The Form 485APOS Files Dataset is a complete corpus of post-effective amendments filed under Rule 485(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 by registered open-end management investment companies, exchange-traded funds, unit investment trusts, and insurance-company separate accounts. Each record is one EDGAR submission of Form 485APOS — the substantive-change vehicle used to amend an already-effective registration statement on Form N-1A, Form N-3, Form N-4, Form N-6, Form N-8B-2, or Form S-6 — bundled as a single accession-number folder containing the submission metadata, the main amended registration document, and every textual exhibit attached to that submission. The dataset spans EDGAR submissions from January 1994 through the present and is delivered as monthly ZIP containers partitioned <year>/<year>-<month>.zip, with file types TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF retained and EDGAR image attachments (.jpg, .gif) deliberately pruned.
Programmatically retrieve the full list of dataset archive files, download URLs and dataset metadata.
Dataset Index JSON API
Download the entire dataset as a single archive file.
Download Entire Dataset:
Download a single container file (e.g. monthly archive) from the dataset.
Download Single Container:
The dataset captures the full population of Form 485APOS filings transmitted to EDGAR — the post-effective amendment path used when an investment-company registrant makes substantive changes to a registration statement that has already been declared effective. Under Rule 485(a), such an amendment becomes effective automatically on the sixtieth day after filing (or seventy-fifth day where a new series is registered), giving the staff a review window before the new disclosures go live. Typical drivers include adding a new fund series or share class to an existing trust, restructuring fees, replacing an investment objective or principal investment strategy, changing an adviser or sub-adviser, restating risks, materially altering an insurance contract's separate-account features, or rolling forward audited financials together with substantive prospectus revisions.
The registration form actually being amended depends on the registrant type: open-end mutual funds and ETFs amend Form N-1A, variable-annuity separate accounts amend Form N-4, variable-life insurance separate accounts amend Form N-6, and unit investment trusts amend Form N-8B-2 / S-6. The 485APOS filing is the carrier; the amended N-1A / N-4 / N-6 content is the cargo. The dataset spans EDGAR submissions from January 1994 to the present, is delivered as monthly ZIP containers, and ships every textual document that was physically transmitted in each submission alongside a structured metadata.json describing the filing event.
One record in the Form 485APOS Files Dataset is one EDGAR submission of Form 485APOS. On disk, the record is a single accession-number folder bundling the metadata describing the submission, the main amended registration document, and every exhibit the registrant attached to that submission. The accession folder is the atomic unit: it preserves the original EDGAR submission as it was filed, with image attachments stripped but every textual document retained.
A record is therefore not a single prospectus, a single fund, or a single share class — it is one filing event, which can carry anything from a single thin amendment document to a fully reissued statutory prospectus, Statement of Additional Information, and a long ladder of governance, advisory, distribution, and compliance exhibits.
The dataset is delivered as monthly ZIP containers partitioned <year>/<year>-<month>.zip. Inside a monthly archive, each record occupies its own folder named after the EDGAR accession number with the dashes stripped — for example, accession 0001193125-25-301580 becomes folder 000119312525301580. Inside that folder the record contains:
metadata.json describing the submission,1,The file-types found in the dataset are TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF. In modern records, document files are predominantly .htm/.html, with occasional legacy .txt for older filings and supplementary .pdf when the registrant chose to include a PDF rendition. Image attachments (.jpg, .gif) submitted to EDGAR are deliberately excluded from the dataset, although they still appear as GRAPHIC rows in the metadata document index for completeness. The metadata.json is the only JSON file in a record.
Filenames typically encode both the document role and the filer's filing-agent toolchain. The main document usually contains the literal token 485a or 485apos (e.g., d45957d485apos.htm, reckoner485a.htm). Exhibit filenames embed the regulation reference — dex99e5.htm for Exhibit 99.(e)(5), ex9928i1.htm for Exhibit 99.28(i)(1), dex99n1.htm for the Rule 18f-3 plan exhibit. Filing-agent prefixes are stable across the dataset: d<id> for RR Donnelley submissions (filer 0001193125), ea<id> for EdgarAgents (filer 0001213900), fp<id> for FilePoint (filer 0001398344), tm<id> for Toppan Merrill (filer 0001104659); Workiva/Wdesk-generated documents are identifiable by an <!-- Document created using Wdesk --> HTML comment in the body.
