Stock screeners are a type of online software widely used by investors who are constantly searching and analysing a large amount of information to determine the best stocks to invest in and the opportunities that best fit their strategies.
A stock screener is exactly that, a platform that gives its users the possibility to perform specific searches through different filters and features, in order to receive only results according to their needs. Although they can also have complementary functions that help or improve the decision making process before an investment.
There are a large number of companies, brands and websites offering these stock screener services, and they compete for the attention of their users. Therefore, it is necessary to make a detailed analysis of each of these options before choosing a stock screener, which might not be the right one for your plans. So here we will analyse the best free and paid stock screeners to help you find the best option for you.
Table of Contents
What are the best screener for stocks?
1. Trade Ideas
Trade Ideas is a good stock screener that stands out for its signals system based on artificial intelligence for the analysis of shares and opportunities within the market. It has a large number of users who trust its system, and all the functions it provides for each type of investor.
It also offers a wide level of customisation and types of filters to use to perform the necessary searches. This allows you to filter results according to technical indicators, company data, sector, volume, price fluctuations, resistance breaks, among others. So you can get specific information according to your search criteria, saving time and effort.
In addition, you can save each of the settings you make in the stock analyser, so you don’t have to adapt the characteristics of your strategy every day, or even develop your own algorithms. This, together with the training available within Trade Ideas, makes it a great choice as a stock screener.
This trading software has 3 different types of plans, with the free option having very limited features and only available through the website. The basic plan, with some functions of alarms, indicators and backtesting. And finally, the Alpha Pro premium plan, which has all the features, which would include a chat room and an educational resources section to improve trading strategies.
Some examples of the Trade Ideas trading signals:
Key features of Trade Ideas
- Charts: Trade Ideas can open up to 20 different charts simultaneously. This feature is especially important when you are looking to compare different data or patterns.
- Real-time data: Access instant information on market performance, including prices, volumes, trends and news. This stock finder improves decision making by providing instant, up-to-date information.
- AI Trading Signals: This unique Trade Ideas tool called Holly uses artificial intelligence (AI) to scan the market and find profitable trading opportunities. This feature is ideal for identifying stocks that have bullish or bearish momentum, or spotting patterns that indicate a change in trend.
- Alerts: Receive notifications when certain market conditions are met. Using them reduces the risk of missing profitable trading opportunities and helps you make more timely trading decisions.
- Filters: Customise the trading experience to suit your trading style, reduce the amount of irrelevant information displayed on the platform and allow you to focus on the trading opportunities that matter most.
- Market Explorer: Designed to identify lucrative trading opportunities based on a variety of criteria such as technical patterns, indicators, news and fundamental data. With this feature you can access trend scans, pattern scans, indicator scans and news and data scans.
- Auto-trading: Allows traders to automate their strategies and execute trades autonomously. This feature frees users from the need to constantly monitor the market and make real-time trading decisions.
- Backtesting: Evaluates the historical performance of trading strategies. This stock analyser provides valuable information about the viability and potential of a strategy before it is applied in the real market.
More information at https://www.trade-ideas.com/
2. Benzinga Pro
Benzinga Pro is, like any good stock screener, an important source of real-time financial and economic news, with relevant data and a focus on the stock market. By using this platform you can keep up to date with the latest market movements, expert analysis and corporate events, presented in a clear and concise manner.
In addition, you will have the opportunity to connect with a community of professional traders who share their trades in real time, as well as being able to access mentoring or chat rooms to exchange data or experiences. In this way, you can find new investment opportunities, or simply improve or update your strategy.
Benzinga Pro offers three subscription plans: Basic, Essential and Optimised. The Basic plan is the least expensive and provides key features such as real-time Nasdaq quotes, comprehensive news, chat and watchlist alerts. The Essential plan, at a mid-range price, includes all the features of the Basic plan, plus a real-time scanner, calendar, signals and access to premium articles.
The Optimised plan, the most expensive, offers all the features of the previous plans and adds an advanced newsfeed, audio squawk for stocks and options, and access to trading options newsletters. The choice of the ideal plan will depend on each user’s needs and budget.
