form4api-mcp

Production-grade SEC Form 4 insider trading data for any MCP-compatible AI assistant — amendment-aware, 10b5-1 clean, with Form 144 + institutional 13F-HR overlay

An MCP server that exposes the hosted Form4API REST API to Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, Codex CLI, and any other MCP-compatible client. Configured once, your LLM can answer questions about insider trading, institutional positioning, and intent-to-sell filings directly during research sessions.

Four data-quality claims no scraping-based alternative can make:

• 🛡 Amendment-aware — Form 4/A amendments are reconciled automatically. No double-counting when an insider corrects a filing.
• 🎯 10b5-1 clean — every transaction flagged as pre-scheduled (10b5-1 plan) or discretionary. Cluster signals exclude planned trades by construction.
• 📜 Form 144 intent-to-sell — 23K+ Form 144 filings indexed. Catch insider sales ~2 days before they hit Form 4.
• 🏛 Institutional × insider join — every transaction carries the current 13F-HR ownership context (top-3 holders, AUM trend). No competitor at any price point joins both sides in one query.

Quick install

1. Get a free API key

Go to form4api.com → Sign in → Dashboard. Free plan includes 500 requests/day, no credit card required.

2. Add to your MCP client

Claude Desktop — edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "form4api": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "form4api-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "FORM4API_KEY": "fapi_live_your_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart the client. The tools appear automatically.

Claude Code (CLI):

claude mcp add form4api -- npx -y form4api-mcp

…then set FORM4API_KEY in your shell or in ~/.claude/mcp.json.

Cursor / VS Code / Codex CLI / Windsurf — same generic stdio config (command: "npx", args: ["-y", "form4api-mcp"], env.FORM4API_KEY).

3. Or run directly

FORM4API_KEY=fapi_live_your_key npx form4api-mcp

Available tools (22)

Form 4 insider trading

| Tool | Description | Plan | |---|---|---| | get_transactions | Search insider transactions — filter by ticker, insider, date range, transaction codes or whole categories (exclude_category=derivatives), 10b5-1 plan trades, or use significant=true for real discretionary buys/sells only. Pro adds trade-size screening (min_value, min_shares) | Free | | get_recent_filings | Most recent Form 4 filings, optionally filtered by ticker | Free | | get_filing | Single filing by accession number | Free | | get_insider_profile | Insider profile — name, title, director/officer/10pct owner flags | Free | | get_insider_transactions | All transactions for a specific insider (by CIK) | Free | | get_company_overview | Company profile — name, CIK, SIC sector, state, website, filing counts | Free | | get_company_insiders | All insiders who have filed Form 4s for a company | Free | | list_companies | List companies, sorted by name or filing count | Free | | get_insider_career_summary | Aggregate career rollup: total bought/sold, top companies, 10b5-1 split, return averages | Pro | | get_insider_scorecard | Buy track-record scorecard for an insider (CIK) — hit rate and avg/median return on discretionary open-market buys; null when fewer than 5 matured samples | Pro | | get_insider_leaderboard | Top insiders ranked by hit_rate or avg_return; filter by horizon (3m/6m), min_trades, and limit | Business |

Signals + sentiment

| Tool | Description | Plan | |---|---|---| | get_signals | Cluster buy/sell signals — multiple insiders at the same company in the same direction. Excludes 10b5-1 trades automatically | Business | | get_sentiment | MSPR-style monthly sentiment score per ticker (-100 to +100). 10b5-1 excluded so the score reflects real insider conviction | Business |

Form 144 + institutional

| Tool | Description | Plan | |---|---|---| | get_form144 | Notice-of-proposed-sale filings — early signal ~2 days before Form 4 sale lands | Business | | get_holdings | Institutional positions from Form 13F-HR (filter by ticker, CUSIP, manager, quarter, min value) | Business | | get_managers | Institutional manager index with latest AUM | Business |

Utility

| Tool | Description | Plan | |---|---|---| | check_usage | Your API key usage stats and current plan | Free | | get_key_usage | Same data, OpenAPI-shape response | Free | | get_key_activity | Recent API requests for this key | Free | | get_usage_history | Daily request counts for the last N days | Free | | search_insiders | Substring search on insider names | Free | | list_webhooks | List your webhook subscriptions | Free | | get_webhook_events | Replay webhook delivery events since a timestamp | Free |

Example prompts

Configured? Ask your LLM:

Quality-led (these require our amendment-aware, 10b5-1 clean, joined dataset):

• "Show me cluster buy signals from this week — discretionary only, no planned trades"
• "Which companies have insiders buying while institutional ownership is increasing this quarter?"
• "Are there any Form 144 filings at NVDA suggesting upcoming sales?"
• "What's the monthly insider sentiment for TSLA over the last 6 months, with 10b5-1 plans excluded?"
• "Berkshire Hathaway's top 13F-HR holdings — what did they add or trim this quarter?"

