In this Finviz stock screener review, I will provide you in-depth guidance regarding the Finviz functionalities, costs, and the best features. I am an active Finviz user since 2008.
I am not kidding, the picture below is how Finviz looked like in 2008!
Crude Oil at 101.84, EUR/USD at 1.5432 and the Dow Jones at 11,847.25, that’s like traveling with Marty McFly just Back to the Future.
How is it possible that a stock screener still looks the same 10 years later? That’s simple – it’s because of the fact, that the benefits still exist and unbeaten in this niche of stock screeners.
The majority of improvements happen behind the scenes by adding new functionalities and bigger databases to improve customer experience without changing the product itself. So, if you knew how to use it, then you will also know it 10 years from now.
Transparency: We may get compensated when you click on links in this article.
What is Finviz?
Finviz is one of the best stock screeners for traders and investors available for free and also available as a pro version called Finviz Elite. It’s is a privately held company founded by Juraj Duris in June 2007. Finviz stands for “financial visualizations,” and about 27.4 million people use their website every month.
Features
Finviz is well known for its simplicity. But Finviz is more powerful than one would expect using it the first time.
Fast Search
Enter a stock symbol like “AAPL” in the upper left search box.
It takes only a fraction of a second until you see the results separated into three main categories:
In the upper left you have the option to:
- Publish a chart
- Save it to a portfolio
- Create an alert
The “publish chart” option is free to use. You need at least a free Finviz account to save a stock to a portfolio. To create an alert, you need Finviz Elite.
Free Finviz Chart AAPL (with daily, weekly and monthly time frame and delayed prices)
Finviz Elite Chart AAPL (with intraday time frames and real-time prices)
Three chart types are available:
- candle, line and advanced charts for free and
- interactive- and performance-based charts for Finviz Elite users.
You can also adjust the time frame in the upper right to toggle between daily, weekly, and monthly in the free Finviz version and the real-time intraday charts with Finviz Elite.
There are also various key figures available just below the chart, like P/E, Dividends, and various performance figures.
Finally, various Finviz news sources are listed at the very bottom of the results page for each stock.
Charting types:
- Candle (Free)
- Line (Free)
- Advanced (Free)
- Interactive (Elite)
- Performance (Elite)
Time Frames:
- Intraday (Elite)
- Daily (Free)
- Weekly (Free)
- Monthly (Free)
Finviz News
The newsfeed lists the latest news and articles according to news and blogs either chronologically or – if selected – by origin. The sources are well-known media such as Bloomberg, CNN, MarketWatch, and many others. In addition, many prominent financial blogs are part of the list.
Stock Screener Finviz
The stock screener Finviz would not exist without this excellent feature. The stock screener is to 90% of what Finviz is all about. All these other little gadgets are a great addition, but the stock screener itself is where Finviz shines. The Screener is an advanced tool that allows visitors to track and filter stocks based on several:
- descriptive (like stock market price, market capitalization or price)
- fundamental (like P / E, EPS growth, debt ratio, net profit margin, etc.) or
- technical indicators (among them chart patterns, candlesticks, or RSI levels).
The results can then be further sorted, applying a large number of criteria. In total, there are over 60 criteria available. Adapted to different settings, thousands of filter variants are achieved for further fine-tuning of the existing screener.
The best Finviz screener settings are part of my guide on How to use Finviz. You do not need Finviz Elite to use the different filters, but you need Finviz Elite to create price alerts and to export the results with a click on “export” in the lower right corner. Also, you need Finviz Elite to take a closer look at the statistics.
Also, besides the data export and statistics functionality, Finviz Elite also comes with advanced charts and even more customizable filters like market cap ranges, P/E ranges, etc.
Programs like MS Excel are still the best way to crunch the data. If you export all data every day, then you can also create your own alternative to Yahoo finance API. Just collect the data, build your own database, and make the right investment decision at the right time.
Finviz Heat Maps
Now let’s proceed with this Finviz stock screener review by taking a closer look at the Finviz heat maps functionality. The tool quickly provides an overview with its very informative graphics.
They show which shares are moving in what direction (red = falling, green = rising) and market significance (area size). Maps may be selected for S&P500, World Stock, Industry (Technology, Financial, Consumer, etc.) and ETFs.
Groups
The Groups tab provides a snapshot of the groupings.
- Sectors
- Industries
- Countries
- Capitalization
displayed rising and falling according to the criteria overview, rating, performance, or, as customized. Besides, the values listed as tables can also be viewed as a bar chart, spectrum (display), grid (display), and as charts. You can choose between various time frames, and you can combine multiple settings.
I do not use this functionality that much, but it provides clear visual guidance on how sectors and industries perform each given day or on a larger time frame. If you like to stay with the trend of the indices like the S&P and on top of that with a sector, then Finviz helps you to understand the data better with visualization.