Main features of Benzinga Pro
- Stock Screener: Monitors and updates the rise and fall in the price of each stock in real time. In addition, you can search for stocks or view the results according to different filters that you can choose.
- Market news: Allows you to see on screen the most relevant news in real time. This is essential to be informed about the stocks we are interested in and to determine how the price will change in order to make the right decisions.
- Alerts and signals: Program alerts for any aspect of the page, from when a stock is affected, or when a specific type of news comes out. You can also set alerts for different market signals, such as sharp movements or when a stock reaches highs or lows.
- Movers: Visualise in a quick and easy way the major ups and downs that have occurred in the stock market. It can be filtered according to specific characteristics, such as price, sector, market capitalisation, among others.
- Audio Squawk: Receive audios with breaking news, important or relevant data, which are given by an announcer. It is an option that is activated to be listened to at the moment, which is advantageous for some users.
- App: Benzinga Pro has an app, both for Android and Apple, with which you can stay informed anywhere from your mobile phone. This app allows you to monitor important stocks, check market sentiment or perform fundamental analysis on the stocks you are interested in.
More information on the official website https://www.benzinga.com/pro/
3. TradingView
TradingView is perhaps one of the most popular trading software worldwide, so it has a significant number of active users daily. It is, in a very simple way, a chart plotter with advanced and complex options, which allows you to perform technical analysis in a fluid and comfortable way.
But it is not only that. It has integration with several online brokers, which allows you to execute buy or sell orders from the same stock analyser. It is also considered a kind of social network, where users can share their data, charts and trades, so it is an extensive community where you can learn or share results easily.
TradingView has three subscription plans. The Essential plan is the cheapest and provides the basics to get started, such as 2 charts per tab, 5 indicators per chart and 20 price alerts. The Plus plan offers more options, such as 4 charts per tab, 10 indicators per chart and 100 price alerts. Finally, the Premium plan is the most comprehensive, with 8 charts per tab, 25 indicators per chart and 400 price alerts, in addition to other advanced features. Importantly, all plans include a 30-day free trial period.
TradingView main features
- Charting: A large number of charts are available with an extensive repertoire of indicators. It also provides custom drawing tools and instruments, extremely useful for complex market analysis.
- Multi-Chart: Offers the ability to view multiple charts simultaneously, with up to 8 charts on the same screen, each with independent indicators, times and symbols.
- Desktop application: A desktop application designed to improve and optimise the platform’s performance is available.
- Indicators: As mentioned above, there are a large number of indicators, which can greatly enhance analysis and decision making while using Tradingview.
- Screener: Tradingview has the option to analyse the market according to different aspects, such as performance, valuation or oscillators, to identify new investment opportunities.
- Heatmaps: This is a way for TradingView to quickly visualise stocks that are losing or gaining positions in the market.
- Community: It has a large and friendly community, which provides the means to exchange and share relevant information, or access educational resources.
- Real-time news: Like many stock search engines in the market, it displays real-time news to keep its users informed about the latest developments concerning the stocks it manages.
- Brokers: One of the biggest advantages is its integration with different brokers, which allows users to trade directly from this platform, saving time and effort.
More information at https://www.tradingview.com/
4. Finviz
Finviz is a free stock screener that provides information for market analysis, mainly for stocks, and is widely recognised for the amount of quality information you can find with a free account.
Although, with a free account at Finviz you get limited functions, for some cases this is more than enough to help you in your strategies and analysis. Although it also has a paid version without any limitations in its functions, and with which you could have access to all the features, ideal for experienced users in the market.
The benefits of purchasing the Finviz elite version would include, real-time news, advanced charting, backtesting, advanced stock screeners with customisable statistics and filters, and email notifications of highlighted events.
Finviz main features
- Stock search: By simply entering the ticker or company name, you can get a detailed summary of its performance, including real-time charts, fundamental data and relevant news.
- Stock Screener: Search and filter through thousands of companies on the market, and find the one that best suits the characteristics you want. Apply filters according to different parameters, whether technical, fundamental or descriptive.
