A stock screener answers one question: which stocks match these criteria right now? You set filters — market cap over $2B, RSI under 30, volume above average — press search, and get a list.
The free options are genuinely good. Below is an honest comparison, followed by the structural limitation that every screener shares regardless of price.
The main free screeners, compared
| Tool | Strongest at | Free-tier limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Finviz | Speed and breadth. Around 70 filters across fundamentals, technicals and descriptive data, usable without an account. | Delayed data; real-time quotes, backtesting and advanced charts are behind Finviz Elite. |
| TradingView | Charting, and a screener that hooks into custom Pine Script indicators. | Free tier caps saved alerts and indicators per chart; the strongest screening lives on paid plans. |
| Yahoo Finance | Fundamentals, saved screens, zero friction. Good for long-term value filtering. | Technical filtering is thin — fine for P/E, weak for pattern or indicator logic. |
| Zacks | Earnings-estimate-driven screening and its own ranking system. | Heavily oriented around Zacks' proprietary ranks; custom technical criteria are limited. |
| Your broker's screener | It's already there, and it links straight to the order ticket. | Quality varies enormously, and you're locked into one broker's universe and data. |
How to choose between them
- Fundamental investing? Yahoo Finance or Zacks. You want valuation, growth and earnings fields.
- Technical / swing trading? Finviz for the list, TradingView for the chart. Most people use both.
- Chart-first workflow? TradingView, because the screener and the chart are the same product.
- Just starting? Finviz. No signup, and the filter names teach you the vocabulary.
The limitation every screener shares
A screener is a pull tool. It only works when you're sitting in front of it. The realistic workflow looks like this:
- Open the screener.
- Re-apply your filters.
- Read a list of 40 tickers.
- Open charts one at a time to see which ones actually look like your setup.
- Do it again tomorrow, because the list is already out of date.
Three things break in that loop:
- Timing. A screener shows you a stock that met your criteria at some point today. It can't tell you the moment the condition became true — which, for a breakout, is the only moment that matters.
- Consistency. Manual review means your mood decides which of the 40 you look at. That's the exact discretion the filters were supposed to remove.
- No evidence. A screener never tells you whether your criteria have historically been worth anything. You can filter for RSI under 30 forever without ever learning whether that produced good entries.
Scanning: the push version of the same idea
A scanner takes the same criteria and inverts the workflow. Instead of you asking the market, the rules sit running and the market tells you.
| Screener | Scanner | |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger | You press search | A bar closes matching your rules |
| Output | A list to review | A notification with the ticker and price |
| Requires you present | Yes | No |
| Historical evidence | Usually none | Backtest the exact rules first |
Where Trade Manager fits
Trade Manager is a scanner, not a screener — it's a poor replacement for Finviz if what you want is to browse the market. It's built for the step after browsing, once you know what your setup is and you're tired of hunting for it manually.
- Build rules as blocks. Breakouts, support and resistance, retests, gap fills and candlestick patterns as triggers; RSI, MACD, moving averages, volume and benchmark comparison as filters. No code.
- Backtest before trusting. The rules are replayed bar by bar over real historical price data by the same engine that scans live, so the test reflects live behaviour.
- Alerts, not lists. Signals arrive by Telegram, email or web push with entry price plus your take-profit and stop-loss levels.
- Live win rates. Public strategies in the strategy library show a rolling 30-day win rate computed from signals that actually fired — not from a backtest.
Coverage is the S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100. The free plan includes 10 backtests per month; Pro is $19/month plus VAT with 200 per day. See pricing.
A workflow that uses both
- Use a free screener to explore and find a pattern that interests you.
- Write that pattern down as one trigger and two or three filters.
- Build it in the strategy builder and backtest it to see how often it fired and what happened next.
- If it holds up, activate it and let alerts come to you.
- Go back to the screener when you want to find the next idea, not to hunt for the same one daily.
Screeners are for discovery. Scanners are for execution. Using a screener for execution is the part that quietly eats your evenings.
Next: a worked example of backtesting a breakout strategy that lost 50%, and how to set an alert with multiple conditions.