The short answer
A Form 10-K is a company's annual report filed with the SEC. It includes a year-level account of the business, risk factors, management discussion, and financial statements. A Form 10-Q is a quarterly report that updates information during the fiscal year. A Form 8-K is a current report used for specified events; it can include exhibits such as an earnings release.
The form tells you the filing type, not whether a particular disclosure is important to your question. Read the filing and its exhibits for context, and confirm the reporting period and filing date on EDGAR.
Where common questions appear
In a 10-K, Item 1A is Risk Factors, Item 7 is Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A), and Item 8 contains Financial Statements and Supplementary Data. In a 10-Q, Item 2 is MD&A; interim statements and notes appear in the financial-information section. An 8-K is organized by event Items, so use its table of contents and attached exhibits rather than assuming it has the same structure as an annual report.
- Use the 10-K for the issuer's annual narrative and audited financial statements.
- Use the 10-Q to review an interim update and changes since the most recent annual report.
- Use the 8-K to find a reported event, announcement, or attached document; check the specific Item and exhibits.
Find the official filing
Search EDGAR by company name, ticker, or CIK, then filter by form and filing date. Open the filing index to see the primary document and exhibits. A press release attached to an 8-K may contain useful detail, but it is still an exhibit to the filing and should be read in that context.
EdgarStack's filing lookup returns accessions and primary-document names for supported forms. Its section extractor supports selected 10-K and 10-Q Items; its filing comparison tools work on selected sections and retain links to the source filings.
Compare like with like
For a year-over-year disclosure review, compare the same company, form, and Item across periods. Keep both filing dates and accession numbers. A text difference can be caused by wording, layout, tables, or extraction boundaries; it does not establish legal or financial materiality.
For financial metrics, compare the reported period ends and units rather than assuming that every fiscal year ends in December. SEC company-facts data may include facts from several forms and filing dates for the same concept.
What a filing comparison can and cannot tell you
Sentence-level diffs help you find additions, removals, and rewording. They are a navigation aid. They do not interpret management intent, determine whether a risk changed, or replace reading the original filing. Check quoted passages in the linked SEC document before relying on them.
Official sources
Use these SEC resources to confirm filing requirements, API behavior, and company-reported facts.