⊕ ALTERNATIVE · edgar.tools vs AlphaSense · Pricing verified April 2026

The AlphaSense Alternative for SEC Filings.

AlphaSense is a $12,000+ per-seat market intelligence platform covering filings, broker research, expert calls, and news. edgar.tools is a $24.99/month filing-native intelligence platform — purpose-built for SEC filings with precision-first search, an AI plugin (23 tools), and HMAC-signed webhooks.

Honest comparison — including where AlphaSense wins.

If your work centers on SEC filings and not on broker research or expert calls, this is the tradeoff worth understanding.

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Plan AlphaSense edgar.tools
Free / trial No public free tier Free (100 API calls/day)
Entry / individual $12,000/yr per seat $24.99/mo · $300/yr
Power user $18,000/yr median $79.99/mo · $960/yr
Enterprise ~$125,000/yr avg Custom
AlphaSense pricing per Vendr marketplace (n=36 deals), Spendhound, TrustRadius. AlphaSense does not publish prices; figures are aggregated third-party data.
TL;DR

AlphaSense is a recall-first market intelligence platform with deep content (1.4M companies' filings + 200K+ expert transcripts + broker research + news) and a sales-led enterprise motion at $12K–$20K per seat per year. Strong if you need broker research and expert calls.

edgar.tools is a precision-first SEC filing intelligence platform — UI + AI plugin (23 tools) + HMAC webhooks + bulk data — with self-serve monthly pricing at $24.99/mo Pro and $79.99/mo Analyst.

Choose AlphaSense if expert calls and broker research are core to your process. Choose edgar.tools if SEC filings are the core of your work and you want filing-native precision, a self-serve multi-tool AI plugin, or transparent pricing.

02How they compare

Six dimensions where the choice actually matters.

01

Search precision

AlphaSense runs recall-first generative search across a unified corpus mixing filings, expert transcripts, broker research, and news. Strong when you don't know what you're looking for.

edgar.tools runs precision-first filing search with novelty scoring (0.0 boilerplate → 1.0 entirely new language), year-over-year diff filtering, proximity / NEAR search, and an acronym/synonym library mapped to accounting standards (revenue recognition ↔ ASC 606; lease ↔ ASC 842). Built for "find the exact disclosure, fast."

Even though they have query expansion, their search quality still sucks. — r/FinancialCareers · one of 19 G2 mentions of noisy results in AlphaSense reviews

Bottom line: If you regularly search across broker research and expert transcripts as well as filings, AlphaSense's recall-first model fits. If you're searching SEC filings specifically, our precision primitives are built for the job.

02

AI plugin / Agent surface

AlphaSense
  • 1 MCP tool: alphasense_search
  • Wraps GenSearch via GraphQL mutations
  • Credit-priced: 10 / 25 / 100 credits per call
  • Modes: auto, fast, thinkLonger, deepResearch (12–15 min)
  • OAuth 2.0 password grant + 5 credentials
  • Access gated behind enterprise contract ($12K+/seat/yr)
edgar.tools
  • 23 tools across 8 categories — Free 4 / Pro 17 / Analyst 23 + 5 recipes
  • Search, brief, filings, compare, snapshot, statements, trends, disclosure, insider, institutional, material, live, funds, advisers, analyze, notes
  • Structured outputs (parsed financial statements, 8-K item codes, insider transactions) — not document excerpts
  • 5 commercial recipe prompts (Analyst tier)
  • Bearer JWT, OAuth in three minutes
  • Self-serve from $0 — daily call cap, no per-call credits

Bottom line: Both products ship MCP servers, but only one is self-serve. AlphaSense's MCP is a single AI-search wrapper, sales-gated behind an enterprise contract — strong for "ask one question, get a synthesized answer." The edgar.tools AI plugin is a multi-tool toolkit with structured outputs, free to start, OAuth in three minutes — strong for "compose tools into a workflow."

03

Real-time monitoring

AlphaSense offers in-app real-time alerts on competitor names, industry shifts, keywords, and sentiment shifts. Delivery is the AlphaSense UI / notification inbox.

edgar.tools runs a real-time SEC filing stream (10-second poll cadence in business hours), AI-analyzes new filings within 60 seconds via Workers AI, and delivers to a per-user SSE inbox and via HMAC-signed webhooks (Analyst tier+) to any HTTP endpoint — Slack, your CRM, an agent pipeline. Webhook secrets rotate with a 24-hour dual-signing grace; full delivery log + test event button at /settings/webhooks.

Bottom line: AlphaSense alerts live inside their product. edgar.tools events flow wherever you need them.

04

Filing-specific depth

AlphaSense indexes 1.4M companies' regulatory filings as one content type among many. Strong general-purpose AI summarization with sentence-level citations.

edgar.tools is filing-native:

  • 400+ SEC form types indexed
  • 8-K event extraction with item-type detection (1.01–9.01) + exhibit materialization
  • Form 4 insider intelligence — 186K+ filings, 802K+ transactions, sentiment heuristics
  • 13F institutional ownership with multi-quarter trend tracking
  • Form ADV adviser networks — executives, private funds, related persons graph, disciplinary breakdown
  • 424B prospectus depth — offering classifier, deal economics, pricing, underwriting, dilution, capitalization, shelf lifecycle
  • Person Profile graph — unified identity across Form 4, ADV, 8-K Item 5.02, DEF 14A, 10-K Item 10
  • Disclosure Search with 12 curated XBRL topic chips and timeline view across all 10-K disclosure years

Bottom line: For filing-grade depth — extraction, comparison, structured navigation — we treat the filing as a first-class object. AlphaSense treats filings as one content type among many.

