How to access Financial Statements with ChatGPT or Claude

10-K, 10-Q and 8-K (Item 2.02 and Exhibit 99) SEC filings contain income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements. An assistant connected to the SEC-API.io MCP server can read the information out of the filing and sort, compare across periods or sectors, and return output in Excel, PDF, HTML page and other formats. This blogposts shows you how.

What SEC filings contain Financial Statements

Form 10-K: The Annual Report

Form 10-K contains the audited financial statements for a full fiscal year, with comparative columns for the two prior years on the income statement and the cash flow statement, and one prior year on the balance sheet. One 10-K therefore supplies three years of income and cash flow data and two balance sheet dates without opening a second filing. Large accelerated filers file within 60 days of the fiscal year end, accelerated filers within 75 days and all other filers within 90 days (General Instruction A(2) to Form 10-K, Exchange Act Rule 13a-1).

10-Q: Quarterly Report

Form 10-Q contains unaudited statements for the quarter, for the second and third quarters, and the year to date period, each with the matching prior year column. The balance sheet in a 10-Q shows the quarter end date against the prior fiscal year end and against the same date a year earlier. Large accelerated and accelerated filers file within 40 days of the quarter end, other filers within 45 days (Exchange Act Rule 13a-13). The fourth quarter is derived by subtracting the three quarters from the 10-K.

8-K Item 2.02 and Exhibit 99: Earnings Release

A company announcing results discloses them under Item 2.02 of Form 8-K, with the press release attached as Exhibit 99. The 8-K is due within four business days of the announcement, which typically puts condensed statements in front of a reader two to six weeks before the 10-K or 10-Q lands. Exhibit 99 usually contains a condensed income statement, a condensed balance sheet and often a cash flow statement, plus the non GAAP measures and the guidance that appear only in the release. Details of that form and its exhibits are covered in Form 8-K Item 2.02 and Exhibit 99 earnings announcements.

Form 20-F, 40-F and 6-K: Foreign Private Issuers

A foreign private issuer files its annual report on Form 20-F within four months of its fiscal year end (General Instruction A(b) to Form 20-F). A Canadian issuer eligible for the multijurisdictional disclosure system files Form 40-F instead, attaching the annual report it prepared under Canadian requirements on the same day it is filed in Canada. Interim results reach EDGAR on Form 6-K, which is furnished promptly after the information is made public in the home jurisdiction, so half year or quarterly statements for these companies are found on 6-K.

What Financial Statement to find in each file

Connecting the Assistant

When adding the SEC-API.io MCP server with your AI tool, the AI tool gets access to over 20 million EDGAR filings from 1993 to today across 500 filing types, updated within 300 milliseconds of publication. Nothing is installed on the machine and no process runs locally. A free key is issued at https:sec-api.io/signup, you only need to connect https://api.sec-api.io/mcp?apiKey=YOUR_API_KEY as Connector (Claude) or Plugin (ChatGPT). Takes 2 to 5 minutes.

Claude Connector and ChatGPT Plugin

In Claude, the server is added under Settings, then Connectors, then Add custom connector: paste the URL, leave the OAuth fields empty, click Add and then Connect, then switch it on for a conversation with the plus button.

In ChatGPT on the web the connection is a plugin: turn on Developer mode under Settings and Security and login, open Plugins, click the plus button, paste the URL including the /mcp path, set Authentication to No Auth and create the SEC-API.io plugin. Claude Code takes claude mcp add --transport http sec-api "https://api.sec-api.io/mcp?apiKey=YOUR_API_KEY", and the ChatGPT desktop app reads the Codex file at ~/.codex/config.toml.

Full walkthroughs with screenshots are at Claude setup and ChatGPT setup.

Worked prompts

Every table below is an example of what the assistant returns for the prompt above it, built from the XBRL data of the filing named under the table. Amounts are in millions of US dollars unless a table states otherwise, and figures in parentheses are negative.

