These two platforms both scan US stocks in real time, and that’s roughly where the overlap ends. Trade Ideas sells machine-generated trade signals and streaming momentum alerts at $1,068–$2,136 a year; TC2000 sells fast charting and build-it-yourself screening at $250–$1,000 a year, with the friendliest billing terms in this matchup by a mile.
TL;DR verdict
Choose Trade Ideas if you trade momentum every day and want the machine doing the finding: streaming event alerts, Holly’s AI entry and exit signals, OddsMaker backtesting, and automated execution through a connected broker. Budget $89–$254 a month and accept all-sales-final billing.
Choose TC2000 if you bring your own setups. You get real-time charting, EasyScan screening, custom PCF formulas, and deep options tools for $24.99–$99.99 a month, backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee and pro-rated refunds on prepaid terms.
Side by side
| Trade Ideas | TC2000 | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | Basic $127, Premium $254 | Basic $24.99, Premium $49.99, Premium Plus $99.99 |
| Annual price | Basic $1,068 ($89/mo), Premium $2,136 ($178/mo) | $20.82, $41.65, $83.32 effective monthly |
| Core strength | Streaming event alerts plus AI signals | Charting speed plus condition-based screening |
| AI signals | Holly, Premium tier: 60+ strategies re-optimized nightly | Trader-built conditions instead: EasyScan and PCF formulas |
| Backtesting | OddsMaker, Premium tier | History Columns review past scan results, not strategy P&L |
| Auto trading | Premium, via connected brokers | Manual orders through TC2000 Brokerage |
| Data coverage | US stocks, real-time, 500+ alert and filter data points | US stocks and options, real-time Nasdaq Basic feed on every paid plan |
| Charting | 10 charts on screen (Basic), 20 (Premium) | Stock and option charts, multi-leg option strategies drawn on the chart |
| Platforms | Windows desktop, full-featured web version | Windows desktop, full version streamed to Mac and browser, Android app; iPhone listed as coming soon |
| Free option | Free account, 15-minute delayed browser dashboards | Free version with delayed data, charts, option chains, paper trading; no card required |
| Refunds | All sales final; store credit or exchange only | 30-day money-back guarantee; pro-rated refunds on prepaid plans |
| Our rating | 4.2 / 5 | 4.3 / 5 |
Pricing verified June 2026 against the official Trade Ideas pricing page and TC2000 plans page. Ratings follow our five-criteria methodology; the decimal gap between them says less than the fact that they’re excellent at different jobs.
Real-time scanning: streaming alerts vs conditions you build
Winner: Trade Ideas for live momentum flow. TC2000 for screening you control.
Trade Ideas was built as an alert engine. Its Alert Windows stream events as they happen, drawing on more than 500 alert and filter data points, and every paid tier includes customizable scans, premarket and after-hours data, and price alerts. When a low float gaps up on news at 7:40 and starts printing new highs, that’s the event flow this platform exists to catch. The web version runs the same scans with no documented speed difference from the desktop.
TC2000’s engine works the other way around: you define conditions through the EasyScan wizard or write your own Personal Criteria Formulas, then filter and sort watchlists against them. It’s a pull model rather than a push model, and two plan details matter for day traders. First, scanning isn’t on the $24.99 Basic tier at all; real-time scanning, EasyScan, and PCFs start at Premium ($49.99). Second, filters and sorts that auto-refresh in real time are a Premium Plus feature ($99.99), and those streaming scans run on TC2000’s servers with a documented cap of five at a time (extra capacity is a paid add-on). Trade Ideas alert windows stream by design at every paid tier, no cap on the plan pages.
So the honest split: if your edge is reacting to what the tape is doing right now, Trade Ideas is the purpose-built tool. If your edge is a precise screen you wrote yourself, run before the open and re-sorted through the day, TC2000 does that beautifully for less than half the money.
AI signals, backtesting, and automation
Winner: Trade Ideas, because only one side of this matchup sells these tools at all.
Holly is the headline. Per the official AI guide, she re-backtests and re-optimizes more than 60 strategies every night, keeps only the ones with the best statistical profile for the next session, and enters 5 to 25 trades a day on average, each with an entry, stop, and target. OddsMaker backtesting and automated execution through connected brokers round out the Premium tier.
