StockVane
I was on Tuesday night, I had a cup of coffee about 40 minutes ago without my consent and I was going to make the World’s Most Perfect Stock Screen. Market cap of more than $1 billion. P/E under 15. Revenue growth above 20%. Debt-to-equity under 0.3. RSI between 40 and 60. Dividend yield above 2%. I continued to add filters, like a fortress to prevent bad investments, and the screener gave me no results at all. Not a small list. Zero. I had just happened to screen a stock that’s not on planet Earth.
The one thing that I learned that night about screeners that I never heard anyone mention when they were beginning, is that more filters doesn’t necessarily mean more results, and the tool is only as good as the person’s knowledge of what to look for. Since then I’ve spent a pretty crazy amount of time testing pretty much every screener a retail investor can reasonably get their hands on and I want to take you guys through what works, what the marketing pages conveniently leave out, and how to set two of them up from scratch.
This category is more confusing than it needs to be, because of the following reasons:
This is the secret no one tells you when you first start out. Stock screener is not one product, but at least three different products under the same name. There are also technical scanners designed for traders who are active traders and require real-time price action and pattern recognition. There are basic screeners that are created for individuals who wish to narrow down their list of fifty companies to five companies based on the health of their balance sheets. Then there are hybrid rating sites that combine the two and give you an opinionated rating.
Most comparison articles you’ll find online will simply list 10 tools in alphabetical order with a paragraph for each and that’s it. I believe that is really not helpful at all because the “best” screener will depend on which of those three categories you are in and if you are not in the right one, you will be paying for features you will never use and you will be missing out on features you will use.
The Full Lineup, Compared Honestly
Before we dive into any one tool, let me set the field first as context is important. Or you can check all stock rating with my tool, it is free.
| Screener | Best For | Free Tier | Paid Pricing | Filter Depth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finviz | Fast technical + fundamental screening | Yes, 67 filters, 15-min delayed data | Elite: ~$24.96/mo (annual) or $39.50/mo | 67+ filters |
| TradingView | Global multi-asset screening, charting | Yes, 168 criteria, 14,000+ stocks, 150+ exchanges | Paid tiers add real-time data and more indicators | 168+ criteria |
| Stock Rover | Deep fundamental research, long-term investing | Limited free version | Essentials $7.99/mo, Premium $17.99/mo, Premium Plus $27.99/mo | Up to 800+ metrics |
| Trade Ideas | Active day trading, AI-powered scanning | No meaningful free tier | ~$127 to $254/mo | Real-time AI signals |
| Seeking Alpha | Ratings-driven screening with contributor research | No, paid membership required | See Premium/Alpha Picks pricing | Quant Rating based filters |
| Zacks | Earnings-revision-driven ranking | Limited free access | Zacks Premium subscription | Proprietary Rank system |
| Yahoo Finance | Absolute beginners, casual use | Yes, fully free | N/A | Basic filters only |
| TC2000 | Technical chart-based scanning | Limited free version | Paid tiers for real-time scanning | Chart pattern focused |
Take a look at that filter depth column, it’s a true story. Stock Rover boasting access to more than 800 metrics is ridiculous unless you realize that’s what the site is built for—it’s for people who want to filter for metrics such as consistency of five-year free cash flow growth, dividend coverage ratios, and more, not just “is the stock up right now? Meanwhile Trade Ideas does not even bother to compete on the number of filters, as its value proposition is to scan real-time during the trading session, using AI capabilities, a completely different value proposition.
The One I’d Actually Tell A Beginner To Start With is Finviz.Finviz: The One I’d Actually Tell A Beginner To Start With is Finviz.
I want to spend real time here because I think that for probably 70% of retail investors reading this, Finviz is the best starting point and I say that as someone who eventually outgrew it and made the majority of my deep research elsewhere.
