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Individual investors are often advised to leave stock picking to the professionals. They have the resources and a deep bench of analysts to help them search the vast universe of stocks and sort through mountains of data. It’s probably good advice unless you have access to a quality stock screener that can do the work for you.
A quality stock screener can sift through the thousands of stocks in the U.S. or the tens of thousands listed worldwide, and in a matter of seconds, identify those that meet your specific criteria and suit your investment strategy. The more you work with a stock screener, the better you become at narrowing down your choices to the best investment opportunities. Here are our picks for the best.
TC2000
After more than 25 years of refinement, the TC2000 stock screening package is as robust and powerful as you will find, making it our top pick as the best overall stock screener.
Wide selection of fundamental and technical screening criteria
Nearly three decades of refinement and improvement
Ease of use
Screening for ETFs and options
Interactive charts with chart drawing tools
Only works with U.S. and Canadian exchanges
With its excellent selection of fundamental and technical screening criteria and powerful options and exchange-traded fund (ETF) screening, the TC2000 stock screener is as robust and comprehensive as it gets. In 1995, its award-winning stock screener was considered best-in-class, and it has outpaced the competition since, which is why we picked it as the best overall.
The entry-level Silver plan costs $9.99 per month, providing users with the opportunity to begin testing the EasyScan stock screener's capabilities. However, you unleash its real power with the Gold and Platinum plans for $29.99 and $89.98 per month, respectively. All plans are discounted when paid annually.
The Gold plan provides full access to the EasyScan screener, including a simple step-by-step wizard for creating conditions. Users can jump from chart drawing tools into sortable watchlists that can set up to 100 alerts with simultaneous tracking.
The Platinum plan adds historical condition testing, automatic refresh intervals on scans, and sorts with up to one thousand alerts that can be simultaneously tracked. Platinum users can receive up to $300 in yearly discounts if they open a TC2000 trading account.
Its ease-of-use masks the power and robustness of its screening, scanning, and filtering. If you open a TC2000 brokerage account for trading, integration is flawless, allowing you to effortlessly move from screening on a wide range of fundamental and technical screens to managing your watchlists to making trades. The same power and maneuverability apply to its ETF and options screening.
The only downside of TC2000 is it is limited to U.S. and Canadian exchanges. That aside, the powerful TC2000 stock screener, coupled with its solid customer support, makes it hard to beat.
ZACKS
Zacks Investment Research has a comprehensive stock screener solution with high functionality supported by a massive number of metrics. The free version offers enough tools to conduct thorough and informed filtering of stocks, which is why we picked Zacks as the best free option for a stock screener.
Well-equipped free stock screener
Hundreds of fundamental metrics
Extensive stock database
Extensive EPS metrics
Low cost paid plan
Limited technical screening
Zacks has built a reputation as a reliable source of stock data so for investors looking for a stock picking edge, Zacks' free stock screener has almost everything investors need to make well-timed and informed stock picks. That's why Zacks is our choice as the best free option for a stock screener.
In addition to the hundreds of metrics Zacks provides, one of its key features is users' ability to enter their own segmentation criteria. You enter a customs value or range as a filter, giving you more opportunities for precise screening results. Another standout feature is the extensive earnings per share (EPS) metrics, allowing you to delve more deeply into a company's relative performance compared to its EPS history.
All but some of its more advanced features are available on the free plan. You can dig deeper with more than 45 predefined screens or use the Custom Screener that shows you the best Zacks Rank stocks to match your personal interests and trading style such as Value, Growth, Momentum or Income, with Zacks Premium membership for $249 a year. You can try Zacks Premium Screens, plus several additional powerful tools and research, with a free 30-day membership.
Trade Ideas
With its lightning-fast platform and AI-driven functionalities for screening hundreds of criteria, Trading Ideas makes our list as the best stock screener for day trading.
Stock screener with AI functionalities
More than 800 filters
Integration with brokerages
Customizable screens
Live trading room
Only works with U.S. and Canadian stock exchanges
Day traders need access to real-time data, and they need it now. That's what you get with the Trade Ideas Pro stock screener. Powered by a high-end artificial intelligence machine, the tool uses technical, fundamental, and social data to scan thousands of trading opportunities to find the ones with the most substantial upside potential quickly. That makes Trade Ideas our choice as the best stock screener for day trading.
Trade Ideas was founded in 2003 by a group of financial technology entrepreneurs in response to the growing demand for DIY investing. Their customized server-based technology connects directly to the exchanges, enabling it to track every single stock and ETF that is traded. Every tick is analyzed and tested, measuring a securities behavior against the past in real-time. That's the kind of edge that day traders need.