- Maps: Represents the different companies in the S&P 500 index, where you can perceive the importance it has in the index, and its colour shows the advance of the current quotation.
- News: This section provides a list of breaking news, both domestic and international, that can have a significant impact on the price of stocks and other assets.
- Portfolio: Adds stocks and monitors their performance, according to different metrics, such as price, volume, market value, among others. It also has a window at the top where you can see news related to the stocks in your portfolio.
- Insiders: Analyses the behaviour and decisions made by the senior managers of certain companies with the shares they manage. It allows you to take action by understanding that these users usually have privileged information in their jobs.
- Backtesting: Accesses up to 24 years of information to analyse strategies and check their viability.
More information at https://finviz.com/
5. Zacks
Zacks is a scanner for stocks and other financial instruments, which can be a good option when looking for new investments. Among the most striking aspects of this stock screener are low fees on ETFs and stocks, and no inactivity fee.
Although it may be an attractive option, its interface is not very user-friendly, which makes it a stock screener that is not recommended for inexperienced users, being used mainly by users who have some experience in this world.
Zacks has 3 different plans, which are the Ultimate, the Investor Collection, and the premium. The Ultimate plan allows real-time tracking of market outlooks, buys and sells for all recommended portfolios. The Investor Collection offers a package of eight long-term investment portfolios. And right now, you can get full 30-day access to the services. And the premium has a set of premium tools, to complement the analysis and strategies to follow.
Key features of Zacks
- Mobile app: They have a new app that you can download to your mobile phone to use the platform from anywhere.
- ETF Rank: Follow emerging trends without buying individual stocks.
- Investor Home Run: Focuses on finding little-known companies that perform well.
- Confidential: Allows you to see what the best strategists are doing, to follow their decisions or be inspired by their strategies.
More information at https://www.zacks.com
6. Black Box Stocks
Black Box Stocks screener is a real-time stock and options trading platform. It has been designed to allow its users to perform analysis and make informed decisions. Its interface also allows it to be used and understood by traders of all levels of experience.
This tool blends algorithmic trading with a community of experienced traders to provide users with trading ideas and new investment opportunities.
In addition, this software has only 2 payment options to access its features. The first one is a monthly fee, where, currently, there is an offer that offers to pay $1 per day. And the second option, which is an annual payment, offers the same features, with the only difference being the subscription time to the stock screeners.
Main features of Black Box Stocks screener
- Stock alerts: These are not buy or sell signals, but notifications in response to high trading volume, high volatility, or other relevant events.
- Volatility indicator: Serves as a starting point for more detailed analysis. This indicator reflects when demand for a stock exceeds supply, or, when there is an excess of shares for sale.
- Charting tools: Provides a chart window that allows traders to see the price at which an alert was triggered and how the price of that stock has evolved over the course of the day.
- Options alerts: Allows monitoring of stock options and issues alerts for options experiencing unusual order flow.
- Chat rooms: There are a number of chat rooms where users can discuss open trades or alerts, ask questions about the system, share experiences, and so on.
- Customisation: Black Box Stocks is set up so that investors can see all their stock alerts, a chart and a chat room all in the same window. This is a great help to stay informed quickly.
- Brokers: Black Box Stocks integrates with TradeStation and E*TRADE, allowing traders to send orders and monitor their positions directly from the platform.
More info at official webpage https://blackboxstocks.com/
7. Investing.com
Investing.com is one of the best stock screeners and a valuable resource for traders seeking an edge in the market. It provides real-time financial news, allowing users to stay informed about market volatility.
Also, users can access real-time quotes on a wide range of financial products, as well as receive updates on specific events based on your interests. In addition, the stock screener facilitates investment management through a portfolio service, where preferred financial instruments can be tracked.
This stock screener only offers one paid plan, which is the Investing Pro. It offers access to better investment ideas backed by human analysis and artificial intelligence, more comprehensive and effective research tools to help you make informed decisions, and better tools to manage your portfolio and minimise losses.