Last three Statements of a specific company

          1
          Pull NVIDIA's income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement from its
        

          2
          most recent 10-K. Show every line item as filed, keep the prior year column
        

          3
          next to it, and state the fiscal year end date and the reporting units at the
        

          4
          top.
        

What comes back:

NVIDIA Corporation, Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 25 January 2026, filed 25 February 2026, accession number 0001045810-26-000021. Amounts in millions of US dollars, except per share data.

NVIDIA income statement

NVIDIA balance sheet

NVIDIA cash flow statement

The assistant adds the context a reader needs to use the three statements:

• Revenue grew from $130,497 million to $215,938 million, 65.5 percent, and operating income from $81,453 million to $130,387 million, an operating margin of 60.4 percent against 62.4 percent a year earlier
• Other income of $9,022 million, against $1,034 million a year earlier, is mostly gains on equity securities: the cash flow statement removes $8,918 million of those gains from net income
• Goodwill rose from $5,188 million to $20,832 million. The Groq note in the 10-K explains the move: a non exclusive license for Groq's language processing unit technology and the hiring of Groq employees, with $14.4 billion recorded as goodwill, $13.0 billion paid at closing and $4 billion payable within one year inside accrued liabilities
• Receivables and inventories absorbed $26,723 million of operating cash in FY2026, and operating cash flow of $102,718 million was $17,349 million below net income
• Buybacks of $40,086 million and dividends of $974 million returned $41,060 million to shareholders, 40.0 percent of operating cash flow
• Fiscal years end on the last Sunday in January, so FY2026 covers 27 January 2025 to 25 January 2026

Source filings: NVIDIA Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 25 January 2026, accession number 0001045810-26-000021, including the comparative columns carried inside the same filing.

Growth and margins trend (multiple years)

          1
          Build a five year income statement for Palantir from its 10-K filings, one
        

          2
          column per fiscal year, oldest on the left. Add stock based compensation from
        

          3
          the cash flow statement, add rows for revenue growth, gross margin, operating
        

          4
          margin and net margin, and add a CAGR column. Mark any cell where a growth
        

          5
          rate cannot be calculated.
        

What comes back:

Palantir Technologies Inc., fiscal years ended 31 December. Amounts in millions of US dollars, filed in thousands.

• Revenue compounded at 30.5 percent a year from FY2021 to FY2025, and annual growth rose from 16.7 percent in FY2023 to 28.8 percent in FY2024 and 56.2 percent in FY2025
• Operating margin moved from (26.7%) in FY2021 to 31.6 percent in FY2025, while total operating expenses grew at 8.9 percent a year against revenue at 30.5 percent
• Stock based compensation fell from 50.5 percent of revenue in FY2021 to 15.3 percent in FY2025
• CAGR cells for operating income, net income and EPS read n/m, because a compound growth rate from a negative starting value has no meaning
• FY2023 appears in both source filings with identical values, so the two 10-K filings stitch together without a restatement break
• The accession number of each 10-K is listed under the columns it supplied

Source filings: Palantir Form 10-K for FY2025, accession number 0001321655-26-000011 (FY2023 to FY2025), and Form 10-K for FY2023, accession number 0001321655-24-000022 (FY2021 to FY2023).

Quarter over quarter comparison

          1
          Take Tesla's most recent 10-Q. Put the quarter's income statement next to the
        

          2
          same quarter of the prior year, include the revenue lines by product, add a
        

          3
          change column in dollars and in percent for every line, and tell me which lines
        

          4
          moved more than 10 percent. Include the balance sheet at the quarter end
        

          5
          against the prior fiscal year end.
        

What comes back:

Tesla, Inc., Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, filed 22 July 2026, accession number 0001628280-26-049270. Unaudited. Amounts in millions of US dollars, except per share data.