Portfolio
The portfolio functionality is only available to Finviz Elite subscribers. Later in this Finviz review, I will talk about Finviz Elite in detail. There you also find all the important things about the Finviz portfolio.
Insider
The list of insider transactions will be presented in descending order as of the date of the announcement by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission). It can be sorted and filtered according to buy or sale transactions, among other criteria like:
- Latest Insider Trading
- Top Insider Trading Recent Week
- Top 10% Owner Trading Recent Week
Futures
The menu function “Futures” provides investors with a quick overview by a representation in colored tiles, as currently happens on the futures market. Finviz futures charts are available by hovering over the quote or by clicking on it.
Included are the prominent indices, commodities, bonds, precious metals, and currencies. The different hues in green or red indicate the daily performance in the positive and negative range.
The price data is shown in extra-large font, including the respective daily highs and lows. A daily performance chart from light green (top performance) to light red (worst performance) is below the future tiles.
As a day trader, you should use this free feature to check the markets before the open. It is important to understand the market sentiment, and the futures indicate how the market will open.
Forex
With almost the same methodology as the futures, you get an overview of the major currency pairs.
Current prices can be displayed as tiles. In addition, the performance data for the tiles can be displayed as a table, including a column diagram (tops and flops) or in each case only as charts.
Crypto
Currently, there are performance numbers and charts for 15 cryptocurrencies, while TradingView streames about 200 of them. The clear tiled presentation follows the same system as for the forex values.
This is just another nice financial visualization feature.
Backtests and Historical Data
The backtesting feature is only available to paying Finviz Elite customers.
Here are some benefits:
- 100 backtestable technical indicators
- option to compare the results with the SPY benchmark and
- 16 years of historical data database
Now let’s get straight to the Finviz Elite benefits. Is Finviz Elite worth it? The next few paragraphs will answer that question!
Finviz Elite Review
The free Finviz version comes along with tons of great features. Investors might be happy with the free version. However, if you are a trader, then Finviz Elite provides a great value add for low costs.
Also, if you want to build your own database or feed an external system with a massive amount of data, Finviz Elite provides tons of data for such purposes. But let’s go through it step by step in this Finviz Elite review.
Here are the Finviz Elite benefits:
Real-Time and Pre-Market Data
First of all, Finviz Elite comes with real-time data and also provides access to the pre-market session. The Finviz Elite subscriptions already include the cost for the data feed. Normally, the data feed for stocks and futures alone costs more per month than Finviz Elite.
It is a nice benefit having rea-time data in all section at Finviz.com. If you are long term investors, then other Finviz Elite features are more beneficial for you.
Advanced Charts and Technical Studies
If you are a technical trader, then you will enjoy the advanced charting features. More intraday-charts, indicator overlays, drawing tools, and the performance comparison charting feature are the most relevant ones.
As I lined out earlier, two charting types are not included in the free Finviz version.
- Interactive charts and
- performance charts
Here is a screenshot of the interactive charting feature.
As you can see, you have more time-frames available. You can choose everything up from 1 minute to monthly. Also, drawing tools like lines and Fibonacci and a full-screen mode is available. One thing I miss here is a zoom functionality.
However, since finviz.com is web-based and not a standalone-tool, such a zoom feature would be a bit difficult to implement. Finviz clearly focuses on speed. The other charting feature is the performance comparison chart.
You can visualize the price development from your favorite tickers for a chosen time span. Here is an example of AAPL in relation to SPY:
Backtest Modul
The backtesting feature is an interesting one but not as close as good as the one from Trade Ideas. The user-interface is okay, and you can create a new backtest by clicking on “create your first backtest.”
You can create the backtest with a few mouse clicks. That’s cool and intuitive.
You can even include transaction costs into the calculation, add different entry conditions and exit conditions. Even a stop loss level and a time-based exit can be configured. Or course, you can test long-strategies and short strategies with Finviz Elite.
For the entry-and exit conditions, you can choose from a long list of different trading indicators and chart patterns. Once you hit the “run backtest” button, the magic begins. And a few seconds later you see the result. First of all, you see a graph with some key figures.
Also, you see the most important statistics:
And even a monthly return-table is available:
Finviz strength is clearly the long term backtest data on a daily price action level. However, Finviz Elite falls short when it comes to complex trading strategies and intraday-backtests.
Anyway, for less than $25 per month, you get all the intraday-data plus a great backtest engine. That’s already cool, but now let’s have a look at the correlations feature.
Correlations Feature
So whats the correlations feature all about? Finviz proprietary correlation algorithms find stocks that are related to another one. Why is this helpful? Let’s assume that you have a top list showing the best-performing tickers of today.
Often, other stocks related to this stock move later once traders and investors realize, that they correlate. And this is where this feature comes into play. Let’s assume that APPL prices go through the roof.
Type in the Apple-ticker AAPL, and then you see the correlations and inverse correlations just above the statements section.
