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 — 29 tools + 6 ready-made research prompts

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 www.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": "YOUR_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

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 — edit ~/.cursor/mcp.json (user-level) or .cursor/mcp.json (workspace-level):

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

Restart Cursor. The tools appear automatically.

Windsurf — edit ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json:

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

Restart Windsurf. The tools appear automatically.

VS Code — edit .vscode/mcp.json (workspace-level). Note: VS Code uses the servers key (not mcpServers):

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

Restart VS Code. The tools appear automatically.

Codex CLI — config is TOML at ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.form4api]
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "form4api-mcp"]
env = { FORM4API_KEY = "YOUR_API_KEY" }

Verify it works

Ask your LLM to run the verify_setup tool — it confirms your API key is valid and the MCP server is reachable, or returns the exact fix steps.

Example: "Run the verify_setup tool to confirm the MCP is configured correctly."

Try before you commit a key

get_public_stats is a keyless tool — it works with no FORM4API_KEY set. Try it first to preview live data coverage before signing up:

FORM4API_KEY="" npx form4api-mcp

Once you like what you see, sign up for a free key at www.form4api.com → set FORM4API_KEY → all tools unlock.

3. Or run directly

FORM4API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY npx form4api-mcp

Available tools (29)

Form 4 insider trading

Tool	Description	Plan
`research_company`	Bundled insider-research context for one ticker in a single call — company profile, recent transactions, cluster signals, sentiment, and a computed buy/sell direction summary. Replaces 4 separate calls and degrades gracefully when a section needs a higher plan	Free (signals/sentiment sections need Business)
`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`) and post-trade-return screening (`min_return_1d`…`max_return_6m`, `has_returns`; returns are fractions, 0.05 = +5%). Free tier can filter on `inst_ownership_trend` (13F ownership trend)	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
`explain_signal`	Explain why a signal fired — the insiders and trades counted, exclusions, and criteria	Business
`get_data_quality`	Public data-quality, freshness and coverage metrics	Free

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
`verify_setup`	Verify the MCP is configured correctly — confirms API key is valid and server is reachable	Free
`get_public_stats`	Public corpus-wide totals (filings, transactions, companies, 13F-HR AUM, ingestion latency) — no API key required	Free (keyless)
`get_status_history`	Trailing 90-day daily uptime history for the public status page	Free (keyless)
`health_ingestion`	Live ingestion-health check — Form 4 freshness, parse-queue backlog, price-feed staleness	Free (keyless)

Prompts (6)

Beyond the 29 tools, this MCP ships 6 prompts — ready-made research recipes that a client can list (prompts/list) and load (prompts/get) so you don't have to hand-assemble the right tool sequence yourself. Each one tells the LLM exactly which SEC Form 4 / Form 144 / 13F-HR tools to call, in what order, and how to read plan-gated results.

Prompt	Args	What it does
`insider_monitor`	`ticker`	Recent SEC Form 4 insider activity for a ticker — transactions (10b5-1 flagged), cluster signals, sentiment — summarized as buy/sell conviction with post-trade-return context
`cluster_buy_scan`	`days` (default 7)	Market-wide scan of recent cluster-buy signals, 10b5-1 excluded, ranked by conviction (insider count + $ value), each with a sentiment score
`form144_early_warning`	`ticker` (optional)	Pending Form 144 notice-of-proposed-sale filings cross-referenced against recent Form 4 sells — flags discretionary (non-10b5-1) notices as the highest-signal early warnings, ~2 days ahead of the sale
`exec_conviction_check`	`insider` (name or CIK)	An insider's career track record — total bought/sold, historical post-trade returns on discretionary buys, and whether their buying has historically beaten their scheduled 10b5-1 selling
`institutional_insider_overlap`	`ticker`	Combines 13F-HR institutional holders with recent insider transactions to spot where smart money and insiders agree or diverge
`post_selloff_buys`	`min_return` (default 0.05)	Screens insider buys with post-trade-return filters to surface historically-successful dip-buying patterns

These map to the recipe workflows scraping-based Form 4 MCPs don't offer — each one leans on data this MCP alone exposes (10b5-1 flags, Form 144, 13F-HR join, per-insider return scoring). Plan requirements are honored honestly: prompts that touch Business-plan tools (get_signals, get_sentiment, get_form144, get_holdings, get_managers) or Pro-plan tools (get_insider_career_summary, get_insider_scorecard) instruct the LLM to surface the structured upgrade_required response rather than silently failing.

In Claude Desktop, prompts surface as a / slash-command picker; in Claude Code or other MCP clients, ask the assistant to "use the insider_monitor prompt for NVDA" (or similar) and it will fetch and follow the recipe.

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

Install as a Claude Desktop Extension (DXT)

A manifest.json is included at the repo root for one-click install via the Desktop Extensions (DXT) format. Once Claude Desktop supports .dxt files natively, pack and install with:

npx @anthropic-ai/dxt pack
# Produces form4api-mcp.dxt — open it in Claude Desktop to install

Until then, use the standard claude_desktop_config.json method described in Quick install above.

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.

The 6 recipe prompts live in src/prompts/recipes.ts — also hand-written, not generated. They add no new backend surface area; each one is a client-side template that tells the LLM which existing tools to call and in what order.

Links

Form4API — API homepage
Documentation — Full REST API reference
Dashboard — Manage your API key, view usage, configure webhooks
Status — live uptime, database, and ingestion-queue health
npm — npm package
mcp.so — MCP server directory listing

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 28 Commits
.github/workflows		.github/workflows
codegen		codegen
src		src
test		test
.dockerignore		.dockerignore
.gitignore		.gitignore
.npmignore		.npmignore
CHANGELOG.md		CHANGELOG.md
Dockerfile		Dockerfile
LICENSE		LICENSE
README.md		README.md
glama.json		glama.json
manifest.json		manifest.json
package-lock.json		package-lock.json
package.json		package.json
server.json		server.json
smithery.yaml		smithery.yaml
tsconfig.json		tsconfig.json

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form4api-mcp

Quick install

1. Get a free API key

2. Add to your MCP client

Verify it works

Try before you commit a key

3. Or run directly

Available tools (29)

Form 4 insider trading

Signals + sentiment

Form 144 + institutional

Utility

Prompts (6)

Example prompts

Why this MCP vs scraping-based alternatives

Beyond MCP — when you need more

Plans

Data coverage

Install as a Claude Desktop Extension (DXT)

How tools stay in sync with the backend

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About

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form4api-mcp

Quick install

1. Get a free API key

2. Add to your MCP client

Verify it works

Try before you commit a key

3. Or run directly

Available tools (29)

Form 4 insider trading

Signals + sentiment

Form 144 + institutional

Utility

Prompts (6)

Example prompts

Why this MCP vs scraping-based alternatives

Beyond MCP — when you need more

Plans

Data coverage

Install as a Claude Desktop Extension (DXT)

How tools stay in sync with the backend

Links

About

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