Each record carries exactly one metadata.json describing the EDGAR submission as a whole. The intentional, structured fields are:
formType — always "485APOS".accessionNo — the canonical dashed accession (e.g., "0001193125-25-301580"), the unique EDGAR identifier for the filing event.description — the human-readable form label, typically "Form 485APOS - Post-effective amendment [Rule 485(a)]".filedAt — the EDGAR receipt timestamp as ISO 8601 with timezone offset, e.g., "2025-11-28T11:51:18-05:00".linkToFilingDetails — URL to the primary document on SEC.gov.linkToTxt — URL to the consolidated SGML submission text file on SEC.gov.linkToHtml — URL to the EDGAR filing-index HTML page.linkToXbrl — URL to the XBRL instance document; for 485APOS this is typically an empty string because most 485APOS filings carry no separately-filed XBRL instance.id — a 32-character hex hash used as the dataset-internal record identifier.documentFormatFiles — an ordered array describing every document attached to the submission. Each item carries sequence, size (bytes, expressed as a string), documentUrl, description, and type. The first entry is invariably the 485APOS document itself; the trailing entry, with blank sequence, blank type, and a description of "Complete submission text file", points at the full SGML bundle on EDGAR but is not shipped inside the container.dataFiles — typically an empty array [] for 485APOS, since separately-filed structured data attachments are rare for these filings.entities — an array of registrant/filer entity records. Each entity carries cik, companyName (with role suffix such as "(Filer)"), fileNo, filmNo, irsNo, act ("33" for the Securities Act and "40" for the Investment Company Act of 1940), stateOfIncorporation, fiscalYearEnd (MMDD), and type. The same registrant typically appears twice — once under Act 33 and once under Act 40 — because investment-company registrations are jointly filed under both statutes; this duplication is intentional and is not a data-quality issue.seriesAndClassesContractsInformation — an array describing the EDGAR series and class identifiers taxonomy attached to this filing. Each series entry carries the EDGAR series identifier (e.g., "S000006642") and a name. Each classesContracts child entry carries the EDGAR class/contract identifier (e.g., "C000018129"), a name (the share-class label or contract label), and an optional ticker (present for traded ETFs and mutual-fund classes; absent for variable-insurance contracts and for series that exist only as CIK-level vehicles).The shape and density of seriesAndClassesContractsInformation is the strongest in-record signal of registrant type: a single series with one class denotes an institutional mutual fund or single-strategy product; multiple series each with multiple classes denotes a multi-strategy fund family or ETF series trust; a single contract with no ticker denotes a variable-annuity or variable-life separate account.
Every document file inside a record — whether the main 485APOS body or any exhibit — is wrapped in an EDGAR SGML document envelope, even when the inner payload is HTML. The wrapper carries header pseudo-tags (<TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, <DESCRIPTION>) that mirror the corresponding entry in documentFormatFiles, then opens a <TEXT> block enclosing the actual payload. A typical exhibit opens:
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<DOCUMENT>
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<TYPE>EX-99.(E)(5)
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<SEQUENCE>3
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<FILENAME>d45957dex99e5.htm
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<DESCRIPTION>FORM OF DEALER AGREEMENT USED BY NATIXIS DISTRIBUTION
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<TEXT>
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<HTML>...</HTML>
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</TEXT>
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</DOCUMENT>
The main document follows the same convention, with <TYPE>485APOS and <SEQUENCE>1. This envelope is load-bearing for extraction: any HTML parser must either accept the SGML preamble and trailing tags or strip them before handing the inner HTML off to a renderer. The pseudo-tags allow a reader to associate the on-disk file with the metadata index without parsing the HTML body.
The main 485APOS HTML document is heavyweight — a single file commonly runs 1–2 MB and well over 100,000 lines after decompression — because it bundles the full statutory prospectus and Statement of Additional Information for every series and class being amended, marked up with extensive inline CSS produced by the registrant's filing agent. Its internal structure mirrors the registration form being amended.
For mutual funds and ETFs (amending Form N-1A), the main document typically contains, in order:
333-XXXXXX Securities Act registration number and 811-XXXXX Investment Company Act registration number), the form being amended, the registrant's principal office address, the agent for service of process, and the box-checked basis for filing under Rule 485(a).For variable-insurance separate accounts (amending Form N-4 or N-6), the main document instead carries contract-level disclosures: contract description and available investment options (the underlying funds offered as sub-accounts), fees and charges (mortality and expense charge, administration charge, surrender charge, transfer fees), death benefits, annuity payout options, contract loans where applicable, and tax considerations, followed by the SAI-equivalent contract-level material and signatures.
