issuer within a short window flags abnormal selling pressure. The dataset's coverage back to 1996 allows backtesting the predictive value of these filing clusters against subsequent price moves.
Broker-dealer compliance officers cross-reference the <securitiesSoldInPast3Months> entries and the <noOfUnitsOutstanding> field against the proposed sale quantity to confirm that a client's cumulative three-month sales remain within Rule 144 volume limits. When the prior-sales flag is set to "Y" but the remarks reference an attached PDF schedule, compliance teams check the EX-99 exhibit to resolve the inconsistency and ensure no unreported prior sales exist.
Forensic analysts reconstruct selling timelines by extracting the order-placement date (<approxSaleDate>), proposed volume (<noOfUnitsSold>), and reporting-person identity from filings surrounding an alleged fraud window. They compare these against the filer's historical baseline of Form 144 activity, using amendments (Form 144/A with <previousAccessionNumber>) to identify quantity or timing changes that may indicate awareness of forthcoming material disclosures.
Data engineering teams join Form 144 records to Form 4 transaction reports using the reporting-person CIK, issuer CIK, securities class, and approximate sale date. This reconciliation flags notices that lack a subsequent transaction report — indicating a cancelled or unexecuted sale — and quantifies the gap between proposed and actual disposition volumes. The metadata.json entity objects provide the paired CIKs needed for the join.
Due diligence analysts filter Form 144 filings by the target issuer's CIK and review the reporting persons' relationship designations (<relationshipsToIssuer>) to identify officers or directors who have been systematically reducing their positions before a deal announcement. The tranche-level acquisition history in <securitiesToBeSold> — including acquisition date, transaction nature, and payment type — reveals whether dispositions involve vested equity compensation or open-market holdings, informing retention and valuation discussions.
Governance teams at institutional asset managers track persistent Form 144 filings by a company's officers and directors, using the proposed sale size relative to <noOfUnitsOutstanding> to gauge the scale of disposition activity. Sustained high-volume selling feeds into say-on-pay assessments and director-election voting decisions. The reporting person's multiple relationship designations (e.g., both Officer and Director) help prioritize which filings warrant board-level engagement.
Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-144-files.json
This endpoint returns metadata about the Form 144 Files Dataset, including its name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date, total records and total size, covered form types, container format, and content file types. It also returns the download URL for the entire dataset and a list of all individual container files with per-container metadata such as size, number of records, last updated timestamp, and download URL. No API key is required to access this endpoint.
Use this endpoint to monitor which containers have been updated in the most recent refresh run, so you can decide which containers to download on a daily basis rather than re-downloading the full dataset each time.
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{
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"datasetId": "1f13365b-9ade-61e2-9194-901c942dc1d5",
3
"datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-144-files.zip",
4
"name": "Form 144 Files Dataset",
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"updatedAt": "2026-04-17T02:53:56.201Z",
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"earliestSampleDate": "1996-03-01",
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"totalRecords": 228471,
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"totalSize": 939623774,
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"formTypes": ["144", "144/A"],
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"containerFormat": "ZIP",
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"fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "HTML", "PDF", "XML"],
12
"containers": [
13
{
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"downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-144-files/2026/2026-04.zip",
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"key": "2026/2026-04.zip",
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"size": 1285934,
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"records": 312,
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"updatedAt": "2026-04-17T02:53:56.201Z"
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}
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]
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}
Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-144-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads the full dataset as a single ZIP archive containing all containers. An API key is required.
Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-144-files/2026/2026-04.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads one individual monthly container file instead of the full dataset. This is useful for incremental updates or when only a specific time period is needed. An API key is required.
The dataset covers SEC Form 144 (notice of proposed sale of securities) and Form 144/A (amendments to previously filed notices). Both form types are filed under Rule 144 of the Securities Act of 1933.
A single record represents one Form 144 or Form 144/A filing, identified by a unique accession number. Each record is stored as a subfolder within a monthly ZIP archive and contains a JSON metadata file, the raw XML source document, an XHTML rendering, and any optional exhibit attachments.
Form 144 must be filed by any person — affiliate or restricted-security holder — proposing to sell restricted or control securities under Rule 144 when the proposed sales during any three-month period exceed 5,000 shares or $50,000 in aggregate sale price. Non-affiliates who have held restricted securities for at least one year are exempt.
The dataset begins with filings from March 1996. Coverage before April 13, 2023 undercounts actual Form 144 activity because paper filing was permitted. From April 13, 2023 onward, electronic EDGAR filing became mandatory for securities of Exchange Act reporting issuers, making coverage substantially complete for that population.
Form 144 is a pre-trade notice filed when a sell order is placed; Form 4 is a post-trade report filed within two business days after the transaction settles. Form 144 covers any holder of restricted or control securities above the Rule 144 threshold, while Form 4 covers only Section 16 insiders (officers, directors, and ten-percent owners). The two filings serve different statutes and carry different content.
Records are packaged in monthly ZIP archives. Each record's subfolder contains a metadata.json file, a primary_doc.xml raw XML document, an XHTML rendering in a xsl144X01 subfolder, and optional PDF exhibit attachments. Older filings (pre-2023) may contain .txt or .html primary documents instead of the XML/XHTML pair.
The dataset is refreshed daily. New Form 144 and Form 144/A filings accepted by EDGAR are added to the corresponding monthly container. The dataset index API endpoint can be polled to identify which containers have been updated in the most recent refresh run.