Best Cheap Stock Screeners

There are many free stock screeners so why would you want to invest in any screening tool ?

The reason is simple: free stock screeners have some limitations.

The screeners reviewed below allow you to build strategies that would be difficult to build, if ever possible, with any free screener.

These include "Martin Zweig" with AAII Stock Investor Pro or Morningstar Premium Screener, the "Market Leaders" with SmartMoneySelect, "Warren Buffett" with NAIC Stock Prospector, "CANSLIM" with Pitbull Investor Stock Tables.

So, here is a review of the best cheap stock screeners. They're all well worth their reasonable cost.

  • SmartMoney Select
  • Morningstar Premium Screener
  • NAIC Stock Prospector
  • AAII Stock Investor Pro
  • Pitbull Investor Stock Tables



    • Note: all featured screeners provide more variables and capabilities than stated below. I only highlight the main ones and put them in a format that hopefully makes comparison easy.


    SmartMoney Select         Go Back to Top

    Investing Universe: Market Cap, Index Membership (DJIA, S&P500, Russell2000, NASDAQ).

    Valuation: P/E, PEG, P/S, P/BV, P/CF, Dividend Yield.

    Investment Return: ROE, ROA, ROI.

    Relative Strength: Yes.
    • select the variable "Price Chg - XX (%)" where XX is your required Relative Strength period (For instance "52 weeks")
    • select "Top % in ALL" in "Conditions",
    • Finally enter the required value in the field "Values".
      For instance if you want a Relative Strength greater than 80, enters 20 in the field "values": this way, you'll get the Top 20% Stocks with highest Relative Strength in the Market. You can thereafter sort the results by "Price Chg XX - %"
    Growth: EPS Growth (QoQ, 1 yr, 3 yrs, 5 yrs). Revenue Growth (QoQ, 1 yr, 3 yrs, 5 yrs).

    Others: EPS Surprises, % held by Institutions/Insiders, Insider transactions, Technical Analysis.

    Ranking of results: Yes.

    Price: 5$/month or 58$/year. Includes access to SmartMoney Select Tools.

    Pros:
    • Can build formulas.

    • Can compare 2 criteria as a filtering condition
      e.g. "Quarterly Earnings Growth" > "1 yr Earning Growth".

    • "Top % In" and "Bottom % In" conditions
      e.g. "(Quarterly Earnings Growth) Top % In All = 20%" will screen for the 20% stocks in the entire Market with highest Quarterly EPS Growth.

    • Can easily stop your monthly subscription (you can do it online with no need to call or write to the customer service): great if you want to screen once a year or even once a quarter

    Cons:
    • no

    Overall: the best value among cheap stock screeners. Many possibilities for Value, Growth and Momentum investors. SmartMoney Select is also the cheapest solution to screen for Market Leaders.



    Morningstar Premium Stock Screener         Go Back to Top

    Investing Universe: Market Cap, Morningstar Rating, Morningstar Grades (Price / Fair Value, Economic Moat, Growth, Profitability, Risk, Financial Health).

    Valuation: P/E, PEG, P/S, P/BV, Dividend Yield. For each, except PEG and Dividend Yield, Morningstar provides current and each of the last 5 years value as well as the 5 years average.

    Investment Return: ROE, ROA. For both, each of the last 10 years.

    Relative Strength: Yes (1 mth, 3 mth, 1 yr, 3 yrs).

    Growth: EPS Growth, Revenue Growth. For both, Quarterly growth versus same quarter a year ago (Q1/Q5, Q2/Q6, Q3/Q7, Q4/Q8), Yearly growth for each of the last 5 years.

    Others: Financial Statement (5 years restated, 10 years original), Many Analyst Estimates (Revenue and EPS forecasts), Earnings Surprises, % held by Mutual Funds.

    Ranking of results: Yes (including Scoring with weights assigned to different parameters).

    Price: 16.95$/month or 159$/year. Includes access to Morningstar Premium tools.

    Pros:
    • OR criteria

    • Morningstar Rating / Grades

    • 10 years Financial Statement (Revenue, Earnings, Margins, ROA, ROE, Cash Flow, Capital Spending, R&D/Sales...)

    • Many Growth variables
    • Can compare 2 criteria as a filtering condition
      e.g. "EPS % Growth Q1 / Q5 " > "EPS % Growth Q2 / Q6 ".

    • Provides Market Quartile Ranges (Top 25%, 2nd 25%, 3rd 25%, Bottom 25%) for many variables. Useful to set conditions.