Where the SEC's inline-XBRL mandate applies, the structured tags are embedded directly inside the HTML body of the main document rather than as a separate file. Inline XBRL has been required for the risk/return summary information in N-1A prospectuses since 2020 and for the variable-contract summary information in N-4/N-6 prospectuses since 2022. Because 485APOS does not produce a separately-filed XBRL instance, the linkToXbrl field is typically empty and dataFiles is typically [] even when the body is fully tagged.
Beyond the main 485APOS document, a record commonly carries exhibits drawn from the exhibit table of the form being amended. Exhibit type codes follow the EDGAR EX-99.(X)(Y) convention used for investment-company registrations, where the parenthetical letters and numerals map to the exhibit list of Form N-1A (for mutual funds and ETFs) or to the parallel exhibit lists of Forms N-4 and N-6 (for variable-insurance contracts). Exhibit codes routinely seen in records include:
EX-99.(A)(III) — amendment to the declaration of trust.EX-99.(B) — amended and restated by-laws.EX-99.(D)(6)(III) — investment-advisory agreement addendum.EX-99.(E)(5) — form of dealer agreement used by the distributor.EX-99.(H)(1)(X) — transfer-agency agreement amendment.EX-99.(H)(4)(III), EX-99.(H)(4)(IV), EX-99.(H)(4)(V) — fee-waiver and expense-reimbursement undertakings.EX-99.(N)(1) — Rule 18f-3 multi-class plan.EX-99.(P)(II) — code of ethics adopted by the adviser, sub-adviser, or distributor.EX-99.30(R)(I), EX-99.N(II) — Form N-6 / variable-contract exhibits such as the initial summary prospectus and power of attorney.GRAPHIC — image attachment present in the metadata index but pruned from the on-disk record.Each exhibit is a separately-tagged HTML file under its own SGML envelope, and the same type value appears both in the SGML wrapper and in the corresponding documentFormatFiles[*].type. Exhibit content is heterogeneous: declarations of trust and by-laws are long legal instruments; advisory and dealer agreements are contracts with defined terms, fee schedules, and signature blocks; fee-waiver letters are short undertakings; the Rule 18f-3 plan is a board-adopted plan describing the rights and expenses of each share class; codes of ethics are policy documents; powers of attorney are witnessed signatures by trustees and officers authorizing a designated person to sign future filings on their behalf.
The container ships the full textual content of every document in the EDGAR submission: the main 485APOS document, every exhibit document, and the per-record metadata.json describing them. What is intentionally excluded is image content — .jpg and .gif attachments accepted by EDGAR are pruned uniformly across the dataset, even though they remain referenced as GRAPHIC entries inside documentFormatFiles. The consolidated .txt SGML bundle that EDGAR produces for the whole submission is referenced in metadata.json via linkToTxt and as the trailing blank-type row in documentFormatFiles, but is not extracted into the container — the dataset ships the individual constituent documents instead, each in its own envelope.
Attachments incorporated by reference to an earlier filing — a common practice for declarations of trust, by-laws, and advisory agreements that have not changed — are not present in the record because the registrant did not refile them. The exhibit list inside the main document body is the authoritative inventory of what the filing legally relies on; documentFormatFiles is the inventory of what the filing physically transmitted. To retrieve an exhibit incorporated by reference, the reader must follow the cross-reference to the earlier accession.
