ChatPDF didn’t meet my needs, so I built a more powerful AI financial report chat tool

I’ve always had a habit of analyzing financial reports from publicly listed companies. I usually download them directly from the SEC website and spend hours digging through the data to find what I need. But let’s be honest—finding specific financial figures and supporting evidence in those lengthy reports is incredibly time-consuming. A while ago, I discovered ChatPDF, which made things a bit easier. It helps extract financial data from PDF reports and even shows the source references. Sounds great, right? Well, here’s the catch—it only supports PDF files. Since SEC reports are mostly in HTML format, I had to convert them into PDFs first. For every company I wanted to analyze, I had to: Open the SEC website Search for the company Filter report types Open the HTML report Download and convert it to PDF Upload it to ChatPDF Now imagine doing this for multiple companies. Over and over again. It was mind-numbingly tedious. To make things worse, ChatPDF’s free plan only allows you to upload two PDFs a day, each capped at 20 pages. Sure, upgrading to the paid plan helped, but the repetitive steps still remained. I tried looking for alternatives, but most tools I found were bloated with features I didn’t need. I just wanted something simple, clean, and easy to use for analyzing financial reports. One night, while slogging through the same boring process, I thought, why not build my own tool? A platform where all SEC filings could be analyzed directly without the need for downloading, converting, and uploading files. Sounds amazing, right? Well, the journey wasn’t easy. I had to gather data on thousands of companies. I needed not just their financial reports but also their company info. Then came the challenge of downloading 10 years’ worth of annual and quarterly reports—over 130,000 filings—and converting them all into PDFs. Finally, I had to process these PDFs into AI-readable formats for quick and accurate data retrieval. After some dedicated work, Chat2Report is now online.

Apr 19, 2025 - 04:25

ChatPDF didn’t meet my needs, so I built a more powerful AI financial report chat tool

I’ve always had a habit of analyzing financial reports from publicly listed companies. I usually download them directly from the SEC website and spend hours digging through the data to find what I need.

But let’s be honest—finding specific financial figures and supporting evidence in those lengthy reports is incredibly time-consuming.

A while ago, I discovered ChatPDF, which made things a bit easier. It helps extract financial data from PDF reports and even shows the source references. Sounds great, right? Well, here’s the catch—it only supports PDF files.

Since SEC reports are mostly in HTML format, I had to convert them into PDFs first. For every company I wanted to analyze, I had to:

Open the SEC website
Search for the company
Filter report types
Open the HTML report
Download and convert it to PDF
Upload it to ChatPDF

Now imagine doing this for multiple companies. Over and over again. It was mind-numbingly tedious.

To make things worse, ChatPDF’s free plan only allows you to upload two PDFs a day, each capped at 20 pages. Sure, upgrading to the paid plan helped, but the repetitive steps still remained.

I tried looking for alternatives, but most tools I found were bloated with features I didn’t need. I just wanted something simple, clean, and easy to use for analyzing financial reports.

One night, while slogging through the same boring process, I thought, why not build my own tool? A platform where all SEC filings could be analyzed directly without the need for downloading, converting, and uploading files.

Sounds amazing, right? Well, the journey wasn’t easy.

I had to gather data on thousands of companies.
I needed not just their financial reports but also their company info.
Then came the challenge of downloading 10 years’ worth of annual and quarterly reports—over 130,000 filings—and converting them all into PDFs.
Finally, I had to process these PDFs into AI-readable formats for quick and accurate data retrieval.

After some dedicated work, Chat2Report is now online.