What Is the Best Stock Screener for Day Trading?
With 20 years of experience in day trading, we know what features are essential and how to weigh the costs when evaluating the overall rating. We’ve tested all stock screeners and added links to the relevant reviews for further reference.
My Favorite Stock Screeners for Day Trading
1. Trade Ideas
Trade Ideas is fast and empowered by high-end technology with servers near the NYSE for accurate real-time data. The screener scans for premarket movers, gaps, low float stocks, high relative volume and hundreds of other freely configurable trade alerts. Trade Ideas leads our list as the best stock screener for day trading.
Why We Picked It ⌵
Advanced features like the integrated backtesting interface, the brokerage account API for E-Trade, CenterPoint Securities and Interactive Brokers, and automated order submissions enable active traders to improve their results.
The Trade Ideas A.I. channel algorithm automatically scans for the trade setups with the highest profit potential and shows the results in real-time. Their AI has beaten the various indices benchmarks.
In addition, Trade Ideas offers free education classes, a stock chat room, and simulated trading. Trade Ideas is on the INC 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in the United States.
All that makes Trade Ideas our top choice as the best stock screener for day trading.
Costs
Trade Ideas offers a Standard Plan with real-time streaming ideas, charts, price alerts, the trade simulator and live chat room for $118 per month or $999 annually and the Premium Plan with everything in Standard plus A.I. trade alerts, backtesting and broker API connections for $228 per month or $1,999 annually.
Benefits
- Stock screener with A.I. functionalities
- Gap scanners and many other pre-configured scans
- Backtesting and automated trading features
- Freely customizable scanners with ~800 filters and alerts
- Live trader chat room and free education included
Best Offer
2. Benzinga Pro
Benzinga Pro is an excellent scanner with integrated squawk audio functionalities. The robust fundamental and technical analysis tool comes with integrated charts, trading indicators and stock screener functionalities.
Why We Picked It ⌵
Users can use pre-configured workspaces or create them with specific stock screener settings.
Benzinga Pro streams U.S. equities and options in real-time, has an integrated trader chat room and offers a 14-day free trial (a credit card is not required to sign up for starting the free trial.)
Costs
The most worthwhile subscription is the Essential Plan for $197 per month, $547 per quarter, or $1,997 per year, which includes access to real-time quotes, the news feed, scanners, calendars, and signals.
The most expensive plan is the Options Mentorship plan for $457 per month or $4,570 per year, which includes everything of the Essential Plan plus trading mentorship and education with Nic Chahine and access to the options inner circle chat room.
Benefits
- Fundamental and technical screening criteria
- Powerful pro-features (check the review for details)
- Customizable newsfeed and audio-squawk
- Squawk box and audio alerts are available
Best Offer
- Benzinga Pro 14-Day Free Trial (Exclusive discount offer from Benzinga during the free trial period included).
3. TradingView
TradingView is an excellent screener for stocks with advanced chart analysis capabilities. Heatmaps, trading strategy testing, bar replay, and comprehensive financial data make it an excellent choice for stock screening. In addition, paper trading and online broker integration are available. TradingView is the best global stock screener with data feeds from all over the world.
Why We Picked It ⌵
TradingView is available via web browsers and for iOS and Android. Installable trading software for desktop users with multi-monitor support is also available.
Costs
TradingView offers a free plan with one chart, some indicators and drawing tools. The paid plans are the Pro for $14.95, Pro+ for $29.95 and Premium for $59.95 per month available. All paid plans have similar capabilities, but the number of data sets, time frames, alerts and algorithms differ from plan to plan.
Benefits
- Stocks, options, ETFs, and more assets supported
- Extensive charting functionalities
- Broad global coverage
Best Offer
- TradingView 30-day free trial (Exclusive discount offer from TradingView during the free trial period included).
4. Black Box Stocks
Black Box Stocks focuses on scanning stock options (e.g. unusual option scans), but also comes with multiple stock screening, education and community features for traders and investors. Black Box Stocks leads in our list of the best stock screeners as the one with the best options scanning capabilties, combined with stock scanner functionalities.
Why We Picked It ⌵
Users can apply 17 filters to real-time options flow and color-code the options alerts. Free access to the trading chat room and real-time news covered via TheFly complete the offer. It is possible to scan North-American stocks, including large-cap stocks, mid-cap, small-cap and even penny stocks (during premarket hours, regular trading hours and after-hours).
