When it comes to finding the best stock setups, the overall process can be overwhelming without the right scanner. The FINVIZ stock screener can streamline this process for you with easy-to-use market research tools that rapidly scan stocks meeting your requirements.
FINVIZ has three plans to choose from: FINVIZ Free, FINVIZ Registered, and FINVIZ Elite. If you’re unsure of which plan is right for you, this comparison guide will provide you with the details you need to make the best decision.
About FINVIZ
FINVIZ is a popular stock market research tool that helps you find tradable stocks. It does this by scanning through an ocean of equities and then narrowing the field down to a few select choices. Since it’s user friendly and highly versatile, the FINVIZ stock scanner appeals to new traders as well as the most experienced. The platform helps you refine your search with drop-down menus, charts, filters, financial analysis, and stock profiles. With amazing speed, it can summarize large volumes of information with beautiful graphics and color-coded indicators. Plus, FINVIZ’s technical and fundamental functions cater to active day traders, swing traders, and long-term investors alike.
With its free and registered accounts, FINVIZ removes the barriers to better trading by offering much of their research platform for free. These two plans give you access to stock quotes, filtering tools, charts, and stock screeners. For serious traders in search of even more research capabilities, the FINVIZ Elite account is a great option, giving you full access to some of the best tools around. For more details on the company’s paid scanner, be sure to read our in-depth FINVIZ Elite review.
Homepage Layout
Like TrendSpider and Benzinga Pro, FINVIZ is a browser-based application that you can conveniently access from any device. As far as navigation goes, FINVIZ has a 12-tab format that makes it easy to quickly find what you need. At the top of this page, you’ll see charts for the DOW, NASDAQ, and the S&P 500 indices. The remainder of the homepage displays the following:
- Top gainers and top losers
- Unusual volume
- Insider buying
- New high and new lows
- Overbought
- Above and below the 50-day simple moving average
- Above and below the 200-day simple moving average
- Stocks in consolidation patterns or near support/resistance
- Futures
- Forex and bonds
The homepage also features a heat map of leading stocks by sector, a shortlist of market news stories, and the latest earnings releases. By the way, don’t overlook the search feature at the top of the homepage as it’s a great way to access:
- Charts
- Financial data such as EPS, income, P/E ratio, float, shares short, analyst target prices, and gross margins
- Analyst’s ratings
- News
- Detailed insider trading
Features
News
Under the news tab, you can get the latest market news from Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Reuters, and other major media outlets. To the immediate right, the blog section lists an extensive selection of articles. Some of the third party posts are from Zero Hedge, Calculated Risk Blog, Seeking Alpha, Abnormal Returns, and Mish Talk. There’s a 15-minute delay for FINVIZ’s free accounts, so you’ll need a FINVIZ Elite subscription to access real-time news.
Stock Screener
This stock scanning feature puts FINVIZ ahead of the pack because of its flexibility, versatility, and ease of use. This page provides you with 14 preset filters that include price, sector, industry, RSI, dividend yields, and volume. These screeners will help you find stocks to trade that meet your exact criteria.
FINVIZ free users get full access to the screener, but they can’t use the presets, customize scan ranges, or export screens. On the other hand, FINVIZ Registered users have 50 presets available, but they can’t customize or export screens. FINVIZ Elite users get all the screener perks, including full access to the pre-market scanner.
Heat Maps
The Heat Maps feature condenses a large amount of data and displays it in a way that’s easy to read. You can browse through the entire world market by country, or focus on a particular sector, index, or group in the U.S. Also, this feature can filter by periods of performance, volume, P/E ratio, and many other criteria.
When you find the desired area, you can conduct further analysis by clicking on the different categories within the map. They include:
- Communication services
- Technology
- Consumer defensive
- Healthcare
- Financial
- Industrial
- Real Estate
- Utilities
After you have settled on a particular area, you can locate a specific ticker by using the search bar in the middle of the first column. All three FINVIZ plans offer this feature, including the bubble display and filters.
Groups
The group feature gives you a performance summary of all industries. You can select your group by sector, industry, country, or market cap. With performance data ranging from 1 week to a year, you can get an idea of how money is flowing in different segments of the market. Also, you have the option of viewing the data with bar charts, tabs, or grids.
FINVIZ Elite members get real-time data for the major indices, while the free plans have a 15-minute delay.
Portfolios
FINVIZ gives Registered and Elite users the ability to create portfolios. This feature makes it easy to keep track of your positions and you can even create a portfolio for hypothetical paper trades — a great feature for beginners. Unfortunately, FINVIZ Free users don’t get portfolios.
As far as limits go, FINVIZ Registered subscribers can create up to 50 portfolios with up to 50 tickers while FINVIZ Elite members can create up to 100 portfolios and a maximum of 100 tickers. Lastly, for security purposes, your portfolio has a separate login page.