Although every record shares formType: "485APOS" and the same metadata schema, the internal shape varies markedly by registrant type:
seriesAndClassesContractsInformation carries one or more contracts (no tickers), the main document is a contract prospectus on Form N-4 or N-6 rather than a fund prospectus, and exhibits include initial summary prospectuses (EX-99.30(R)(I)), participation agreements with underlying funds, and contract-specific powers of attorney.metadata.json and one .htm.The dataset's record structure reflects the layered evolution of EDGAR submission format over more than three decades. The outer SGML document envelope (<DOCUMENT><TYPE>...<TEXT>...</TEXT></DOCUMENT>) has been a stable EDGAR convention since 1993 and is therefore present uniformly across the dataset. What changed inside the envelope is the payload format and the regulatory disclosure requirements:
<TEXT>, with prospectus tables rendered as fixed-width ASCII and exhibit instruments as plain text. These records account for the .txt file-type in the dataset..htm/.html files inside the SGML envelope.S000xxxxxx and C000xxxxxx codes that populate seriesAndClassesContractsInformation) was introduced in 2006 with the SEC's adoption of mandatory series and class identifiers for investment companies; records filed before that are not annotated with these identifiers, so the seriesAndClassesContractsInformation array is sparser or empty for older filings.EX-99.30(R)(I)) and a restructured contract summary; older variable-contract records do not.The container format itself is normalized to monthly ZIPs across all years, and image attachments are pruned uniformly across all eras, so the on-disk packaging of records is consistent even though the payload format inside the SGML envelope evolves with the underlying SEC rules.
A few nuances matter when working with these records.
accessionNo, entities[*].cik, and the EDGAR series and class identifiers in seriesAndClassesContractsInformation.entities, once under act: "33" and once under act: "40", because investment companies are jointly registered under both Acts.documentFormatFiles lists only what was physically transmitted in this submission.description text on each documentFormatFiles entry is registrant-supplied free text, useful for human triage but inconsistent across filers. The type code is the structured field for grouping and retrieval..htm file contains an SGML preamble before the <HTML> tag; HTML parsers that strictly require well-formed input must skip or strip the preamble (and the trailing </TEXT></DOCUMENT> tags) before parsing.filedAt and reconcile across form types outside this dataset.linkToXbrl, dataFiles) will appear empty even when the body carries tagged risk/return summary or contract-summary facts.Form 485APOS is filed exclusively by registrants with an already-effective registration statement under both the Securities Act of 1933 and the Investment Company Act of 1940. The filer is always the registrant whose registration statement is being amended. Three categories of registrants use the form:
Closed-end funds, business development companies, and operating companies do not use the 485 series. Closed-end funds amend on Form N-2 outside Rule 485; operating companies amend Forms S-1 or S-3 under Rule 462. The 485 regime is reserved for the continuously offered, perpetually registered open-end and variable-contract model.
Form 485APOS is the substantive-change path for post-effective amendments under Rule 485(a) of the Securities Act of 1933. It is registrant-initiated; nothing externally compels a 485APOS at fixed intervals, although the annual prospectus update required by Section 10(a)(3) of the Securities Act often serves as the occasion when bundled substantive changes are filed.
Typical triggering events:
Effectiveness timing. A 485APOS becomes effective automatically:
The Commission may accelerate effectiveness on registrant request, or may delay or suspend it if staff review surfaces issues. During the waiting period, the staff may issue comments; the registrant typically responds with a further 485APOS, converts to a 485BPOS once issues are resolved into ministerial form, or withdraws the amendment.
Form 485APOS occupies a narrow slot in the investment-company disclosure lifecycle: substantive post-effective amendments to open-end fund, variable product, and UIT registration statements, filed under Rule 485(a) with a 60-day (or 75-day, for new series) delayed effectiveness. The most useful comparisons are with its Rule 485(b) sibling, the underlying N-series and S-6 registration statements, the Rule 497 prospectus deliveries that follow, the periodic fund reports that share subject matter, and the post-effective amendment vehicles used outside the fund regime.
485BPOS is the nearest neighbor. Both amend the same underlying registration statement and update prospectus and SAI content, but the two are split by Rule 485's (a)/(b) gate:
The two are sequential, not substitutable: a fund typically files 485APOS, clears comments, and then files Form 485BPOS filings to put the amendment into final effective form. Use 485APOS to detect substantive product change; use 485BPOS for the canonical current prospectus and the annual update cadence.
These are the originating registration statements that 485APOS amends:
Initial filings on these forms are infrequent (typically one per registrant or new trust). 485APOS is the recurring amendment stream that follows. The initial registration tells you when a fund came into existence; the 485APOS series tells you how it has been reshaped. Together they reconstruct the full registration history.
Rule 497 filings deliver the final prospectus, summary prospectus (Form 497K), or supplement to EDGAR after effectiveness. Content overlaps with 485APOS — same fee tables, risk language, strategy summaries — but the role differs:
Use 485APOS for the legally operative amendment; use 497/497K for what investors actually receive and for interim supplements between amendments.
