The Form S-8 Files Dataset is a complete archive of Form S-8 and Form S-8/A registration statements submitted to the SEC's EDGAR system, used by issuers to register securities offered to employees, directors, and certain natural-person consultants under employee benefit plans such as stock option plans, restricted stock and RSU plans, and employee stock purchase plans. Each record corresponds to one EDGAR submission identified by its accession number and contains the original registration statement, any reoffer prospectus, every attached exhibit (legality opinion, plan instruments, auditor consents, filing-fee exhibit), and a generated metadata.json manifest that exposes the EDGAR submission header in structured form. Form S-8 is codified at 17 CFR Section 239.16b and is unusual in that it becomes effective automatically upon filing, without SEC staff review. The dataset covers all S-8 and S-8/A filings from January 1, 1994 to the present, with monthly ZIP containers updated as new filings arrive on EDGAR.
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 corpus of Form S-8 and Form S-8/A filings — the Securities Act of 1933 short-form registration used to register securities issued under employee benefit plans. Form S-8 is available only to issuers already subject to Exchange Act reporting; it is short because most substantive disclosure is satisfied by incorporation by reference to the registrant's Exchange Act reports and by a separately delivered Section 10(a) prospectus. Form S-8/A is the corresponding amendment, used to revise a previously filed registration statement — typically to register additional shares under the same plan, to add a new plan, to substitute a successor registrant after a merger, or to correct or replace an exhibit.
For each accession number, the dataset preserves the metadata.json manifest plus every TXT, HTML, and PDF document present in the original EDGAR submission: the primary registration statement, any reoffer prospectus, and all attached exhibits (legal opinion, plan documents, auditor consents, powers of attorney, the Inline XBRL filing-fee exhibit, and miscellaneous exhibits). Image files (JPG, GIF, PNG) and the synthetic complete-submission text file are deliberately excluded. The archive is delivered as ZIP containers organized by filing month, and the file types found inside are TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF. Coverage begins on January 1, 1994 and extends to the present.
A single record in the Form S-8 Files dataset corresponds to one Form S-8 or Form S-8/A registration statement as submitted to EDGAR, identified by its 18-character accession number. The physical embodiment of that record is a directory whose name is the accession number with dashes removed (for example, accession 0001493152-25-020414 becomes folder 000149315225020414), housed inside a monthly ZIP archive keyed by YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip. Within that directory the dataset preserves the registrant's original EDGAR documents — the registration statement itself plus every attached exhibit — together with a generated metadata.json index file that exposes the EDGAR submission header in structured form. The accession-number folder is the natural primary key for the record: one filing equals one folder equals one row in any tabular view derived from the dataset.
Internally, Form S-8 is organized in two parts. Part I, "Information Required in the Section 10(a) Prospectus," contains items describing the plan, the participants, and the securities offered, but Rule 428 permits this Part I content to be delivered to plan participants outside the filing itself, so the on-EDGAR copy is generally a brief stub that references the plan documents and the Section 10(a) prospectus rather than reproducing them. Part II, "Information Required in the Registration Statement," is the substantive on-filing content and contains the items that drive most of the document's body: Item 3 Incorporation of Documents by Reference, Item 4 Description of Securities (when not registered under Exchange Act Section 12), Item 5 Interests of Named Experts and Counsel, Item 6 Indemnification of Directors and Officers, Item 7 Exemption from Registration Claimed (when reoffer or resale shares are involved), Item 8 Exhibits, and Item 9 Undertakings. The body closes with the required signatures by the registrant, its principal executive officer, principal financial officer, principal accounting officer, and a majority of the board of directors.
When the registrant simultaneously registers the resale of restricted securities by control persons or affiliates, a reoffer prospectus prepared on Form S-3 is bound into the same filing under General Instruction C. This adds a Form S-3 cover page, a selling-shareholder table, a plan of distribution, and a brief narrative section ahead of Part II.