    Cons:
    • Can't build formulas (At 159$/year, you would expect this function)

    • Can't export to Excel

    • Slow Interface


    Overall: a great stock screener for growth investors thanks to its rich set of growth variables and financial statement. Can build complex strategies: for instance, you can build the successful Martin Zweig stock screen from AAII.



    NAIC Stock Prospector         Go Back to Top

    Investing Universe: Market Cap, S&P Quality Rating.

    Valuation: P/E, PEG, PE/ROE, P/S, P/BV, Dividend Yield.

    Investment Return: ROE.

    Relative Strength: No.

    Growth: EPS Growth (QoQ, 1 yr, 3 yrs, 5 yrs, 10 yrs), EPS Rank,
    Revenue Growth (QoQ, 1 yr, 3 yrs, 5 yrs, 10 yrs).

    Others: % held by Institutions/Insiders.

    Ranking of results: Yes.

    Price: 99$ Software + 79$/year for Better Investing Membership.

    Pros:
    • OR criteria

    • R2 (R-squared): measures the consitency of various criteria (EPS Growth, Revenue Growth, Dividend). For instance the EPS R2 10y measures how consistent are EPS Growth over the last 10 years. Extremely useful in Growth Stock Screens.

    • Can create your own list of stocks with the criterion "Symbol in('tickerA', 'tickerB',...)". Extremely useful (for instance to import results from another screener) but it can be tedious to create a long list.

    Cons:
    • No Relative Strength.


    Overall: a good stock screener for Growth Investing a la Warren Buffett thanks to its R-squared. Due to lack of Relative Strength, Momentum Investors can give it a miss despite the availability of the EPS Rank.



    AAII Stock Investor Pro (SIPRO)         Go Back to Top

    Investing Universe: Market Capitalization, Index Membership (Dow Jones, S&P400 Mid Cap, S&P500 Large Cap, S&P600 Small Cap).

    Valuation: P/E, P/BV, P/CF (both Price/Cash Flow and Price/Free Cash Flow)), P/S, Dividend Yield. Stock Investor Pro provides each of last 7 years, 3 yrs average, 5 yrs average, 7 yrs average for the Valuation ratios.

    Investment Return: ROE (each of last 7 yrs, 5 yrs and 7 yrs average), ROA (each of last 7 yrs), ROIC (each of last 7 yrs, 5 yrs average).

    Relative Strength: Yes (1 mth, 3 mths, 6 mths, 1 yr).

    Growth: EPS Growth (QoQ for "Q1/Q5, Q2/Q6, Q3/Q7, Q4/Q8", YoY for "Y1/Y2, Y2/Y3, Y3/Y4", 1 yr, 3 yrs, 5 yrs, 7 yrs), Revenue Growth (QoQ for "Q1/Q5, Q2/Q6, Q3/Q7, Q4/Q8", 1 yr, 3 yrs, 5 yrs, 7 yrs).

    Others: Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow statement. For all 3, each of last 7 years and last 8 quarters. Earnings Surprises, % held by Institutions/Insiders and many more...

    Ranking of results: Yes.

    Price: 198$/year + 29$/year for AAII membership.

    Pros:
    • Very rich set of variables.

    • Can build your own variable and formulas.

    • Income Statement, Balance Sheet , Cash Flow statement.

    • OR criteria.

    • R2 (R-squared) over last 7 years for EPS Growth and Sales Growth.
    • Stocks screens: pre-defined screens from Gurus (Warren Buffett, Martin Zweig, William O'Neil's CANSLIM...) with historical performances from 1998.


    Cons:
    • Need to perform manual updates (monthly with CDROM or weekly online) to get up to date data. Luckily, you can skip some updates and only use the latest one.


    Overall: Stock Investor Pro is the most complete stock screener. You can build many strategies not possible with other screeners thanks to its rich set of variables. Unsurprisingly it is the priciest tool on this page but still reasonable at 227$/year.



    Pitbull Investor Stock Tables         Go Back to Top

    Investing Universe: None.

    Valuation: None.

    Investment Return: None.

    Relative Strength: Yes.

    Growth: EPS Rank.

    Others: Some Technical Analysis for Momentum Investors (Accumulation/Distribution a la Investor's Business Daily...)

    Ranking of results: Yes.

    Price: 14.95$/month or 99$/year.

    Pros:
    Cons:
    • No Market Cap Filter


    Overall: several possibilities for Momentum Investors despite its simplicity and seemingly lack of variables. A cheaper alternative to Investor's Business Daily to screen for CANSLIM Stocks.





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