Tesla income statement, Q2 2026 against Q2 2025

Tesla balance sheet, 30 June 2026 against 31 December 2025

• Total revenues rose 25.5 percent while income from operations fell 56.9 percent, from $923 million to $398 million, and operating margin moved from 4.1 percent to 1.4 percent
• Operating expenses grew 47.3 percent: research and development up $782 million and selling, general and administrative up $616 million
• Regulatory credit revenue fell from $439 million to $146 million, a decline of 66.7 percent; the statement shows no cost of revenues line for regulatory credits
• Energy generation and storage revenue rose 12.5 percent while its gross profit fell from $846 million to $640 million, as the cost line grew 28.6 percent
• Other income of $590 million and a lower tax charge kept net income attributable to common stockholders at $1,114 million, 4.9 percent below the prior year quarter
• Property, plant and equipment grew $6,612 million in six months, and other non current assets grew $4,408 million
• The 10-Q also carries six month columns: revenue of $50,623 million against $41,831 million, and income from operations of $1,339 million against $1,322 million

Source filings: Tesla Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, accession number 0001628280-26-049270, with the prior year quarter and the 31 December 2025 balance sheet contained in the same filing.

Compare companies' ratios (peer analysis)

          1
          Compare the latest annual financial statements of Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon,
        

          2
          Meta and Oracle. One table, companies as columns. Rows: revenue, gross profit,
        

          3
          research and development, operating income, net income, operating cash flow,
        

          4
          capital expenditure, free cash flow, total assets and long term debt. Add
        

          5
          operating margin, capital expenditure as a share of revenue and capital
        

          6
          expenditure as a share of operating cash flow. Label each column with that
        

          7
          company's own fiscal year end date, and write "not reported" where a company
        

          8
          does not tag the element.
        

What comes back:

• Three different fiscal year ends sit in one table: Microsoft closes on 30 June, Oracle on 31 May, and Alphabet, Amazon and Meta on 31 December, so the Microsoft column includes the first six months of 2026 and the Oracle column the first five
• Oracle spent $55,663 million on capital expenditure against $31,977 million of operating cash flow, 174.1 percent, which leaves free cash flow of $(23,686) million; its long term notes and loans rose from $85,297 million to $122,342 million over the year
• Microsoft capital expenditure rose from $64,551 million to $115,948 million year on year and absorbed 63.4 percent of operating cash flow; Amazon capital expenditure absorbed 94.5 percent
• Microsoft is the only company of the five that tags a gross profit subtotal. Alphabet, Amazon and Meta report a cost of revenues or cost of sales line inside total costs and expenses, and Oracle presents operating expenses by function, so their gross profit cells read "not reported"
• Amazon reports technology and infrastructure expense of $108,521 million in place of a research and development line, so that cell reads "not reported"
• Oracle tags its debt as long term notes and loans, which the table places on the long term debt row
• Capital expenditure is purchases of property and equipment as filed; Amazon's figure is gross of the $3,499 million of proceeds from property and equipment sales and incentives it reports on a separate line

Source filings: the most recent Form 10-K from each of the five companies, accession numbers in the source row, covering fiscal years that end on different dates.

Downloading the statements as Excel, CSV or PDF

The assistant produces a file when the prompt asks for one

An unspecified prompt returns prose or a table inside the chat window. A file appears when the prompt names the format, and the assistant then writes it with its code environment and returns it as a download. State the format, the sheet or file layout, and the units, in the prompt itself.

Excel with one sheet per statement

An .xlsx workbook delivers the statements as cells that a formula can point at, which is what a model built on top of them needs. Ask for one sheet per statement, periods across the columns and line items down the rows, with the XBRL element name in its own column so each row can be traced back to the filing. Add a cover sheet holding the company name, CIK, form type, period end date, accession number and the reporting units, so the workbook is self describing when it is opened three months later.

          1
          Pull the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement from Deere &
        

          2
          Company's three most recent 10-K filings and give me an .xlsx workbook.
        

          3
          
        

          4
          Sheet 1 "Cover": company, CIK, form type, period end dates, accession numbers,
        

          5
          currency and units.
        

          6
          Sheet 2 "Income Statement", sheet 3 "Balance Sheet", sheet 4 "Cash Flow": one
        

          7
          column per fiscal year, oldest on the left, line items as rows in filed order,
        

          8
          with a column for the XBRL element name.
        