Each record has three concentric layers: the monthly ZIP container, the per-filing accession folder, and the individual documents inside that folder. The ZIP archive contains a top-level folder named after the month (YYYY-MM/); under that month folder, every filing has its own accession-number subdirectory; under each accession folder are the registrant's submitted documents plus metadata.json. File names within an accession folder are preserved exactly as the registrant uploaded them and follow no global convention — names like forms-8.htm, d28876ds8.htm, s-8x103125.htm, and tm2529594d1_s8.htm all denote primary registration statements. Document type cannot be reliably inferred from file name; the canonical type-to-file mapping lives in metadata.json.
Each document inside the folder is wrapped in the EDGAR SGML document envelope, with header tags identifying the type, sequence, filename, and description before the actual <HTML> body begins:
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<DOCUMENT>
2
<TYPE>S-8
3
<SEQUENCE>1
4
<FILENAME>forms-8.htm
5
<DESCRIPTION>S-8
6
<TEXT>
7
<HTML>... full HTML body of the registration statement ...</HTML>
8
</TEXT>
9
</DOCUMENT>
The same wrapper appears around the legal opinion (EX-5.1), each auditor consent (EX-23.x), each plan or charter exhibit (EX-4.x, EX-10.x), and the filing-fee exhibit (EX-FILING FEES). The primary registration statement is conventionally sequence 1; exhibits follow in the sequence the registrant assigned.
metadata.json is the structured manifest derived from EDGAR's submission header and is the recommended entry point into a record. Its top-level scalars include formType ("S-8" or "S-8/A"), accessionNo in dashed form, filedAt as an ISO-8601 timestamp with timezone offset, effectivenessDate (which for Form S-8 typically equals the filing date because S-8 takes effect on filing), a constant boilerplate description of "Form S-8 - Securities to be offered to employees in employee benefit plans", an internal hex id, and four EDGAR URLs: linkToFilingDetails (primary document), linkToTxt (full submission text), linkToHtml (the -index.htm page), and linkToXbrl (frequently empty for S-8 because the only structured data is the Exhibit 107 inline-XBRL fee filing).
Three structured arrays follow. documentFormatFiles[] enumerates every document in the submission as it sat in the EDGAR header, with sequence (string "1", "2", ..., or a single space " " for the synthetic complete-submission row), size in bytes as a string, documentUrl, registrant-supplied description, and type (S-8, S-8/A, EX-4.1, EX-5.1, EX-23.1, EX-10.1, EX-FILING FEES, GRAPHIC, and similar). dataFiles[] lists auxiliary machine-readable artifacts; for S-8 this almost always reduces to a single extracted XBRL filing-fee instance with type: "XML" and description "EXTRACTED XBRL INSTANCE DOCUMENT". seriesAndClassesContractsInformation[] is structurally present but normally empty, since that field is populated only for investment-company filings.
entities[] describes the parties associated with the submission. For Form S-8 there is typically a single entry, the filer, with companyName carrying a role suffix (e.g. "SHF Holdings, Inc. (Filer)"), cik, irsNo (sometimes "000000000" when absent), fileNo of the form 333-NNNNNN, EDGAR filmNo, the entity-level type (e.g. "S-8"), act ("33" for the Securities Act of 1933), stateOfIncorporation as a two-letter code, fiscalYearEnd as an MMDD string, sic combining the four-digit SIC code with its industry label (e.g. "3674 Semiconductors & Related Devices"), and a tickers[] array of trading symbols associated with the registrant (which may include warrant or unit symbols when applicable).
Primary registration statement (TYPE = S-8 or S-8/A, sequence 1). The substantive body of the filing in HTML. It opens with a facing page giving the registrant's exact legal name, state of incorporation, IRS employer identification number, principal executive office address, the title of the plan or plans whose securities are being registered, and the name and address of the agent for service. Until the filing-fee exhibit was carved out in 2022, this page also carried the calculation-of-registration-fee table; in modern filings that table is replaced by a cross-reference to Exhibit 107. The body then proceeds through Part I (typically a one-page Rule 428 stub), Part II Items 3 through 9, and the signature block. Form S-8/A bodies are usually shorter and explicitly identify which prior S-8 is being amended and what is changing — most commonly an additional share count under an existing plan or a replacement of a specific exhibit.
Reoffer prospectus. When General Instruction C is used, the reoffer prospectus appears either as a separate document or as an embedded section of the primary HTML. It contains the cover page in S-3 form, summary, risk factors (often by reference), use of proceeds, a selling-shareholder table with names and share amounts, plan of distribution, legal matters, and experts.