The free version provides 67 filters covering basic and advanced metrics on data that is 15 minutes stale. That wait seems like a deal breaker, until you realize that 15 minutes doesn’t make a difference in your decision quality if you’re not day trading. The most brilliant thing that most of the competitors haven’t been able to copy yet is the visual heat map, a colour-coded grid of the whole market or a particular sector, which enables you to see which sectors are moving before you’ve read a single headline. As a first pass filter before I even open my real screening criteria, I use this for the macro weather before I plant anything.
Elite is $24.96 per month, billed annually, or $39.50 per month if you don’t want to commit. If you need to export screen data to a spreadsheet for more in-depth analysis, you are paying for the delayed feed, more filters and more export options at that level.
Let’s see how to get started with Finviz step-by-step.
First, you need to go to finviz.com. The basic screener itself is free of any sign-up requirements, a quirk that most people are surprised to find when they come from the sites that require a sign-up wall to gate everything. In the top navigation bar, click “Screener”. You’ll be taken to a page where there are rows of dropdowns for Descriptive, Fundamental, Technical and an “All” tab which pulls them all together.
Use only two or three filters – not seventeen as I did on Tuesday night! A reasonable beginner screen might be: Market Cap > $2 billion, P/E < 25, and Average Volume > 500,000 shares so that you aren’t screening in illiquid stocks that you can’t trade. Click “Filter” and see the results populating instantly without a page reload or waiting.
You’ll need a free account if you wish to save this screen for future use. Just click “Register” at the top right, input an email and password, confirm via the verification email and you’re good to go. After you log in, your filter combination has a “Save Screen” option, allowing you to avoid having to create it from the start each evening.
The upgrade to Elite is available under your account settings, as “Upgrade to Elite,” and if you choose to upgrade after using Elite for a couple weeks, you’ll be able to do so. Just fill in the payment information, and the switch to real-time data happens instantly without any waiting time.
For the past 20 years, I’ve been doing my fundamental work on Stock Rover.
Finviz is my morning routine, Stock Rover is my night routine. It’s a platform that was created by two software engineers in 2008 who were tired of managing several browser tabs and spreadsheets to perform basic fundamental comparisons. It’s not flashy. I’m not being all that flattering to the interface, but under that fairly old-fashioned exterior lies one of the most complete fundamental databases for retail investors anywhere.
The number of metrics cited varies between sources and plan tiers, ranging from approximately 596 to more than 800, and I’ve been using Stock Rover for a long time and think the latter is more representative of the Premium Plus plan and its full historical and ranked screening capability, and not the basic experience. What really makes it stand out from Finviz is the 150+ pre-built screening strategies based on the strategies of legendary investors such as Buffett, Lynch, Greenblatt, Piotroski, etc. You’re not just filtering at random, you’re using an actual documented investment philosophy with one click and you’re seeing which stocks fit that investment philosophy at the moment.
There are three price tiers for pricing. Each tier of Essentials, Premium and Premium Plus provides progressively more detailed historical data (the highest tier offers up to 20 years of fundamentals) and increasingly advanced ranked and equation-based screening.
The complete guide to setting up Stock Rover.
Go to stockrover.com and click either “Get Started Free” or “Sign Up,” which are typically located on the homepage. They will ask for an email address and a password, nothing new or special. Verify your email with the link you received in your email inbox in a minute or two.
After logging in, you’ll be placed in the free tier and you will have a real, albeit somewhat restricted, taste of the full screening world, so that you can see how it works before putting any money into it. Any active discount will be listed directly on the account settings or on the upgrade page directly, not on a generic homepage banner, as that kind of promotion on research platforms like this is likely to change from time to time and appear only when you’re in the logged in upgrade flow. If there is a discount banner in place, it will usually be displayed when you click the “Upgrade” link from your Dashboard, and it will show you a discount on the first-year or first-month rate from the standard listed rate.
Once you enter your payment details, you will have immediately access to whichever tier you choose to lock in, and you will not need to wait or wait for a separate email to activate the upgrade.
Now, putting it to use. In the left-hand navigation bar, click on “Screener”. The interface will be much more dense compared to Finviz, and will be segmented into categories such as Valuation, Growth, Profitability, Financial Strength, and Dividend Safety. On your first session, instead of creating a screen from scratch, use the “Pre-Built Screens” and choose one of the screens named, such as the Piotroski F-Score screen, which is based on a simple 9-point financial health checklist, rather than the valuation multiples that you’d need to be familiar with.