Black Box Stock is especially worth a subscription for those uncertain about what assets to trade (stocks, or options) and which trading strategy to use.
Costs
Full access to all features and tools costs $99.97 per month or $959 per year.
Benefits
- Stock and options scanner included
- Knowledgeable community and discord trading channel
- Free education in trading and tool handling
Best Offer
5. TC2000
TC2000 is a trading software with extensive stock screener and charting capabilities.
Why We Picked It ⌵
The premarket Pre Buzz column helps finding stocks with unusual activity quicker. Another excellent scanner functionality is the historical scan results tool, where you can go back in time to see what stocks hit the scanner with the defined criteria. Version 23 enables users to choose their preferred refresh interval, with choices ranging from real-time to hourly updates.
Costs
TC2000 offers a Silver Plan for $9.99 per month (comes with stock charting, notes, watchlists and access to the trading module. In addition, the Gold Plan is $29.99 per month with access to the stock and options screener, workspaces, alerts, graphs and formula writing. Finally, the Platinum Plan for $59.98 per month adds historical condition testing and scan results, automatic refresh intervals, up to 1,000 alerts and trading indicators.
Benefits
- All-in-one trading tool
- Options charting with historical bid/ask data
- Integrated paper trading account and trading journal feature
Best Offer
- TC2000 discount of up to $15 Off per month (30-day money-back guarantee included)
6. TrendSpider
TrendSpider has exceptional strengths in scanning based on technical analysis criteria. Their screener generates dynamic watchlists based on technical criteria. This way, investors discover their trade setup based on flexible scans or use one of the 20 built-in scans. Automated technical analysis, scanning, charts, backtesting, monitoring and trade alerts are supported.
Why We Picked It ⌵
The tool can also be used for backtests and trading pattern recognition. Over 55,000 assets, including stocks, ETFs, futures, commodities, and indices, are supported.
An excellent feature is that multiple timeframes can be combined for multi-timeframe analysis. This is a feature where TrendSpider stands out. Some pre-build scanners are the MACD Cross scanner, blue Raindrop- and Ichimoku Cloud scanner. Besides the named functionalities, multi-charting and dynamic alert systems are available.
Newly added features are access to financial statements via Federal Reserve Data (FRED) and FINRA Reg SHO, dark pool trading data, fear & greed data, futures data, price seasonality, options flow and integrated Benzinga News.
Costs
TrendSpider offers three plans. Essential costs $39 per month or $384 per year, Elite is $79 per month or $780 per year, while Elite Plus costs $179 per month or $1,620 per year. However, only Elite products have backtest capabilities, intraday scanning and multi-factor alerts, and they differ in things like the number of results per scan, workspaces and alerts.
Benefits
- Continuously improvements since inception
- TrendSpider University and Trading Pit Show for free
- 55,000+ assets supported
Best Offer
Please, read the best stock analysis app post for more user insights and comparisons.
How to Choose a Stock Screener for Day Trading
You start by evaluating your needs and then look at the best options where price and value are well balanced.
You will also need to choose whether a standalone screener or an integrated screener. Broker dashboards often include a screener, but in some cases, it is only a side product and not the best choice.
A dedicated stock scanner is typically the better option since those are directly developed for scanning purposes.
Here are some of the things to consider when evaluating a stock screener:
- What regions are you interested in? (North America, Europe, Asia etc.)
- What other assets do you want to trade and invest (mutual funds, ETFs, forex or even cryptocurrencies).
- Does free end-of-day data suffice, or do you need real-time tick data?
- Is it sufficient to have out-of-the-box pre-defined scans, or do you need coding language capabilities?
Summary
My favorite stock screener is Trade Ideas, followed by Benzinga Pro and TradingView. All three tools know to convince with fast data streams, a great selection of stock screener settings, and an easy-to-use interface. Still, backtesting, automated trading, and A.I. trade signals are only available with Trade Ideas, which makes it the clear winner.
For options traders, Black Box Stocks is an exciting scanner that can scan for unusual options activity (they also have basic stock scans). The filter options are really good, and the screener is fast and accurate.
The stock screeners from TrendSpider and TradingView are a great choice due to their stock analysis features.
Stock Screener Guides and Reviews