EX-4.x — Instruments defining rights of holders. Includes the registrant's certificate of incorporation and bylaws (frequently filed as separate sub-exhibits such as EX-4.1, EX-4.2, EX-4.3), certificates of designation for any preferred series whose conversion mechanics affect the registered shares, and the plan instruments themselves when treated as the security definition rather than as material contracts.
EX-5.1 — Opinion of counsel. Required by Item 601(b)(5) of Regulation S-K. A short legal opinion, typically two to five pages, addressing the due authorization, valid issuance, and (for stock) full-paid and non-assessable status of the shares being registered, conditioned on the plan being properly administered. It is signed by the law firm and includes the firm's consent to its inclusion as an exhibit.
EX-10.x — Material contracts. Most commonly the actual employee benefit plan document — for example the "2025 Equity Incentive Plan," "Employee Stock Purchase Plan," or "Non-Employee Director Compensation Plan." Forms of award agreement (option, RSU, PSU) are often filed as additional EX-10 sub-exhibits.
EX-23.x — Consents of independent registered public accounting firm. One consent per audit firm whose report is incorporated by reference, authorizing inclusion of that report in the registration statement. These are short letters on the firm's letterhead.
EX-24 — Power of attorney. When officers and directors sign the registration statement through an attorney-in-fact, the power of attorney is filed as Exhibit 24. It can also be embedded directly in the signature block of the primary document.
EX-FILING FEES (Exhibit 107). The machine-readable filing-fee disclosure exhibit, mandated for S-8 filings on or after the January 31, 2022 compliance date. It is delivered as Inline XBRL — XHTML carrying ix:nonNumeric, ix:nonFraction, and xbrli:context elements drawn from the SEC's filing-fee disclosure (ffd) taxonomy — and machine-encodes the title of each class of securities being registered, share or unit counts, proposed maximum offering price per unit, proposed maximum aggregate offering price, fee rate, and amount of registration fee. It is the only structured document in a typical S-8; every other exhibit is HTML body text suitable for NLP extraction rather than direct field parsing.
EX-99.x — Miscellaneous exhibits. Used for items that do not fit the other categories: press releases, plan summaries, trustee reports for 401(k) plans (required by General Instruction E when employer stock is an investment option), or signed undertaking letters.
The dataset preserves, for each accession number, the metadata.json manifest plus every TXT, HTML, and PDF document present in the original EDGAR submission. The file-types found in the dataset are TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF. Modern S-8 filings consist almost entirely of HTML/HTM documents wrapped in the EDGAR SGML envelope, with an occasional PDF for scanned plan documents or signature pages and a TXT body only for the earliest pre-1999 filings. The HTML preserves the registrant's original formatting, embedded tables, hyperlinks, and Inline XBRL markup on the filing-fee exhibit.
Image files (JPG, GIF, PNG) embedded in the original submission are intentionally omitted from the archive. metadata.json may still list them under documentFormatFiles[] with type: "GRAPHIC", but the binary files themselves are not present on disk; downstream tools that follow GRAPHIC pointers must expect them to be missing. The complete-submission text file — the concatenated .txt rendering of the entire submission that EDGAR generates as a convenience artifact — is also excluded; it appears in documentFormatFiles[] with sequence " " (a single space) purely as a URL pointer to EDGAR. Substantive content excluded by design rather than by dataset packaging includes the full Section 10(a) prospectus and most of the plan-participant disclosure (delivered outside the registration statement under Rule 428) and any document the registrant chose to incorporate by reference rather than file as an exhibit — most commonly the latest Form 10-K, intervening 10-Qs and 8-Ks, and the Exchange Act registration statement for the class of securities being registered.
The Form S-8 instructions have been revised several times since 1994, and these revisions materially affect what appears inside a record depending on its filing date.
The most consequential rewrite was the 1999 amendment (Securities Act Release No. 33-7646), which sharply restricted Form S-8 use after a series of abuses involving consultants. After that release, securities issued to consultants and advisors qualify for S-8 only if the consultant is a natural person providing bona fide services unrelated to capital-raising or market-promotion activities. The Item 1 and Item 2 instructions were rewritten to reflect this restriction, and the practical effect on filings from 1999 forward is tighter description of the plan participants in Part I and, for filings registering consultant grants, an explicit representation about the nature of the services.