The stock screener employs leading-edge backtesting and automated trading features with more than 800 filters. Traders can use pre-configured layouts to start off strong. With more experience, traders can choose to customize their screens with their own criteria.
Traders also have access to a live trading room, real-time streaming trade ideas, and simultaneous charts. Trade Ideas connects directly to online brokerage firms such as TD Ameritrade, E-Trade, and Alpaca to allow traders to move between simulated trading and real-world trading.
As you might expect, having access to proprietary, high-end technology doesn't come cheap. But, for the edge that traders seek, $228 a month is a worthwhile investment. A standard plan is available for $118 a month without full access to AI technology. There is also a third, baseline option called TI Strength Alerts for $17 a month that gives you five new trade ideas every Sunday. Trade Ideas typically offers discounts of 15% to 25% at any given time.
FINVIZ
FINVIZ offers the right combination of swing trading tools, including a large selection of fundamental and technical criteria, real-time quotes, charts, backtesting, pre-market data, and email alerts, making it our pick as the best stock screener for swing trading.
Highly visual approach to screening
Ease of use
Good selection of fundamental and technical screening criteria
Access to global stocks
Free version is sufficient for many swing traders
Fewer fundamental metrics than other screeners on this list
Can only track stocks on one exchange at a time
FINVIZ's stock screener has been a popular choice for investors since it was created in 2007. But what makes it stand out for swing traders is its comprehensive toolset that includes real-time data, interactive charts, pre-market data, and backtesting using 16 years of historical data. FINVIZ is a great choice for all types of investors and traders, but it is our pick as the best stock screener for swing trading.
FINVIZ is short for Financial Visualizations—a reference to the unique and compelling way it presents information, making it easy and fun to navigate. For instance, users can access a stock's chart simply by hovering over the stock symbol in the screener. But their real claim to fame is the way they have stacked its screener with many useful tools and features. Its Elite screener is a powerful research tool with access to real-time data, advanced charts, pre-market data, customized filters, and data export capabilities.
Its charts are interactive, allowing users to use a crosshair cursor to pinpoint exact data points or check a stock's relative strength indicator. You can also compare a stock's performance with the S&P 500 index. Everything saves to your portfolio, and you can use the screener for up to 100 portfolios, and up to 100 screener presets.
At $39.50 per month or $299.50 a year, FINVIZ is an excellent value. It also offers a free plan with the capacity to filter on 70 factors, but the data is not real-time. That may be OK if you are more of buy and hold investor or you set up your swing trades pre- or post-market.
TradingView
TradingView stacks up well with any of the stock screeners on this list, but where it excels is the breadth of securities it covers, including international stocks and funds from all over the globe. That makes TradingView our pick as the best stock screener for global investing.
Excellent selection of fundamental screening criteria
Extensive charting capabilities
Expansive selection of global stocks
Interactive trading room
30-day free trial
Light on historical data
As a stock screener, TradingView has it all, including a solid offering of fundamental, economic and financial screening criteria and extensive charting functionalities built on advanced HTML5 technology. But where it stands out is its broad coverage of international stocks across 60 global exchanges. That's why we chose TradingView as the best stock screener for global investing.
TradingView is the innovative brainchild of a group of traders and software developers intent on creating a trading platform for the masses—effortless, powerful, and accessible to everyone. With more than one million active worldwide users, TradingView's global reach is unparalleled.
The stock screener includes more than 150 fundamental and technical criteria with the ability to customize filters and views to your liking. One of its outstanding features is the ability to map and compare economic indicators with a company's financial indicators to see how a company has performed in various economic conditions. Another standout feature is its highly interactive chat room, bringing together traders from all parts of the world to share ideas.
You can start screening stocks and ETFs with TradingView for free, which includes access to the screener, list alerts, and advanced filter customization. Paid plans with more complete access to TradingView's powerful tools start at $14.95 a month and go up to $59.95. All plans include a 30-day free trial.
Stock Rover
Through Stock Rover, investors have access to nearly every fundamental criterion you can think of and an extensive database of company financial statements, which is why it is our pick as the best stock screener for buy and hold investors.