05

Where AlphaSense wins, honestly

If any of these are core to your work, AlphaSense is the better tool:

  • Tegus expert-call network — 1M+ pre-qualified experts, 260K+ transcripts. Real moat. We don't have this.
  • Broker / sell-side equity research — exclusive Wall Street partnerships. We don't carry this.
  • Multi-agent DeepResearch — long-form agentic research (12–15 min runs). We do shorter AI summaries, not multi-agent depth.
  • News / general market intelligence — broad news indexing. We focus on SEC filings.
  • Canalyst Financial Models — 4K+ pre-built industry models. We don't offer this.
  • Private cloud deployment — Enterprise Intelligence private cloud option. Our Enterprise tier offers SOC 2 + SSO + dedicated DOs but not customer-controlled hosting.
  • Mature enterprise GTM — named CSM, professional services, Gartner MQ Leader 2026. Our Enterprise tier exists (custom-priced) but is newer.
06

Pricing — tier-equivalent

AlphaSense Market Intelligence edgar.tools Pro edgar.tools Analyst
Per seat / month $1,000–$1,667 $24.99 $79.99
Per seat / year $12,000–$20,000 $300 $960
Free tier None public 100 API calls/day 100 API calls/day
Trial Sales-led 14-day card-on-file 14-day card-on-file
Billing Annual contract Monthly Monthly
Annual escalation 3–5% None None
Hidden costs Expert calls + premium content (20–40% of contract) None None

For a 5-analyst team: AlphaSense ≈ $60,000–$100,000/yr (negotiated). edgar.tools Analyst ≈ $4,800/yr (signed up online).

03Who is each best for?

Pick the platform that matches your shape.

edgar.tools is best for

SEC-filing-native workflows

  • Solo analysts and small funds working primarily with SEC filings — priced out of AlphaSense, want self-serve.
  • Financial journalists and technical investors who need filing-native precision search and real-time event delivery.
  • AI builders / agent developers who need a self-serve multi-tool AI plugin with bearer-JWT auth.
  • Compliance and DD teams who need adviser network mapping (Form ADV executives, private funds, related persons).
  • Quant / data teams who want bulk parquet datasets in addition to live API access.
  • Engineering teams at SaaS vendors that want to embed SEC data via OEM/embed enterprise deal shape.
AlphaSense is best for

Broad market-intelligence workflows

  • Enterprise research teams at investment banks, hedge funds, PE, or large corporates with $60K+ research budgets.
  • Buy-side analysts who depend on expert call networks (Tegus) as part of their process.
  • Equity research teams who consume broker research as a daily input.
  • Strategy / corporate intelligence functions that need news, transcripts, and broker research alongside filings.
  • Buyers who require a Gartner MQ Leader credential for procurement.
  • Teams who need private cloud / data residency at the platform level.
04Frequently asked

Five questions, honestly answered.

01

What is the best AlphaSense alternative for SEC filings?

edgar.tools is purpose-built for SEC filing intelligence — 400+ form types, real-time AI-analyzed event inboxes (Sentinels), an AI plugin (MCP server) with 23 tools, HMAC-signed webhooks, and self-serve pricing from $0 to $79.99/month. AlphaSense is broader (broker research, expert calls, news) and prices accordingly at $12,000–$20,000 per seat per year. For analysts whose work centers on SEC filings, edgar.tools delivers comparable filing depth at roughly 40× lower per-seat cost.

02

How much does AlphaSense cost?

AlphaSense does not publish prices. Third-party sources (Vendr marketplace, Spendhound, TrustRadius) report per-seat pricing of $10,000–$20,000/year, with a starting floor of $12,000 and a median of $18,000. Average contract value is $18,375 across 36 anonymized Vendr deals. Enterprise contracts average $125,124/year. Expert calls and premium content add 20–40% to total contract value. AlphaSense bills annually only — no monthly billing.

03

Does edgar.tools have an MCP server like AlphaSense?

Both products ship MCP servers, but with different shapes. AlphaSense exposes one tool (alphasense_search) that wraps their GenSearch product, with credit-based pricing (10/25/100 credits per call), OAuth 2.0 password-grant authentication, and access gated behind an enterprise sales contract ($12K+/seat/yr). The edgar.tools AI plugin is the only self-serve, full-toolkit option in this category — 23 structured tools (Free 4 / Pro 17 / Analyst 23 + 5 recipes) across search, filings, financials, ownership, advisers, and signals, plus 5 commercial prompts, with bearer-JWT authentication and OAuth in three minutes. AlphaSense's MCP is best for one-shot AI questions; edgar.tools' AI plugin is best for compositional agent workflows.

04

Should I switch from AlphaSense to edgar.tools?

Switch if your work centers on SEC filings, you need precision-first search (AlphaSense's most-cited complaint is noisy results — 19 G2 mentions), you're paying for breadth you don't use, you need filing events delivered to external systems via webhooks, or you want self-serve monthly pricing. Stay on AlphaSense if expert calls (Tegus network), broker research, multi-agent DeepResearch, or private cloud hosting are core to your daily work — those remain AlphaSense's moat.

05

What about Sentieo and BamSEC?

Sentieo was acquired by AlphaSense in 2022 and the standalone site is decommissioned. BamSEC was also acquired and maintains separate branding, though trial signup routes to AlphaSense. If you're evaluating Sentieo or BamSEC, the AlphaSense comparison applies. We also have a dedicated BamSEC comparison.

Comparable filing depth.
~40× lower per-seat cost.

Sign up free. 14-day card-on-file trial unlocks Sentinels, the full AI plugin (17 tools at Pro, 23 + 5 recipes at Analyst), and the AI inbox. No procurement, no sales call.

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