Sarbanes-Oxley (2002) and the related amendments to Item 601 of Regulation S-K refined the exhibits required for an S-8 — most notably the Item 601(b)(5) legal opinion and Item 601(b)(23) auditor consent disclosures — and introduced standardized certifications elsewhere in the disclosure regime that S-8 incorporates by reference rather than restating. From 2003 onward, the auditor consent (EX-23.x) is consistently present as a carefully drafted, firm-specific document.
The most visible recent structural change is the 2022 filing-fee modernization (Securities Act Release No. 33-10997), which moved the calculation-of-registration-fee table off the cover page of the registration statement and into a dedicated, Inline XBRL-tagged exhibit, Exhibit 107 (EX-FILING FEES). For S-8 filings on or after January 31, 2022, every record contains this exhibit; before that date the fee table is embedded as an HTML table on the facing page of the primary document and there is no Exhibit 107.
Successor-registrant rules under General Instruction E and the 401(k) plan trustee-report requirement under General Instruction G have remained substantively stable, but the cover-page identification block was expanded in stages to require the Commission File Number, IRS Employer Identification Number, and (post-2022) the registrant's trading symbol and exchange listing in tabular form.
Form S-8 records span the full evolution of EDGAR document formats. Filings from 1994 through approximately 1996 are plain ASCII text wrapped in the SGML <DOCUMENT> envelope; tables are rendered with monospaced spacing and the only typographic distinction is uppercase headings. HTML filing was permitted from 1999 onward and adoption was nearly universal by the early 2000s; from that point each document inside a record is HTML inside the SGML wrapper, with embedded tables, fonts, and hyperlinks. PDF exhibits became more common in the 2000s for scanned plan documents and notarized signature pages, but they remain a small minority of files.
Inline XBRL appears in S-8 records only on the filing-fee exhibit, and only for filings on or after the January 31, 2022 compliance date for Securities Act Release 33-10997. The filing-fee XHTML carries ix: and xbrli: namespaces and uses the ffd taxonomy to tag each row of the fee table. The narrative body of the registration statement and the legal opinion, plan, and consent exhibits remain unstructured HTML throughout the dataset's history; XBRL tagging of S-8 narrative content has never been required.
Several details warrant care during extraction.
documentFormatFiles[] for type === "S-8" or type === "S-8/A" and resolve that entry's documentUrl basename within the folder; sequence 1 is a useful secondary signal but is occasionally violated.metadata.json that look empty on S-8 (linkToXbrl, seriesAndClassesContractsInformation[]) are structurally present because the schema is shared across multiple form-type datasets; their emptiness is expected for S-8 rather than indicative of missing data.documentFormatFiles[] with type: "GRAPHIC" are pointers to image binaries that the dataset deliberately does not carry; downstream tooling should treat those rows as references only, not as resolvable file paths inside the folder.Each record is a Securities Act registration statement filed by the issuer of the securities being registered. The filer is never the plan participants, the plan trustee, the plan administrator, or an underwriter. The plan itself appears as a co-registrant only when plan interests are themselves separate securities (for example, certain 401(k) plans with employee contribution accounts).
Form S-8 is restricted to a narrow class of registrants. Eligibility requires that the issuer:
The resulting filer population includes:
Excluded from the dataset: private companies, voluntary filers not subject to Section 13 or 15(d), shell companies and pre-business-combination SPACs, and registered investment companies under the Investment Company Act of 1940.
The persons who receive the registered securities are restricted by the form's instructions to employees, officers, directors, general partners, trustees, and natural-person consultants providing bona fide services unrelated to capital-raising or market-making. They are not filers; they are the offeree population.
Form S-8 has no statutory filing deadline and is event-driven, not periodic. It becomes effective automatically upon filing under Rule 462(a), with no SEC staff review. An issuer files when it needs an effective registration in place before offering or selling plan securities.
Typical triggers for a new S-8 filing:
Common timing patterns observed in the dataset:
A Form S-8/A amendment updates a previously effective S-8 to add information, correct deficiencies, or file exhibits. It is normally not used to register additional shares; issuers instead file a new Form S-8 incorporating the earlier filing by reference.