Form N-CSR (annual) and Form N-CSRS (semi-annual) cover the same funds but serve the opposite direction in time. They are backward-looking certified reports — audited financials, schedule of investments, MD&A of performance, governance disclosures — filed under the Investment Company Act. 485APOS is forward-looking offering disclosure filed under the Securities Act: prospective fees, policies, and strategies under which the fund will operate. Subject matter overlaps; statutory regime, cadence, and content type do not.
Form N-PORT (monthly portfolio holdings, quarterly public) and Form N-CEN (annual census of fund operations) are structured tabular datasets focused on holdings and operational metadata. They contain no prospectus narrative. 485APOS is document-centric and primarily narrative, with no holdings disclosure. Use N-PORT/N-CEN for portfolio composition and operational statistics; use 485APOS for fee, strategy, and risk-disclosure analysis.
Form 24F-2 is the short annual fee-payment notice open-end funds use to register additional shares under Rule 24f-2. It shares the open-end fund Securities Act machinery with 485APOS but carries no prospectus content and effects no disclosure changes. The two are complementary maintenance filings: 24F-2 handles share-volume registration fees; 485APOS handles substantive disclosure amendments.
POS AM and POS EX are post-effective amendments to operating-company registration statements (Form S-1, Form S-3, S-11, F-1, etc.). They are functionally analogous to 485APOS but apply to a different filer universe and lack the Rule 485(a) automatic-effectiveness mechanism — POS AM amendments typically require staff acceleration. Their content is corporate (business, use of proceeds, issuer financials), not fund-specific (prospectus, SAI, fee table). Confusing POS AM with 485APOS produces the wrong filer population entirely: operating companies versus registered funds and insurance separate accounts.
485APOS is distinct as the dataset of substantive, non-immediately-effective post-effective amendments to fund and variable-product registration statements:
To detect when funds materially change strategy, add series, restructure share classes, or rewrite risk and fee disclosure, 485APOS is the primary signal. Adjacent datasets fill in the timeline before, after, and around it, but none substitute for the substantive post-effective amendment record itself.
Because Rule 485(a) post-effective amendments carry substantive changes to a fund's prospectus, SAI, fee table, or share-class structure, the corpus is consumed by legal, compliance, fund operations, product strategy, quantitative research, and data engineering roles, each drawing on different parts of the record.
In-house counsel and compliance staff use the corpus as a working library of their own amendments and a benchmarking set against peers. They redline prospectus, SAI, and fee-table text against current registration statements, confirm disclosure changes match underlying portfolio or fee decisions, and manage the 60-day Rule 485(a) clock. Metadata fields (CIK, accession, series/class IDs, filing date) drive internal trackers for pending amendments, board approvals, and effectiveness dates.
Fund attorneys compare drafting choices across registrants when preparing 485APOS submissions. They mine principal strategy and risk sections for peer language on derivatives, options-overlay, buffered, and ESG mandates, study fee-waiver and 12b-1 disclosure, and review SAI sections on securities lending and fund-of-funds investing. The dataset supports template assembly for new series and share class roll-outs and anticipating likely staff comments.
Operations teams operationalize the changes: new share classes on the books, CUSIP and ticker linkages, fee schedules, sales-load and breakpoint logic, and 12b-1 accruals. They rely on the structured fee table, share class IDs in metadata, and prospectus sections on minimums, exchange privileges, and conversion features to drive change-management workflows from filing through effectiveness.
Buy-side product groups track competitor launches, restructurings, repricings, fee-waiver expirations, name changes, and strategy shifts. Metadata fields roll activity up by fund family, vintage, and category; prospectus narrative reveals positioning. Output feeds quarterly competitive scorecards and decisions on launching, rationalizing, or repricing a manager's own lineup.
Researchers use the 1994-present history to build point-in-time panels of series launch dates, share-class additions and terminations, contractual versus net expense ratios, and changes in stated benchmark or strategy. The corpus underpins survivorship-bias correction, fund-launch event studies, fee-trend analysis, and feature engineering for flow and performance models.
Engineering teams at fund-data vendors, screening platforms, and broker-dealer research systems parse metadata for accession-level identifiers, extract structured fee tables and share-class details, and run NLP over prospectus and SAI text to populate objective, strategy, risk, and benchmark fields. The 60-day window provides predictable lead time for change-detection pipelines.
