Guide
House vs. Senate: how the two disclosure systems differ
There is no single congressional filing system. The House and the Senate each run their own, and the differences affect how quickly and how easily the public can actually see a trade.
Two systems, one law
The STOCK Act applies to the whole Congress, but House and Senate members file separately. House members file with the Clerk of the House, whose site publishes Periodic Transaction Reports that can be linked to directly. Senators file with the Secretary of the Senate through the Electronic Financial Disclosure (eFD) system.
Access: where it gets uneven
The biggest practical difference is access. House filings deep-link cleanly: you can point straight at the document. The Senate's eFD system, by contrast, requires accepting an agreement before you can view a report, so a direct link to a specific Senate filing will not open on its own — you land on the search page, accept the terms, and search by the member's name. It is the same public record, just gated behind one extra step.
That is why, throughout this site, a link to a House filing takes you straight to the document, while a Senate link sends you to the eFD search with the member's name — the closest thing to a direct link the Senate system allows.
Other differences to know
- Formats differ. The two systems structure their filings differently, which is part of why building a clean, unified dataset takes work — our methodology describes how we normalize them.
- The same rules, the same limits. Both chambers report on the same lag, in the same amount ranges, covering spouses and dependents alike.
In our database a trade's source is always preserved, so you can tell which chamber a disclosure came from and follow it back to the original — House or Senate.
Frequently asked
Why won't a Senate filing link open directly?
The Senate's eFD system requires you to accept a user agreement before viewing any report, so a direct deep link is blocked for anonymous visitors. Our Senate links send you to the eFD search page instead, where you accept the agreement and search by the member's name. House filings, by contrast, deep-link directly.
Do House and Senate members follow different disclosure rules?
No — the STOCK Act's requirements (what to report, the thresholds, the deadlines) are the same for both chambers. Only the filing systems and how the public accesses them differ.