Registration fees are paid at the time of filing based on the shares registered and a calculated proposed maximum offering price under Rule 457(h).
Form S-8 occupies a narrow slot in the Securities Act registration family: it registers only securities issued under employee benefit plans and becomes effective on filing without staff review. The most informative comparisons are therefore to other 1933 Act registration forms, the post-effective amendments that extend an S-8 registration, and the disclosure datasets that describe the same compensation plans from a different angle.
S-1 is the general-purpose Securities Act registration used for IPOs and most primary or secondary offerings. It shares the 1933 Act framework and Item 601 exhibit conventions with S-8, but requires full business, risk-factor, MD&A, and audited financial disclosure, and is subject to SEC staff review before effectiveness. S-8 carries almost none of that narrative, becomes effective automatically, and is limited to plan participants. Treat S-1 as a deep prospectus dataset and S-8 as a thin, plan-registration dataset.
S-3 is the short-form registration available to seasoned issuers for cash offerings, shelf takedowns, and resales. Both S-3 and S-8 rely on incorporation by reference and become effective quickly, but S-3 covers public capital-raising and selling-stockholder resales (ATMs, follow-ons, PIPE resales) and uses a base prospectus plus prospectus supplements. S-8 covers only benefit-plan issuances and has no supplement workflow.
Form S-4 registers securities issued in mergers, exchange offers, and similar transactions, dominated by merger agreements, fairness opinions, pro forma financials, and target-shareholder proxy/prospectus content. The only meaningful overlap with S-8 is the shared registration framework. S-4 and S-8 occasionally appear in sequence when an acquirer assumes a target's equity plans, but the substantive disclosures do not overlap.
Form S-8 POS filings update, carry forward, or deregister shares previously registered on S-8. They are the closest functional neighbor and form part of the same registration lineage, but are filed under a distinct form-type code and are not included in this dataset, which is limited to S-8 and S-8/A. Researchers tracking the complete life cycle of a plan registration need S-8 POS in addition to this dataset.
Form 11-K provides ongoing audited financial reporting for employee stock purchase, savings, and similar plans whose interests are registered on S-8. The two forms are paired by regulation but report different things: S-8 is a one-time registration of shares and the plan document, while 11-K is a recurring financial statement on the plan entity itself. They are complementary, not substitutable.
DEF 14A proxy statements carry the executive compensation discussion and shareholder votes that authorize or expand the equity plans S-8 later registers. The proxy supplies governance context and plan summaries; the S-8 is the mechanical registration that follows. Proxies do not register securities, and S-8 filings contain little compensation-policy narrative.
The 10-K equity compensation plan information table aggregates shares authorized, outstanding, and available under all equity plans as of a period end. It is the standing-balance view; the S-8 dataset is the transactional record of when and how those shares were registered and under which plan document. See also Item 201(d).
Section 16 filings record person-level acquisitions, dispositions, and holdings, including option grants, RSU vesting, and ESPP purchases tied to S-8-registered plans. The link is through the underlying securities, but the data layer differs entirely: Section 16 data is participant-level transactions, while S-8 is issuer-level plan authorization. See Form 3, Form 4, and Form 5.
The Form S-8 Files Dataset is distinct because it sits at the intersection of three traits no neighboring dataset combines: it is a Securities Act registration record (unlike 10-K, 11-K, proxy, or Section 16 data); it is restricted to employee and director benefit-plan securities (unlike S-1, S-3, and S-4); and it preserves the full original submission, including the plan document or reoffer prospectus, legality opinion, and Item 601 exhibits (unlike the aggregated tables in periodic reports). It is the authoritative source for when an issuer formally registered shares into an employee benefit plan and for retrieving the supporting plan document and counsel opinion as filed. It does not replace ongoing plan financial reporting, compensation governance disclosure, or insider transaction history, but it is the registration record those datasets reference.
The Form S-8 Files Dataset is used by professionals working on equity plan design, securities registration, corporate governance, and stock-based compensation analysis.
