Sources for Historical Company Financial Statements in Panel Data
Summary
The document surveys lower-cost sources for historical financial statements, aimed at students or researchers who need panel data on US companies. The requested fields include balance-sheet, income-statement, and cash-flow items, along with ticker, period date, and release date. It also raises the possibility of extracting records from company filings, though the questioner prefers a ready-made dataset.
Responses name several commercial or broker-provided data services and a free source offering annual, quarterly, and trailing-twelve-month statements. They describe documentation, data quality, pricing accessibility, and account requirements in anecdotal terms. One contributor favors a particular paid provider, while another notes that low-cost services may omit some companies, especially smaller firms. The discussion is a pointer list rather than a systematic comparison: it does not verify current coverage, historical depth, point-in-time release dates, survivorship handling, or licensing terms. Researchers should assess those details against their intended use before relying on any source.
Key ideas
- Historical financial statement panels can be assembled from commercial data vendors, broker APIs, public downloads, or filings.
- The listed sources vary in cost, documentation, data quality, access requirements, and convenience.
- One response describes a free source with quarterly, trailing-twelve-month, and annual statements, while noting occasional missing records.
- The discussion does not establish that any source meets a twenty-year coverage requirement or preserves release-date information consistently.
- Data coverage and licensing should be checked before using a source in research.
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Full text
# Low-Cost Historical Corporate Financials Data? # Low-Cost Historical Corporate Financials Data? For my finance textbook, I would like to recommend data sources that students can afford. Obviously, Compustat is not affordable. Are there any low-cost or free data bases that offer basic historical financial statements on US (and maybe non-US) companies in panel format? I am thinking of just about 10-20 key items for at least 20 years for all US corps: Assets, Current Assets, Liabilities, Current Liabilities, Long-Term Debt, Working Capital, Revenues, Gross Profit, Operating Income, Interest Expense, Income Tax Expense, Net Income, CF Operations, CF Investing, and CF Financing. Plus a ticker, a period date, and a release date. Presumably, this could even be scraped from Edgar, but I would rather not have to do this myself. Pointers appreciated. /iaw ## Answer by Jay (score 2) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/43244 ### iextrading https://iextrading.com/developer/docs/#financials - Misc.: excellent documentation, very active github issue tracking ### eodhistoricaldata.com https://eodhistoricaldata.com/knowledgebase/stock-etfs-fundamental-data-feeds/ - Misc.: sign up is very easy, documentation is good ### InteractiveBrokers API https://interactivebrokers.github.io/tws-api/fundamentals.html Note: requires to open a trading account with them. Approval times vary, and might not be suitable to students. - Misc.: documentation isn't very good. ### Quandl https://www.quandl.com/databases/SF1 - Misc.: documentation + support is very good, excellent data quality I developed software using all of the above services. eodhistoricaldata.com is my favourite so far. ## Answer by David Addison (score 1) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/35091 I have compiled a pretty exhaustive list on my website: http://the-world-is.com/blog/resources/general-investor-resources/ Particularly, look under the following headings: "Tools" >> "Research Platforms" and, "Data" >> "Fundamental Financial Data" There are a lot resources there to get you started. Personally, I use Portfolio123 which might also be appropriate for your purposes. It has several panel-based displays of financial data, some of which are customizable. Moreover, its core data holdings are actually derived from Compustat yet it is much more affordable than purchasing a license to Capital IQ. In this business, you often get what you pay for. I believe that paying a little coin for premium data is well worth the cost, especially since the costs have come down significantly for retail investors. ## Answer by Zachary Kocjancic (score 1) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/65430 Idk if anyone is still looking for a free resource still but MarketBeat has Quarterly, TTM and 10 yr annual data for Income statement, balance sheet and cashflow for free. Idk if they have an API but they let you download a csv for spreadsheets. Note on a rare occasions they wont have the financials. I found that if it happens, it's only on the small caps
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