Academics studying fee competition, share-class proliferation, mutual-fund-to-ETF conversions, and product strategy use the historical depth for longitudinal samples, fee tables for empirical work on management and 12b-1 fees, and prospectus text for analysis of disclosure responses to rule changes.
Teams building retrieval systems for the asset-management sector use 485APOS documents as a high-value corpus for prospectus, SAI, and fee-table question answering. The metadata-plus-documents structure indexes cleanly by CIK, series, and class, and successive versions of the same registration support evaluation on prior states. Output: compliance copilots, advisor research assistants, and internal fund-complex knowledge bases.
Examiners and policy analysts at the relevant securities regulator reference 485APOS filings to confirm what registrants have committed to in effective registration statements. Focus areas include prospectus and SAI sections on investment policies, valuation, liquidity, and conflicts, plus the fee table for compensation arrangements. Supports exam preparation, sweep reviews, and rulemaking impact work.
Reporters covering registered funds surface new product launches, fee cuts, mandate shifts, fund mergers, and named-PM changes by filtering metadata by filer and date and reading the redlined prospectus sections. Supports beat reporting, fund-launch round-ups, and analytical pieces on consolidation and pricing.
The dataset supports a small number of high-value workflows tied to specific record components.
Diff seriesAndClassesContractsInformation across successive accessions for the same entities[*].cik to surface newly added classesContracts entries (new C000xxxxxx IDs and tickers) under existing S000xxxxxx series. Cross-reference each new class against the fee table and the Rule 18f-3 plan exhibit (EX-99.(N)(1)) in the same accession folder to capture the load structure, 12b-1 rate, and minimum investment associated with each class. Output feeds competitive launch trackers and broker-dealer platform onboarding queues during the 60-day Rule 485(a) window.
Extract the shareholder-fee and annual-operating-expense tables from the main 485APOS HTML (the standardized N-1A summary block, inline-XBRL tagged from 2020 onward) and join them by series ID across filedAt to build a point-in-time panel of management fees, 12b-1 fees, other expenses, acquired fund fees, and net expense ratios. Pair each filing with its fee-waiver exhibits (EX-99.(H)(4)(III)/(IV)/(V)) to capture the contractual waiver amount, expiration date, and recoupment terms. Supports fee-trend research, expense-cap-expiration alerts, and survivorship-corrected expense panels.
Pull the "Principal Investment Strategies" and "Principal Risks" sections from the fund-summary block of the main document for a target peer group (filtered by registrant CIK list and filedAt window). Cluster passages on derivatives use, options-overlay mechanics, buffered/defined-outcome structures, ESG screens, or crypto exposure to assemble drafting precedents for outside 1940 Act counsel preparing a new amendment. The 60-day staff review window means recent 485APOS language is a leading indicator of what the staff is currently accepting.
Watch for EX-99.(D)(6)(III) (advisory agreement addenda), new sub-advisory agreement exhibits, and EX-99.(E)(5) (form of dealer agreement) across the corpus, joined to the "Management" section of the main prospectus where named advisers, sub-advisers, and portfolio managers are disclosed. Combined with entities[*].cik and series IDs, this reconstructs adviser/sub-adviser turnover and distribution-arrangement changes per series over time, feeding manager-research databases and conflict-of-interest reviews.
For records where seriesAndClassesContractsInformation carries contracts without tickers (Form N-4 / N-6 filings), parse the contract prospectus for additions to the underlying-fund menu, changes to mortality and expense charges, surrender-charge schedules, and rider/death-benefit option additions. The initial-summary-prospectus exhibit (EX-99.30(R)(I)) in post-2020 variable-contract records gives a structured shorter-form view of the same changes. Supports separate-account product surveillance and underlying-fund participation-agreement tracking by life insurers.
Filter on registrants whose 485APOS amendments rewrite share-class structure into an ETF series, drop legacy A/C/I classes from seriesAndClassesContractsInformation, and add ETF tickers; corroborate with declaration-of-trust amendments (EX-99.(A)(III)) and revised by-laws (EX-99.(B)). Anchored on accessionNo and filedAt, this assembles a timestamped event list of conversion announcements ahead of their 60-day effectiveness, useful for flow-impact studies and competitive intelligence.