          9
          Sheet 5 "Ratios": revenue growth, operating margin, net margin, current ratio,
        

          10
          debt to equity, return on equity, free cash flow and free cash flow margin,
        

          11
          each as a formula referencing the statement sheets, not as a pasted number.
        

          12
          Numbers in millions, two decimal places on ratios, no merged cells.
        

          13
          Write "not reported" where an element is absent.
        

Asking for the ratio sheet to hold formulas rather than values keeps the workbook auditable, because every derived figure points at the cell it came from.

PDF for circulation

A PDF suits circulation, a committee pack or an attachment. State the page size, the orientation and where the page breaks fall, and ask for the source line on every table so the document stands on its own once it leaves the chat.

          1
          Take the same three statements for Deere & Company's most recent fiscal year
        

          2
          and produce a PDF. A4, portrait, one statement per page, the company name,
        

          3
          CIK, fiscal year end date and accession number in a header on every page, and
        

          4
          amounts in millions of US dollars stated under each table. Keep each table
        

          5
          whole on its page. Return the PDF as a download.
        

An individual filing can also be rendered to PDF straight from its EDGAR URL through the MCP server's filing to PDF tool, which is the route to take when the deliverable is the filing document itself rather than a table built from it.

CSV, chat tables and Markdown

CSV suits an import into an existing model or a database: ask for one file per statement, periods as columns, and no thousands separators, so the file parses without cleaning. A table inside the chat needs no file at all and covers the case where the figures are read once rather than reused, and the same table can be requested as Markdown for pasting into a document or a wiki. A CSV carries values rather than formulas, so any ratio requested in CSV form arrives as a computed number.

Format decision table

What to watch for in the data

Fiscal years are not calendar years

A fiscal year ends where the company sets it. Retailers commonly close at the end of January, a warehouse retailer at the end of August, an equipment manufacturer in late October and a transport company at the end of May. A column labelled 2025 in one company's filing can cover a period that barely overlaps another company's 2025. Any table that puts several companies side by side has to carry the period end date next to every column, and a growth rate calculated across companies with different year ends compares different economic periods. Companies on a 52 or 53 week calendar add a further break, because one year in every five or six carries an extra trading week.

Which line items a filing tags

Gross profit is a subtotal a company chooses to present. A company that reports cost of revenue inside a combined costs and expenses block tags no gross profit element, so the figure comes from the components rather than from the face of the statement. Research and development is the same: many industrial, retail and financial companies report it inside a broader expense line. A comparison table needs a stated convention for an absent figure, and the convention that survives review is a cell reading "not reported" rather than a zero, because a zero enters an average and an absent figure does not.

Restatements change the same period twice

A period that has been restated appears with one set of values in the filing that first reported it and another set in the filing that carries it as a comparative. A three year table built from one 10-K is internally consistent. A three year table stitched together from three separate 10-K filings can hold two different values for the same year. When the two disagree, the more recent filing carries the restated figure, and the prompt should say which filing each column came from so the difference is visible.

Units, scale and currency

Values are reported in the units the filing itself uses. One issuer tags in units, another presents in thousands, a third in millions, and share counts and earnings per share sit on a different scale from the dollar lines on the same statement. Currency follows the filing as well, so a 40-F filer such as Canadian National Railway reports in Canadian dollars and a European issuer may report in euros. A prompt that names the target units returns them converted and labelled; a prompt that does not returns the filed units.

IFRS and US GAAP

A foreign private issuer filing a 20-F may report under IFRS as issued by the IASB rather than under US GAAP. The statement captions differ, the tagging uses a different taxonomy, and some subtotals are specific to one basis. Finance costs, share of profit of associates and revaluation reserves are examples that need a stated convention before they map onto a US GAAP template. A comparison that spans both bases should say which basis each column sits on.

FAQ

Does it work for companies that have stopped reporting?