Used to benchmark plan design across peer groups. Consultants pull plan documents, share reservations, and sub-plan language to support share-request sizing, burn-rate studies, and recommendations to compensation committees on amendments, replenishments, and evergreen provisions.
Used to track the registered share pool available for grants. Teams reconcile fee tables, registered share counts, and S-8/A amendments against outstanding awards to support plan capacity monitoring, Rule 457 fee calculations, and grant-system configuration.
Used as a precedent library when drafting S-8s, reoffer prospectuses for affiliate resales, legality opinions, and Item 601 exhibits. Counsel mines the corpus for drafting conventions on assumed plans in M&A, inducement awards under listing-rule exceptions, and Rule 416 anti-dilution coverage.
Used to verify whether share increases were shareholder-approved and to flag evergreen provisions or inducement plans registered outside approved pools. Analysts cross-reference plan names, share counts, and filing dates with proxy approvals to inform vote recommendations and dilution analyses.
Used to estimate dilution and model stock-based compensation expense. Analysts track registered share counts over time and read plan documents for vesting schedules and award limits, flagging step-changes that imply hiring acceleration or aggressive grant practices.
Used to reconcile plans named in financial statement footnotes with the population of registered S-8 plans, identifying unregistered plans, late registrations, or share pools inconsistent with disclosed grant activity.
Used to inventory a target's active equity plans, registered share balances, foreign sub-plans, and assumed legacy plans. Outputs feed treatment of outstanding awards, replacement award design, and post-closing S-8 deregistration or assumption filings.
Used as an internal precedent library for cover pages, fee tables, exhibit lists, signatures, and reoffer prospectus sections, and to time evergreen S-8 filings around peer cadence.
Used during substantive testing of equity transactions to verify registered share pools, plan effective dates, and the presence of legality opinions supporting issuance.
Used to build features from filing timing, frequency, and registered share amounts, treating S-8 activity as a proxy for compensation intensity and anticipated dilution in factor models and event studies.
Used to build structured equity plan databases by parsing plan documents, fee tables, and exhibits into normalized fields. The corpus also grounds retrieval-augmented systems answering legal, compensation, and governance questions against authoritative plan documents and counsel opinions.
The following workflows draw on the registration statement body, plan exhibits, legal opinion, auditor consents, and the Inline XBRL filing-fee exhibit.
Tracking registered share pools by plan over time. Parse Exhibit 107 (EX-FILING FEES) Inline XBRL across an issuer's S-8 and S-8/A history to build a per-plan time series of registered share counts, fee rates, and aggregate offering price. Output feeds dilution models, plan-capacity dashboards, and reconciliation against Item 201(d) tables in the 10-K.
Building a benchmark library of equity plan documents. Extract the EX-10.x plan instruments (equity incentive plans, ESPPs, inducement plans, non-employee director plans) and forms of award agreement across peer groups, then index vesting schedules, share limits, evergreen formulas, change-in-control triggers, and 162(m)-style caps. Compensation consultants and in-house counsel use the resulting corpus for plan design benchmarking and share-request sizing memos to compensation committees.
Detecting unapproved or inducement share grants. Cross-reference the plan name and share count on the S-8 cover page and Exhibit 107 with prior DEF 14A shareholder approvals, flagging registrations that exceed approved pools or rely on Nasdaq Rule 5635(c)(4) / NYSE 303A.08 inducement carve-outs. Output supports proxy advisor vote recommendations and governance red-flag lists.
M&A target plan inventory and successor-registrant tracking. For a target company, pull the full set of S-8 and S-8/A folders to inventory active plans, foreign sub-plans, and assumed legacy plans, including any General Instruction E successor-registrant filings made post-closing. The plan documents (EX-10.x), legality opinion (EX-5.1), and reoffer prospectuses drive treatment of outstanding awards and post-closing assumption or deregistration workflows.
Counsel and auditor network mapping. Aggregate the signing law firm on EX-5.1 legality opinions and the audit firm on EX-23.x consents across the dataset to build issuer-to-firm relationship histories, detect auditor or counsel changes around equity events, and feed league-table style market-share reporting on S-8 work.