Insiders
Since insider trading activity can sometimes be an important tell when it comes to future stock prices, tracking the activity of insiders is another tool that you can utilize to increase your edge. FINVIZ’s insider trading page helps you to keep track of the most recent activity and it displays the following data:
- Latest insider trades
- Top insider trading during the recent week
- Top 10% owner trading during the recent week
FINVIZ displays all of the owner’s information by name, relationship to the company, number of shares, type of transaction, amount of the transaction, share size, and SEC filing number. This information is available to all FINVIZ users, so even free members will have full access to it.
Futures, Forex, and Crypto
FINVIZ also provides futures, Forex, and crypto data, and users can view quotes, performance, and charts. You can quickly analyze indices, energy, commodities, and currencies with candlestick charts and a 1-day interactive performance graph, but you’ll need a FINVIZ Elite account for real-time data.
Backtesting
Only FINVIZ Elite users can use the platform’s powerful backtesting feature. If you’re a beginner, this probably isn’t a tool you’ll need right away, but experienced users will definitely want access to backtest various trading strategies. To run the backtester, the tool requires entry and exit conditions. The backtest uses over 100 technical indicators and 16 years of historical data to test your strategy against the SPY benchmark. Because FINVIZ’s historical data is proprietary to the backtesting tool, free users don’t receive access to it.
Additional Elite Benefits
Here’s a list of some more things that we really like about the FINVIZ Elite account:
- In the Sector and Industrial section of the screen, the custom pop-up box allows you to select one group at a time — this saves a lot of screening time
- Advanced charts and technical studies feature intraday and comparison charts, overlays, and indicators
- With FINVIZ Elite, you can adjust the number of screener results
- The bubble view allows you to quickly spot the top performers in scan results
- You can export data into Excel
- Proprietary correlation algorithms help you find correlated and inversely correlated stocks and ETFs — this is an excellent way to diversify your portfolio
- Includes real-time and premarket data
- FINVIZ Elite gives you the ability to create email alerts for news, insider trading notifications, portfolio activity, and price changes
Plans and Pricing
Below is a side-by-side comparison of the cost and features of each membership:
Free
-
Delayed quotes
-
Delayed charts
-
Delayed screening
-
Heat maps/groups 3-5 minute delay
-
Screener rows per page 20/36/10
Registered
-
Delayed quotes
-
Delayed charts
-
Delayed screening
-
Heat maps/groups 3-5 minute delay
-
Porftolio/ticker limit (50)
-
Layout customization and signals
Elite
-
Real-time quotes
-
Real-time charts
-
Real-time screening
-
Real-time maps and groups
-
Screener rows per page 100/120/50
-
Portfolio/ticker limit (50)
-
Layout customization and signals
-
100 scanner presets
-
Fundamental charts/EPS, share, P/S ratio
-
Email alerts
-
Backtesting
-
Excel exports
-
Premarket data
-
Correlations
This comparison should make something very obvious — there is no reason to be an unregistered FINVIZ user. Just for taking the time to register a free account, you get a portfolio, layout customization, and 50 screener presets. Also, as you grow as a trader, FINVIZ Elite’s more advanced research tools are available for only $299.50 annually or $39.50 a month.
FAQs
No, signing up for a FINVIZ Registered account is free. You only need to supply your email address and a password. Also, if you choose to sign up for FINVIZ Elite, you can pay via Paypal.
No. Your level of commitment has no timeline or stipulations. The three different plans allow you to use the FINVIZ screener according to your skill and comfort level.
Pros and Cons
FINVIZ Free
Pros
Cons
- It’s free with no pressure to buy
- Very user friendly
- Excellent learning platform
- Access to powerful scanning tools
- Great charts, stock information, and indicators
FINVIZ Registered
Pros
Cons
- It’s free with no pressure to buy
- Very user friendly
- You can record and track your trades within your portfolio
- You can save stock screen presets
- You can customize the layout
FINVIZ Elite
Pros
Cons
- Access to very advanced screening tools
- More saving capacity
- No advertising
- Ability to backtest your trading or investment strategies
- Alerts keep you notified of important changes and events
Best for?
If you’re a casual trader or investor, the FINVIZ Free plan is nice but we’d recommend that you take a few minutes to set up a free FINVIZ Registered account instead. This platform gives you a risk-free way to begin scanning for stocks, and the heat maps and other features really come in handy. For the advanced trader or investor, FINVIZ Elite offers the highest performance scanning tools on the market at a very low price.
FINVIZ’s research tools can help you make quick and informed trading decisions, and we feel that FINVIZ is one of the best scanning solutions for beginner, intermediate, and experienced traders.