Vast selection of fundamental screening criteria
Hundreds of value, growth, and dividend screeners
10-year historical fundamental database
Integrates with most brokerages
Stock scoring system
Limited day trading functionalities
Only works with U.S. and Canadian exchanges
Stock Rover offers limited technical indicator filters, which wouldn't make it a good choice for day traders. But, if you are a long-term investor with buy-and-hold tendencies, you'll love the robust research and analysis tools offered by Stock Rover. That, coupled with its very reasonable pricing, makes Stock Rover our choice as the best stock screener for buy and hold investors.
Stock Rover was founded in 2008 by software engineers who have a passion for investing. They created an advanced web application to simplify the way investors can research, select, and track investments. Their platform offers more than 150 screening filters for financial indicators for screening and comparing stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds. Users can fine-tune their results by creating complex equations and combining multiple filters.
Investors love Stock Rover's rating system, which scores securities on a scale from 1 to 100 in several categories, including growth, valuation, efficiency, financial strength, dividends, and momentum. Followers of Warren Buffet will especially like the preset fair market value and margin of safety screeners.
Investors can link Stock Rover to their brokerage account for more robust reporting, portfolio analysis, and portfolio rebalancing recommendations.
Stock Rover offers a free account that is sufficient to get you started, but you can start with the Essentials plan for $7.99 a month to access more functionality. Essentials provides over 260 financial metrics, five years of historical data, watch list tracking, customizable views, and fast stock screening. For $179.99 a year, the Premium plan adds substantially more features, including more financial metrics, 100 charts, and ten years of historical data. The Premium Plus plan for $279.99 a year includes more than 650 financial metrics and top priority email support.
Day traders and stock investors need access to complex data analysis to be able to sift through the tens of thousands of stocks in the U.S. and global markets. To do that, they need access to high-quality stock screeners.
The best stock screeners combine ease of use with flexibility without sacrificing data accuracy or quantity. The best screeners have a broad range of stocks in their database that can be filtered with precision using both preset and custom criteria. The interface should be intuitive, even for beginners.
If you are testing the stock-picking waters as a beginner, you can start with any of the stock screeners that offer a free service. Most do, but many are very limited in their capabilities. That's not the case with Zacks stock screener, which gives you access to hundreds of metrics.
As the best overall stock screener, TC2000's powerful screening, scanning, and filtering software can accommodate any trading or investing style with its best-in-class tools.
A stock screener is an essential tool used by stock traders and investors to sift through thousands of stocks to find those that best meets their criteria. Users can apply any number of filters based on fundamental and technical metrics to narrow down their list. The more robust the screening filters, the more quickly the screener can find you a match. They can also apply their own customized criteria to find a more precise match. When criteria are applied, the screener will instantly display the results in the categories you choose.
Stock screeners are used to identify stocks based on different investing scenarios, such as creating an asset allocation strategy, long-term buy-and-hold strategies, or for day trading in and out of the market for quick returns.
Stock screeners are relatively straightforward. After opening the screener, you choose the filters you want to use based on specific criteria, such as price, trading volume, price-to-earnings ratio, volatility, chart patterns, and other fundamental or technical metrics. To further narrow down your choices, you can layer on more filters until you get the results you want.
On the surface, roaming the vast universe of stocks to find just the right one can seem daunting and complex. A good stock screener is well-organized and easy-to-use, enabling you to find the filters you need and start the process with a few clicks. It's essential to use a stock screener with a wide range of filters and the ability to quickly sort your results so you can drill down further.
Also, look for a stock screener that is most suited to your investing style. Some are more ideally suited for day trading, while others are more appropriate for long-term investing. Some only follow U.S. stock exchanges, while others have a global reach.
Additional must-haves include accurate data. Always check to see that the data comes from a reputable and reliable source. Also, make sure it has the capability to save your screens, or else you will have to continually re-enter your criteria.
Stock screeners do work in helping traders and investors sift through thousands of stocks to narrow down their choices, but they also have their limitations. Stock screeners can only analyze stocks based on quantitative factors based on fundamental and technical metrics. They can't account for the qualitative factors that could affect a stock's performance, such as management changes, major lawsuits, labor issues, or competition.
Also, stock screeners that don't use real-time data or that don't constantly refresh their data could produce untimely or inaccurate results. While stock screeners can save you time in formulating a list of stocks, it would be important to layer on your own research to confirm your findings or uncover potential problems with the company's fundamentals.
Our initial search revealed 30 stock screeners for our consideration. By running them through our criteria of ease-of-use, selection of fundamental and technical filters, depth of filter criteria, customization, and extra functionality, we narrowed the list to 16. After a more rigorous comparison, we identified the best stock screeners in six distinct categories.