Grounding a RAG system for equity plan questions. Chunk the primary registration statement, EX-5.1 opinion, EX-10.x plan documents, and reoffer prospectuses into a retrieval index keyed by accession number, registrant CIK, and plan title from metadata.json. The system answers questions like "what is the evergreen formula in this issuer's 2023 plan?" or "which plans have been assumed via S-8/A after a merger?" with citations back to the filed exhibit.
Event-study features from S-8 filing cadence. Use filedAt timestamps, share counts from Exhibit 107, and registrant identifiers from entities[] to construct issuer-level features capturing S-8 frequency, share-pool replenishment intervals, and registration size. Quantitative researchers feed these into factor models and event studies on dilution, hiring intensity, and post-IPO compensation behavior. See also Forms 3, 4, and 5 insider transaction filings.
The Form S-8 Files Dataset can be accessed in three ways: through the dataset index JSON API for metadata and discovery, through a single-archive download for the entire dataset, or through per-container downloads for incremental updates.
Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-s8-files.json
This endpoint returns dataset-level metadata (name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date, total record count, total size, covered form types, container format, and file types), the full dataset download URL, and the list of all container files with their individual download URLs, sizes, record counts, and updated timestamps. Use this endpoint to programmatically monitor which containers have changed in the most recent refresh and decide which monthly archives to re-download on a daily basis. This endpoint does not require an API key.
Example response:
1
{
2
"datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-68ef-ae51-15610a09429e",
3
"datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-s8-files.zip",
4
"name": "Form S-8 Files Dataset",
5
"updatedAt": "2026-05-08T02:54:10.635Z",
6
"earliestSampleDate": "1994-01-01",
7
"totalRecords": 403245,
8
"totalSize": 2153300688,
9
"formTypes": ["S-8", "S-8/A"],
10
"containerFormat": "ZIP",
11
"fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "HTML", "PDF"],
12
"containers": [
13
{
14
"downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-s8-files/2026/2026-05.zip",
15
"key": "2026/2026-05.zip",
16
"size": 13818783,
17
"records": 154,
18
"updatedAt": "2026-05-08T02:54:10.635Z"
19
}
20
]
21
}
Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-s8-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads the complete dataset, covering all S-8 and S-8/A filings from January 1994 to the present, as a single ZIP archive. This endpoint requires an API key.
Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-s8-files/2026/2026-05.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads one monthly container ZIP instead of the full dataset, useful for incremental syncs targeting only containers that have changed since the last refresh. The available container paths are listed in the dataset index JSON response. This endpoint requires an API key.
The dataset covers Form S-8 and Form S-8/A filings submitted to EDGAR. Form S-8 is the Securities Act of 1933 registration statement used to register securities offered to employees, directors, and certain natural-person consultants under employee benefit plans, and Form S-8/A is its amendment.
One record corresponds to a single Form S-8 or Form S-8/A submission to EDGAR, identified by its 18-character accession number. Each record is a folder containing the original registration statement, any reoffer prospectus, every attached exhibit, and a generated metadata.json manifest derived from the EDGAR submission header.
Form S-8 is filed by the issuer of the securities being registered. Eligibility is restricted to issuers subject to Section 13 or 15(d) Exchange Act reporting that are current on their reports, are not shell companies (or have not been one within the prior 60 days unless Form 10 information has been filed), and are registering securities under an eligible employee benefit plan.
Form S-8 becomes effective automatically upon filing under Rule 462(a), without SEC staff review. It is event-driven rather than periodic — issuers file when adopting a new plan, registering additional shares after shareholder approval, assuming a target's plans after a merger, or topping up an existing share pool.
The dataset is distributed as ZIP containers organized by filing month under the path YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip. Inside the containers, file types include TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF; image files (JPG, GIF, PNG) embedded in original submissions are intentionally omitted.
Form S-8 POS post-effective amendments update, carry forward, or deregister shares previously registered on S-8 and form part of the same registration lineage, but they are filed under a distinct form-type code and are not included in this dataset. This dataset is limited to S-8 and S-8/A filings; researchers tracking the complete life cycle of a plan registration need S-8 POS in addition.
The dataset covers all S-8 and S-8/A filings submitted to EDGAR from January 1, 1994 to the present, spanning the full evolution of EDGAR document formats from plain ASCII through HTML to Inline XBRL on the post-2022 filing-fee exhibit.