Advanced Screener Functionalities
Let’s proceed with the Finviz review by taking a closer look at one of the most underestimated features of Finviz Elite. You thought that the free screener could not be beaten? It can!
The advanced screener functionalities included in Finviz Elite provide you:
- In depth statistics
- Data export functionalities
- Advanced charts
- Customized filters
Finviz Elite comes with more statistics. I do not use them that much, but for value investors and long term investors, they might be beneficial.
The feature I love the most is the data export feature. All you have to do is to set up a screener of choice and hit the little “export” link at the bottom right. That’s it; now you can download the entire content.
And here is a little trick for all data enthusiasts. Click on “screener,” then “custom” and select all potential content fields of your screener. Now hit the export-link.
And guys, I mean this is huge, you get the whole content from all the data in one CSV-file. It is ridiculous that you can get all this data for less than a dollar per day.
Notifications and Price Alerts
Okay, the Finviz review comes closer to the summary. The notification and price alert feature is a neat one, but your trading platform will probably have a better on.
However, it is included in Finviz Elite. So, feel free to give it a try.
Go to “info” at the upper right and choose “settings.” There you chose “alerts.” There you can set up your alerts.
Customization Options
The customization options provide you the opportunity to fine-tune the visual appealing of Finviz Elite. Here are the available settings:
There are also some other little features, but it would make this Finviz Elite review a bit too long to mention all the little details. I am convinced that you will discover them yourself once you subscribed to Finviz Elite.
Plans | Costs | Pricing
The core functionalities of Finviz.com can be used for free. Some more features are available for registered users. It is completely free to register to Finviz.
Finviz Elite costs $39.50 per month or $299.50 per year. If you subscribe on a yearly basis, then you save $174.50 per year compared to the month-by-month subscription. Use this link to check the latest Finviz offers and promotions, or use this link to subscribe to Finviz Elite now.
Finviz doesn’t provide a direct free trial, but they provide something similar. Finviz Elite comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee! So if you are unsatisfied with Finviz Elite during the first 30 days, then you receive a full refund of your subscription fees.
Another nice benefit of Finviz Elite that I did not mention earlier is that Finviz Elite is entirely free of advertisements.
Free Trial | Promo Code
Finviz can be used for free. However, the functionalities for the free version are limited, and only Finviz Elite will provide you with real-time data, intraday charts, and backtesting capabilities.
However, for long-term investors who are looking for a cheap opportunity to do basic research on stocks, the free functionalities of Finviz.com are a good starting point.
Provider Checklist
- Founded: 2007
- Free trial: 30 days money-back guarantee = kind of 30-day free trial
- Free resources: Yes, free delayed data and daily timeframes
- Money-back guarantee: 30 days
- Price range: $0-$39.5 per month
Who Is Finviz Best For?
Finviz provides an excellent balance for investors and traders who are not willing to pay $50 or more per month for data feeds only and another $200 for charting features. All mid-term and long-term investors will have a lot of benefits using this stock screener.
Also, fundamental traders and data enthusiasts will get way more value than someone could expect for such a low price. The charting is fast and accurate; the export-feature is unique, and as far as I know, cannot be found elsewhere.
Hardcore day traders will feel disappointed because features like Level 2, times and sales, tick charts and one-click trading is not possible with Finviz Elite.
Finviz Review Summary
The Finviz website does an exceptional job visualizing and summarizing valuable information in charts, maps, graphs and lists. Each tool comes in an easy to use and highly appealing format. Finviz is the most frequently used stock screener amongst investors with a free and paid Finviz Elite plan.
The premium service “Finviz Elite” really has it all:
- Real-time prices
- Technical analysis tools
- Descriptive and fundamental data on stocks
- Alarm functions as well as the
- Interesting backtesting tool
The data offered about cryptocurrencies and futures is a nice added value. Sure, the annual subscription at US$ 299.50 for Finviz Elite is quite a bundle, but worth every cent for those who need the features Finviz provides.
So, if you really want to prepare your stock investments well, you will be able to benefit considerably from the offer. And the 30-day money-back guarantee should help limit the risk of disappointment.
Guide
Finviz Features and Benefits
Finviz is a stock screener and analysis platform with many features and benefits for traders and investors. Real time data, advanced charting and a stock screener to filter stocks by price, volume and performance. Easy to use for all levels of traders. Educational resources and tools to help you improve your trading and stay current with market moves. Whether you are a new trader or an old investor Finviz has what you need to make good decisions and optimize your trading.
Why Finviz in the Stock Market
Finviz is key in the stock market by giving traders and investors a tool to analyze and find opportunities. The platform’s advanced features and real time data helps you make good decisions and stay ahead of the market. Finviz’s stock screener is great for finding stocks that meet specific criteria like high growth stocks or stocks with strong technicals. By giving you detailed market analysis and real time data Finviz helps you navigate the stock market and make smart decisions. Finviz is a must have for anyone who wants to stay informed and make calculated moves in the stock market.
Rating: ★★★★★
