SEC CIK Lookup API: Resolve a ticker or company name to its SEC CIK — free lookup

Resolve a ticker or company name to its SEC CIK — returns zero-padded CIK, ticker and registered name from the SEC's official mapping. Free. Use before any EDGAR call instead of downloading and parsing company_tickers.json yourself.

Free — no key, no signup, rate-limited to 60 calls per minute per client.

How do you call it?

GET /v1/sec/cik — product id sec_cik_lookup. Over MCP, call answerpool_get with product_id=sec_cik_lookup.

curl "https://answerpool.io/v1/sec/cik?ticker=NVDA"

Live call: https://answerpool.io/v1/sec/cik?ticker=NVDA · JSON sample: /v1/samples/sec_cik_lookup

What does the answer look like?

A representative response, the same static sample served at /v1/samples/sec_cik_lookup.

matches

{
 "as_of": "2026-08-31T14:00:00Z",
 "count": 1,
 "matches": [
  {
   "cik": "0001045810",
   "ticker": "NVDA",
   "name": "NVIDIA CORP"
  }
 ],
 "refresh_after": "2026-09-17T11:15:00.000Z"
}

How fresh is it, and where does the data come from?

The fastest source behind this answer can change every 15 minutes, so every response carries a refresh_after timestamp — right now it would be 2026-09-17T11:15:00.000Z. Schedule the next call on that value rather than on a guess.

• SEC EDGAR (US federal public domain) — upstream: https://efts.sec.gov

Method version 0.1.0 · serving cache 1 day · every response carries a result_id you can resolve at /v1/provenance.

When should you use it?

You have a ticker or name and need the CIK that filings, facts and insider endpoints take.

What you skip building

• company_tickers.json download and parse
• zero-padding bugs
• name-matching code

When should you not use it?

You already hold the CIK, or you need non-US issuers without SEC registration.

Where else can you find this?

• Catalog entry (JSON, free)
• OpenAPI schema — input and output types, prices, the 402 flow
• llms.txt — every product in one plain-text document