After having run a pre-built screen and become accustomed to seeing which real companies pass which real tests, begin to play with the individual filter thresholds yourself, this is where the real learning takes place, and watch how the number of companies in your list of results decreases from 200 down to 8 when you make a change to one filter.
You can add a Watchlist to any result by simply clicking the star icon and Stock Rover will track portfolio level analytics for those names alone, including dividend safety scores, sector allocation breakdowns, correlation analysis with existing portfolio names, and so much more that exceeds what a typical screener can provide.
The Honest Comparison Nobody Gives You
Now that I’ve gone through both of them with some detail, let me tell you my own, personal, slightly opinionated opinion on when each will fit into your workflow.
Finviz is fast and easy to use. In less than 30 seconds, you can click from “I have an idea” to “here’s a list of stocks matching that idea” without needing an account, and the heat map provides market context most competitors don’t offer or go to three menus to find. It has a weakness in depth. There are several hundred metrics in Stock Rover’s database and 67 filters is a lot until you’ve used them and seen how much more nuance there is with Stock Rover than just the snapshots of one moment in time, which is what it fails to capture.
Stock Rover is a winner for being rigorous. This is where that analysis really exists if you’re the type of investor who wants to know not only that a company has good margins today, but that they’ve had good margins for the past five years and none of them had a bad quarter. The learning curve and the dated interface is its downfall, which I will not lie to you and say it doesn’t sometimes get me frustrated after using it for months.
But also TradingView should be mentioned here, as I didn’t do a full tutorial on it, but I don’t want to sell it short. If you invest in anything other than simple US large caps, international markets, crypto, forex, and all within the same interface, it is actually the best choice for its free tier which scans over 14,000 stocks across more than 150 exchanges with 168 criteria. But if you stick with a domestic-only, equity-only portfolio, you won’t be getting much more value from the TradingView screener than you would from Finviz’s, and you’ll be learning the more complicated charting-first interface for a less valuable filtering functionality than you can get elsewhere.
Trade Ideas is a whole different ball game and I want to be clear that it is not really competing with the other 3 for the most retail investors’ attention. This only makes sense if you are actively day trading and need the AI-powered real time scanning (the platform’s Holly AI feature specifically) creating trade signals during the trading session, and at $127 to $254 a month, it’s quite a bit more expensive than Finviz Elite at more than one comparison I dug up. This tool is simply too simple to be of use to you if you check your portfolio twice a week, period.
My Real Advice, Simply Said
If you are new to this and looking to get a feel for it without any strings attached, then Finviz. There are no asterisks after the full stop. After a month or two, if you are looking for more history than you can build by hand, and more strategy screening than Finviz, just add Stock Rover on top, not replace Finviz entirely, I use both in the same evening routine for different purposes, Finviz for the quick macro scan and initial filter pass, Stock Rover for the deep dive on whatever survives that initial filter pass.
Avoid using Trade Ideas if you’re not already certain that you’re a day trader, as the pricing is only relevant to that type of trading. If you’re a fully global or multi-asset investor, then definitely consider TradingView before taking the leap of faith that a US-equity focused tool is what you need.
The Mistake I Still Catch Myself Making
I’ll conclude as I began, with a little confession. Despite all this testing, all this comparison, all this supposed expertise, I still sometimes open a screener and start building a bunker. The tool will not prevent you from doing this. None of the screeners on this list will say to you “hey, maybe six filters is enough”, it’s up to you to develop that discipline. What I’m doing now, after having learned the hard way on that cold coffee Tuesday, is three or four filters maximum on the first pass and then manually checking the list that comes back to see if I can narrow it down more. Even the best screener in the world can’t save you from the fact that you have a very human tendency to over-engineer a search for the perfect stock, and statistically, that stock just wasn’t going to appear with all those conditions anyway.