Yes. A company that was acquired, went private or was delisted keeps the filings it made while it reported, and those filings stay on EDGAR permanently. The statements can be pulled from the last 10-K and 10-Q the company filed. The dataset behind the MCP server covers 1.1 million EDGAR entities without survivorship bias, so a company that no longer exists is still resolvable by name or by CIK.

How far back do the financial statements go?

Filings are available from 1993. Structured XBRL tagging starts later: large accelerated filers with more than $5 billion in public float began tagging for fiscal periods ending after 15 June 2009, and all remaining filers from fiscal periods ending after 15 June 2011. Inline XBRL was phased in between fiscal periods ending on or after 15 June 2019 and the same date in 2021. For periods before a company's own tagging start date, the statements sit in the filed document and are read out of the text.

What happens with a company that changed its fiscal year end?

A change of fiscal year end produces a transition period, reported either in a transition report on Form 10-K or 10-Q or inside the next annual report, and that period is shorter or longer than 12 months. A growth rate calculated across the change compares a stub period against a full year. Ask for the period start date and the period end date on every column rather than a year label, and treat the transition period as its own column.

Is the data the same as what is on EDGAR?

Yes. The values come from the XBRL exhibit attached to the filing on EDGAR, and each returned record carries the accession number, so any figure can be opened in the original document and checked line by line. The figures are returned as filed.

Can it read the notes to the financial statements?

Yes. The notes are part of the filing and can be extracted by section, which is where segment tables, revenue disaggregation, the debt maturity schedule, the lease tables, the tax reconciliation and the share based compensation detail sit. Note level tables are tagged in detail in annual reports, so a segment table or a maturity schedule usually comes back as structured rows. A note a company presents as narrative text comes back as text.

Do you need Excel installed to get the workbook?

No. The assistant writes the .xlsx file in its own environment and returns it as a download, and the file opens in Excel, in Google Sheets, in LibreOffice or in any tool that reads the format. A CSV is available for tools that read that format instead.

Does it return the non GAAP figures from the earnings release?

Non GAAP measures such as adjusted earnings, adjusted operating margin and free cash flow as the company defines it appear in the Exhibit 99 press release attached to the 8-K Item 2.02 filing, together with the reconciliation to the nearest GAAP measure that Regulation G requires. The GAAP statements in the 10-K and 10-Q carry the reported figures. Ask for the earnings release explicitly when the non GAAP figure and its reconciliation are wanted.

Can it return segment and geographic revenue?

Yes, from the segment note. Segment reporting follows the way management runs the company, so segment names and their composition change between years, and a company that reorganises restates the prior year segments inside the newer filing. Ask for the segment table from each year's own filing and for a note on any segment that was renamed or recombined.

Do you need the CIK or the accession number?

No. A ticker or a company name is enough, and the assistant resolves the CIK for the company and the accession number for the specific filing. Give the CIK yourself when a name is ambiguous, for example when several registrants share a name or when a subsidiary files separately from its parent.

What about companies that report in a currency other than US dollars?

The statements come back in the currency the filing uses. Converting them into US dollars requires a stated exchange rate and a stated date, so a converted column should be labelled with the rate used. A comparison across currencies is more reliable on margins and growth rates, which are ratios, than on absolute amounts.

Related reading

The code route

• Download financial statements from EDGAR filings as an Excel file: using Python
• API documentation: the REST endpoints behind the MCP tools

Setup and prompts

• How to access SEC financial data in Claude
• How to access SEC financial data in ChatGPT
• MCP server documentation: the endpoint and the full tool list.
• Financial Analysis Prompt Library: prompts with their output and the underlying data
• How to analyze stocks with AI: the ratios and the full report workflow built on top of these statements.
• Get a free API key

Background on the filings

• How to read a 10-K SEC filing
• SEC EDGAR form types supporting XBRL
• Form 8-K Item 2.02 and Exhibit 99 earnings announcements

Educational content about accessing and analysing SEC filing data. Not investment advice, legal advice, or a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

Last updated: 14 September 2026