Two derived cautions before you pay $2,136 a year for that. First, Holly’s signals go to every Premium subscriber at the same moment, so on a thin name your fill will trail the model’s price; the published results assume entries the crowd makes harder to get. Second, the performance figures on the marketing pages are backtested vendor claims, not independently audited live results, and we treat them accordingly. If the AI is your reason for choosing Trade Ideas, sample it through a Test Drive event first; the free trial and Test Drive routes cost a few dollars instead of a few thousand.
TC2000’s documented toolset is the philosophical opposite: the EasyScan library, PCF formulas, market-pulse gauges, and History Columns that let you review what past scans returned. You do the interpreting, you do the validating, you pull the trigger. Plenty of experienced traders prefer exactly that. But if machine-generated entries and a one-click backtester are what you’re shopping for, this section isn’t close.
Charting and options: TC2000’s home turf
Winner: TC2000.
Charting on Trade Ideas exists to serve the scanner: 10 charts on screen at Basic, 20 at Premium, with drawing tools, custom indicators, and earnings and halt markers. Perfectly serviceable for managing a momentum trade.
TC2000 treats charting as the product. The feature pages document chart-flipping across watchlists, indicators plotted on other indicators, trendline and condition alerts, and an options suite that’s genuinely unusual at this price: 100,000+ option contracts in built-in chains, option charts plotted from bid/ask or last-trade data so thin contracts still draw clean, in-the-money shading on the underlying, and a patent-pending tool that overlays multi-leg strategy legs and P&L zones directly on the chart, updating as you drag strikes and expirations. Trade Ideas’ published plan lineup is built around stocks: scans, charts, signals, and 500+ alert and filter data points, all on the equity side. If options are part of your day, this section decides the matchup on its own.
Price: the $1,636 question
Winner: TC2000, and it isn’t subtle.
Run the annual numbers. Trade Ideas Premium is $2,136 a year. TC2000 Premium, the tier with the actual scanning engine, is $499.80 a year on annual billing. The gap is $1,636 a year, every year. Even Trade Ideas Basic, the no-AI scanner tier, runs $1,068 against TC2000’s $499.80, and against TC2000 Premium Plus with every feature included ($999.84), Trade Ideas Premium still costs $1,136 more.
Stack the add-ons fairly: TC2000’s real-time stock feed (Nasdaq Basic) is included in every paid plan, while real-time options data and real-time US indexes are $9.99 a month each. A TC2000 Premium subscriber on annual billing with both add-ons pays about $740 a year all-in. A Premium Plus subscriber who opens a TC2000 Brokerage account and trades each month earns a documented $25 monthly credit, up to $300 a year, pulling the top tier down near $700 effective. Trade Ideas covers exchange fees for non-professionals, so its sticker price is the real price; there’s just a lot more sticker.
The $1,636 buys Holly, OddsMaker, and auto trading. That’s not padding, it’s the entire value case. A trader who’ll act on AI signals daily can justify it; a trader who’d run custom scans either way is paying quadruple for features they won’t open. The Trade Ideas pricing breakdown shows where the public savings routes are if you do go that way.
Billing, trials, and refunds: opposite ends of the spectrum
Winner: TC2000, by the widest margin of any section on this page.
TC2000’s published terms are about as protective as this category gets: a 30-day, no-questions money-back guarantee for new users (one per household per year, claimed by phone), pro-rated refunds of unused full months if you cancel a prepaid plan early (bonus months forfeited), self-serve cancellation inside the program, and 30 days’ written notice before any fee increase, per the TC2000 terms of use. There’s also a true free version with delayed data and no card required, so evaluation costs nothing.
Trade Ideas sits at the strict end. The official billing policy states all sales are final, with store credit or exchanges as the remedy, subscriptions auto-renew until cancelled, and the customer carries the burden of confirming the cancellation went through. There’s no standard free trial because of exchange data requirements; the free account is 15-minute delayed browser dashboards, and the periodic Test Drive events ($11.11 for a recent 10-trading-day run) are the paid sampling route, themselves non-refundable.