Index each accession folder as a unit: metadata.json for filer, series, class, and ticker facets; the main 485APOS HTML chunked by N-1A section heading (Objective, Fees, Strategies, Risks, Management, SAI); exhibits keyed by type code. Successive accessions for the same series provide built-in version pairs for evaluating retrieval over prior prospectus states. Output feeds compliance copilots, advisor research assistants, and internal fund-complex knowledge bases that need authoritative, citation-anchored answers from the operative offering document.
Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-485apos-files.json
This endpoint returns the dataset metadata and the list of available containers. Metadata includes the dataset name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date, total records and total size, covered form types (485APOS), the container format (ZIP), and the included file types (TXT, JSON, HTML, PDF). The response also contains the full dataset download URL and a containers array, where each entry describes a single monthly archive with its key, size, records, updatedAt timestamp, and downloadUrl. Use this endpoint to monitor which containers were updated in the most recent refresh run and to decide which monthly archives to pull on a daily basis.
This endpoint does not require an API key.
Example response:
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{
2
"datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-6902-82f9-433a437b40cb",
3
"datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-485apos-files.zip",
4
"name": "Form 485APOS Files Dataset",
5
"updatedAt": "2026-04-25T02:51:19.000Z",
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"earliestSampleDate": "1994-01-01",
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"totalRecords": 219136,
8
"totalSize": 9582423801,
9
"formTypes": ["485APOS"],
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"containerFormat": "ZIP",
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"fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "HTML", "PDF"],
12
"containers": [
13
{
14
"downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-485apos-files/2025/2025-11.zip",
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"key": "2025/2025-11.zip",
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"size": 41258392,
17
"records": 612,
18
"updatedAt": "2025-12-01T02:51:19.000Z"
19
}
20
]
21
}
Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-485apos-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads the complete dataset as a single ZIP archive covering all 485APOS filings from the earliest sample date (1994-01-01) to the latest refresh. This endpoint requires an API key.
Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-485apos-files/2025/2025-11.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads one monthly container archive, which is useful for incremental updates or when only a specific month is needed. Containers are organized by year and named by year-month. This endpoint requires an API key.
The dataset covers Form 485APOS — the post-effective amendment to a registration statement filed under Rule 485(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 by registered open-end investment companies, ETFs, unit investment trusts, and insurance-company separate accounts. The 485APOS filing is the carrier; the underlying content amends Form N-1A (mutual funds and ETFs), Form N-3 / N-4 / N-6 (variable-insurance separate accounts), or Form N-8B-2 / S-6 (unit investment trusts).
One record is one EDGAR submission of Form 485APOS, stored on disk as a single accession-number folder. The folder bundles a metadata.json describing the submission, exactly one main 485APOS document (the amended prospectus and/or Statement of Additional Information), and zero or more exhibit documents — each wrapped in its own EDGAR SGML envelope.
Only registrants with an already-effective registration statement under both the Securities Act of 1933 and the Investment Company Act of 1940 file 485APOS amendments. That population comprises open-end management investment companies (mutual funds and open-end ETFs) on Form N-1A, insurance-company separate accounts on Forms N-3 / N-4 / N-6, and unit investment trusts on Forms N-8B-2 / S-6. Closed-end funds, business development companies, and operating companies do not use the 485 series.
Under Rule 485(a)(1), a 485APOS becomes effective automatically 60 days after filing for ordinary substantive amendments; under Rule 485(a)(2), it becomes effective 75 days after filing when the amendment registers a new series. The Commission may accelerate effectiveness on registrant request, or may delay or suspend it if staff review surfaces issues.
485APOS and 485BPOS share the same registrant population and amend the same underlying registration statements, but they are split by Rule 485's (a)/(b) gate. 485APOS carries the 60- or 75-day delay because changes are substantive — new series, new share classes, new strategies, fundamental policy revisions; 485BPOS is immediately effective and is reserved for ministerial updates such as annual financial-statement refreshes. Use 485APOS to detect substantive product change; use 485BPOS for the canonical current prospectus and the annual update cadence.
The dataset spans EDGAR submissions of Form 485APOS from January 1, 1994 through the latest refresh, with the earliest sample date reported as 1994-01-01 in the dataset index API.
The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers partitioned <year>/<year>-<month>.zip. File types inside the containers are TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF; image attachments (.jpg, .gif) are deliberately pruned even though they remain referenced as GRAPHIC rows in the per-record metadata.json. Containers can be downloaded individually or as a single full-dataset archive via the documented API endpoints.