Standard insider research:

• "What insider trades happened at NVDA in the last 30 days, excluding 10b5-1 plans?"
• "What is Tim Cook's career insider-trading summary?"
• "Show me all open-market purchases over $1M at Tesla in 2026"
• "What has the CFO of Microsoft been doing with their shares this year?"

Why this MCP vs scraping-based alternatives

Some MCPs in this space scrape free public sites (e.g. openinsider.com) for Form 4 data. That's fine for a quick prototype but the data layer they give your LLM has structural gaps:

| | form4api-mcp | Scraping-based MCPs | |---|---|---| | Form 4/A amendment handling | ✅ reconciled automatically | ❌ double-counts | | 10b5-1 plan flag | ✅ exposed on every transaction | ❌ planned + discretionary mixed | | Form 144 intent-to-sell | ✅ 23K+ filings | ❌ not exposed | | Institutional × insider join | ✅ top-3 holders + AUM trend per transaction | ❌ insider only | | Sentiment (10b5-1 excluded) | ✅ MSPR-style score | ❌ planned trades pollute score | | Source resilience | ✅ hosted API contract | ❌ breaks when source HTML changes | | Webhooks / production delivery | ✅ HMAC + retry + DLQ | ❌ MCP-only, no fallback | | SDKs | ✅ Python + JS | ❌ MCP-only | | Commercial support | ✅ | ❌ |

If your LLM session is the start of a real research workflow that eventually wants production delivery, picking the MCP that has a graduation path matters.

Beyond MCP — when you need more

The MCP is the easiest entry point. When your workflow grows past LLM-mediated research, the rest of the Form4API platform is right behind it:

• Webhooks — HMAC-signed, exponential backoff, dead-letter queue, auto-disable on persistent failure. For production pipelines, not just LLM chats.
• Python SDK — pip install form4api (PyPI)
• JS / TypeScript SDK — npm install form4api (npm)
• Dashboard — usage, billing self-serve, key rotation, webhook health, billing history.

The MCP wraps the same backend as all of the above — every fact your LLM cites can be re-fetched programmatically through any of these channels with the same key.

Plans

| Tool | Free | Pro | Business | |---|---|---|---| | get_transactions, get_recent_filings, get_filing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | | get_insider_profile, get_insider_transactions | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | | get_company_overview, get_company_insiders | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | | get_insider_career_summary, get_insider_scorecard | — | ✓ | ✓ | | get_insider_leaderboard, get_signals, get_sentiment | — | — | ✓ | | get_form144, get_holdings, get_managers | — | — | ✓ | | Requests/day | 500 | 50,000 | 250,000 |

When a tool requires a higher plan, the MCP returns a structured upgrade_required payload (with required_plan and upgrade_url) so the LLM can surface the path to you directly. No mid-conversation 402 confusion.

Upgrade at form4api.com/dashboard/billing.

Data coverage

• 1M+ Form 4 transactions from SEC EDGAR
• 475K+ filings across all reporting companies
• 23K+ Form 144 notice-of-proposed-sale filings (Business+)
• 16M+ Form 13F-HR holdings across 44K+ filings, $72T+ AUM (Business+)
• 2.5+ years of history (since 2023-10)
• 10b5-1 plan flag on every transaction
• Amendment-aware — Form 4/A reconciled
• Real-time ingestion — new filings within minutes of SEC publication

How tools stay in sync with the backend

This MCP is split between two layers:

• Hand-written tools in src/tools/*.ts (transactions, signals, sentiment, form144, holdings, …) — these carry the LLM-discriminator descriptions (amendment-aware, 10b5-1 clean, etc.) that make this MCP pick correctly over alternatives.
• Auto-generated tools in src/tools/_generated.ts — produced from https://api.form4api.com/openapi/v1.json by npm run codegen. Every new backend endpoint that lands in the OpenAPI spec flows in here automatically. CI runs npm run codegen:check on every PR and fails the build if the committed file drifts from what the live spec would produce, so the MCP is never silently behind the backend.

To add a new generated tool: ship the endpoint on the backend, regenerate (npm run codegen), commit src/tools/_generated.ts, publish. No tool-wrapper code needed.

Links

• Form4API — API homepage
• Documentation — Full REST API reference
• Dashboard — Manage your API key, view usage, configure webhooks
• npm — npm package
• mcp.so — MCP server directory listing