The protection play if you choose Trade Ideas: start monthly even though annual saves $456–$912, confirm any cancellation in writing, and put the renewal date in your calendar the day you subscribe. On a $2,136 annual plan, a forgotten renewal is a four-figure mistake with no documented path back.
Platforms and execution
Winner: TC2000 on devices, Trade Ideas on broker flexibility.
Device coverage favors TC2000. The full Windows version streams to Mac and any browser with, per the platform page, the same features and data, and there’s a native Android app with real-time quotes and EasyScan; the iPhone app is listed as coming soon. Trade Ideas documents two ways in: the Windows desktop and the browser-based web version, which carries all 500+ alerts and filters with no speed difference. Mac users run the web version or virtualize Windows. Both products limit you to one running session at a time.
Execution architecture is the more interesting fork. Trade Ideas connects outward: documented API integrations with Interactive Brokers, E*TRADE, TradeStation, and Alpaca let you manage orders, chart-trade, and (on Premium) automate strategies through the broker you already use, with partner arrangements at CenterPoint, Cobra, and moomoo on top. TC2000 connects inward, to its own affiliated broker-dealer: TC2000 Brokerage (FINRA/SIPC member) executes from the charts on IB SmartRouting at $1 plus half a cent per share on the default plan, states it doesn’t sell order flow, and offers 4:1 intraday margin. One integrated stack versus bring-your-own-broker. If you’re attached to your current broker, that alone may decide it.
The verdict: two different answers to “where do trades come from?”
There’s no universal winner here because the two platforms answer different questions. Trade Ideas answers “show me what’s moving right now and tell me what to do about it.” TC2000 answers “give me fast tools and get out of my way.”
Pick Trade Ideas if you day trade momentum daily, want the streaming alert flow, and will genuinely use Holly, OddsMaker, or automated execution enough to earn back a $1,636-a-year premium. Go in through a Test Drive, start on monthly billing, and treat the AI’s published numbers as backtests, not promises.
Pick TC2000 if you build and refine your own scans, live in charts, trade options, work on a Mac, or simply refuse to pay four figures for features you won’t open. The free version plus the 30-day guarantee means trying it risks nothing, which is exactly how buying trading software should work.
And the standing reality check that applies whichever logo is on your scanner: most day traders lose money, and no subscription changes that math by itself. If neither tool fits, the stock scanner rankings cover the rest of the field, and both contenders here have full write-ups: the Trade Ideas review and the TC2000 review in our software coverage.
FAQ
Is Trade Ideas better than TC2000?
Better at different jobs. Trade Ideas is the stronger momentum-scanning and AI-signal platform; TC2000 is the stronger charting, screening, and options platform at a quarter of the Premium-tier cost. A signal-following day trader and a self-directed chart trader would each pick differently, and both would be right.
Does TC2000 have anything like Holly AI?
AI-generated signals are the Trade Ideas side of this matchup. TC2000’s documented approach is the opposite philosophy: you define every condition yourself through the EasyScan wizard or PCF formulas, and the software finds the stocks that match. Choose it because you want that control, not because you expect machine-generated entries.
Which is cheaper for real-time scanning?
TC2000, decisively. Its Premium tier with the EasyScan engine and a real-time US stock feed runs $499.80 a year on annual billing. Trade Ideas’ cheapest scanning tier is $1,068 a year on annual billing, and the AI tier is $2,136. Note that TC2000’s $24.99 Basic plan has real-time data and charting but not the scanning engine.
Do both platforms have free trials?
Neither runs a standard full free trial, but the sampling paths differ a lot. TC2000 offers a free delayed-data version with charts, option chains, and paper trading, no card required, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee on paid plans. Trade Ideas offers a free 15-minute-delayed dashboard account and periodic paid Test Drive events that open up Premium access for one to two weeks; all its sales are final.
Which is better for Mac users?
Both run in a browser, so neither locks Mac users out. TC2000 streams its full Windows version to Mac with the same features and data, and adds an Android app. Trade Ideas’ web version carries all 500+ alerts and filters with no documented speed difference from the desktop; the desktop itself is Windows software, so running it natively on a Mac means Parallels or a cloud Windows machine.