Key features of Investing.com
- Markets: Investing.com offers detailed information and data for different assets, whether it’s stocks, commodities, cryptocurrencies, indices, currencies, bonds, funds, interest rates, ETFs, futures or options.
- News: The News section allows you to filter news based on asset class or relevance, allowing you to focus on the most relevant information for your strategies.
- Analysis: Provides in-depth analysis of trends and possible investment strategies.
- Charting: Allows users to perform technical analysis with a wide range of customisable charts. Traders can analyse price movements, follow trends and identify potential entry and exit points for trades.
- Brokers: Provides detailed information about brokers, including their features, commissions, regulations and user reviews.
- Education: Offers a wealth of educational resources, including informative articles, video tutorials, webinars, trading guides and market analysis.
More info at https://www.investing.com/
8. MarketScreener
MarketScreener is a stock scanner that, like many others, offers a wide range of tools and data to help you make informed decisions. It has sections from breaking financial news, to expert analysis, to historical company data.
This stock screener shows a summary of market trends and allows you to customise your account by creating watch lists of companies and stocks. In addition, it offers a detailed economic calendar and a section dedicated to different industries, such as technology, real estate and energy.
It also offers 3 types of subscriptions, each designed for a different type of investor and offering a specific set of tools and features. The Access plan is the most basic and affordable plan, ideal for independent investors looking for information and data to make their own decisions. The Premium plan offers, in addition to the above, opinions and recommendations to support your stock market investments. And finally, the Expert plan is aimed at professional investors and provides advanced tools to make investment decisions.
Main features of MarketScreener
- Stock finder with fundamental filters
- Real-time quotes for stocks, indices, commodities and currencies
- Real-time alerts
- Financial analysis and recommendations from industry experts
- Market Screener to research and compare companies according to different criteria
More information at https://www.marketscreener.com/
FAQs about stock screeners
What is a Stock Screener?
A stock screener is a tool with which you can filter information on markets or stocks, according to certain criteria or specifications, in order to obtain results tailored to the needs you have at that moment. A stock screener is a support for traders, regardless of the type of trading you do, since, with the filters, you can adapt the searches and the information you receive will be customised to your strategy.
However, there is a large number of such software, so in order to find the best stock screener, it is necessary to focus on specific parameters, which can indicate the quality and reliability of the platform. An example of these aspects can be the ease of use, the real-time updating of information, the source of the data offered, and, of course, the cost of the different plans offered.
Are there free stock screeners?
There are stock screeners that offer free plans of their platforms, allowing a large number of users to try out and start using these softwares without any investment.
Generally, however, these free stock screeners tend to offer limited features in such memberships, so that as the stock screener is used more frequently, the purchase of a paid plan is necessary to continue to meet the needs that the stock screener seeks to address.
Among the majority of platforms with free plans, Finviz stands out as one of the most committed to users, offering a free subscription with functions that are complete enough to not require more advanced plans, unless you need to perform more complex analysis or handle larger volumes of information.
Is it worth paying for a stock screener?
This is a question that many users ask themselves during the process of acquiring a stock screener to complement their analysis and decisions. However, it is a question that requires analysis of the benefits that acquiring a platform with one of these payment plans could bring.
Firstly, we would have a larger volume of data, which in some cases could also be more up-to-date, allowing for more accurate and in-depth analysis. Also, they have a significant sophistication or customisation of the filters and tools they offer, they manage to make these analyses more complex, or receive alerts or more specific data.
Another option that is usually included in these payment plans is customer service, and there may be different channels or means of communication to resolve any doubts or problems with the stock analyser.
Conclusions
A stock screener is a very important tool for investors, as the ability to filter and analyse large amounts of information makes it easier to recognise new investment opportunities.
While all of the platforms reviewed offer search functions, each excels in specific areas. Trade Ideas stands out with its artificial intelligence signals, while Benzinga Pro is ideal for those looking for real-time news. Finviz, meanwhile, offers excellent value for money for users looking for a basic but effective free stock screener.
Therefore, the choice of the best stock screeners will depend specifically on your analysis, budget and objectives. But, keep in mind that the key can be to try different platforms and choose the one that best suits your investment style.
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