What is XBRL?
XBRL is the structured, machine-readable data format inside SEC filings that lets tools extract exact financial figures instead of scraping text.
The structured data hidden inside filings
XBRL — eXtensible Business Reporting Language — is a structured, machine-readable format that the SEC requires inside many filings. It tags each number in a financial statement with a standard label, so software can read "this figure is Revenue for the fiscal year ending December 2024" instead of guessing from the surrounding text.
Why it exists
Before XBRL, extracting figures from a filing meant parsing prose and tables by hand or with fragile scraping. XBRL turns the income statement, balance sheet and cash-flow statement into reliable, comparable data points — the foundation that lets FiledFeed build accurate charts automatically.
Where you'll see it (and won't)
- Has XBRL: 10-K, 10-Q and 20-F filings generally carry full inline XBRL.
- Often doesn't: narrative forms like 8-K and 6-K, and filings from before roughly 2009, may have little or no XBRL.
Standard vs. custom tags
Companies mostly use standard US-GAAP or IFRS tags, but they can also define custom (extension) tags for things specific to their business. FiledFeed normalizes standard tags automatically and carefully maps custom ones to a consistent set of metrics — and when it can't confidently map something yet, it shows a blank rather than a guess. Accuracy over completeness.