Rating: 4.4 / 5
Best for: traders and investors who build a morning watchlist from US-stock screens and want real-time data without a triple-digit monthly bill.
NOT for: anyone who needs a live alert window firing entries at them in real time, futures traders, or anyone trading non-US markets.
Price: free plan at $0; Finviz Elite at $39.50/month billed monthly or $299.50/year ($24.96/month equivalent). Both billing cycles include every Elite feature; there is no feature tiering above Elite.
Pros
- Free screener, heatmaps, and news work in a browser without an account
- Elite real-time data costs $24.96 a month billed annually
Cons
- Free quotes run 15–20 minutes delayed; entries need Elite
- Backtesting ended March 26, 2026; saved tests are not recoverable
Finviz is the best value in stock screening, and the free tier is the reason most traders have already used it whether they remember signing up or not. The honest frame: it is a research and screening platform, not a live momentum scanner, and the price reflects exactly that.
What Finviz is
Finviz, short for financial visualizations, is a browser-based stock screener and market dashboard covering US-listed stocks on the Finviz platform. The pitch is breadth on one screen: a screener with dozens of fundamental and technical filters, sector heatmaps, a filtered news feed, insider-transaction tracking, earnings and economic calendars, and quote pages for futures, forex, and crypto.
Coverage is US stocks only: NYSE, Nasdaq, and Amex. The help center states plainly that there are no plans to expand into other markets at the moment. If you trade London listings or Toronto small caps, this is the wrong tool, full stop.
There are two tiers. The free version runs on delayed data with ads. Finviz Elite turns on real-time quotes, intraday charts, alerts, exports, and deeper screener capacity. Everything in this review was verified against the official pricing and help pages in June 2026.
The screener: where the money is
The screener is the product. It stacks descriptive, fundamental, and technical filters into one grid and returns results instantly: market cap, float, average and relative volume, short float, gap, performance, volatility, ATR, RSI, distance from the 20-, 50-, and 200-day moving averages, candlestick formations, and detected chart patterns, alongside the full fundamental set (P/E, EPS growth, margins, ownership).
For day traders the useful core is the technical block. A premarket pass filtering for gap, relative volume, and float gets you a gapper watchlist in under a minute. The built-in signals do some of that work for you: Top Gainers, New High, Unusual Volume, Most Volatile, Most Active, Overbought/Oversold, and stocks reporting earnings before the open or after the close. Each signal returns a ranked list (Top Gainers and similar signals cap at the top 200 stocks) that you can stack with any other filter.
Elite extends capacity rather than concept: custom filters and ETF filters, a statistics view of your results, screener presets jump from 50 to 200, and results pages go from 20 table rows to up to 100 (chart view from 36 to 120 thumbnails). The free screener loads without an account; registering a free account adds saved presets and portfolios.
One distinction matters more than any filter count. Finviz tells you what matches your criteria when you run the screen or when an email or push notification goes out. A dedicated scanner streams alerts into an always-on window the second conditions trigger. If your strategy lives or dies on being first into a move at 9:32, that delivery mechanism is the difference; the mechanics are covered in how stock scanners actually work.
Data: the free-vs-Elite dividing line
The free tier delays stock quotes 15 minutes on Nasdaq and 20 minutes on NYSE and Amex. That is fine for building tonight’s watchlist. It is useless for timing an entry; a 15-minute-old quote on a stock that just ripped is a different stock.
Elite switches stock quotes, charts, and screener data to real time and adds extended-hours coverage: premarket data from 4:00 AM to 9:30 AM and after-hours from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM, which is when gappers are actually made (background in our premarket trading explainer). Two caveats the pricing page states itself: futures data stays 20 minutes delayed even on Elite, and fundamentals recalculate hourly rather than tick by tick. Futures traders should treat the futures pages as context, not signal.
Everything around the screener
The heatmap is the most recognizable thing Finviz makes: the S&P 500 as a grid of boxes sized by market cap and colored by performance. It is a three-second read on where money is rotating. Groups does the same job in chart form for sectors and industries. The news feed aggregates headlines and blog posts and filters by ticker, and the insider-trading page tracks Form 4 buys and sells across the market. All of this works on the free tier.
Elite adds the analysis layer: interactive multi-layout charts with drawing tools and saved technical studies, fundamental charts for EPS, sales, and shares outstanding, eight years of financial statements (three on free), full ETF holdings breakdowns instead of the top 10, a correlated-stocks tool, and alerts. Alerts cover price levels, news, analyst ratings, insider activity, and SEC filings, plus screener notifications when new stocks match a saved filter, delivered by email and push notification. Elite also opens exports: screener results, portfolios, groups, options chains, and news to Excel, with API access and sample code for Google Sheets, Python, and JavaScript. If you journal systematically or run your own spreadsheet models, the export alone does real work.
Charting is part of the workflow, not the destination. The chart tools exist to let you eyeball what the screener found. If charting itself is the product you are buying, run the comparison against a charting-first platform; our TradingView review covers that side of the decision.
Backtesting is gone, and most reviews haven’t noticed
Backtesting was discontinued on March 26, 2026. The notice on the retired page is blunt: saved backtests are not recoverable, and no replacement is planned. Plenty of ranking reviews still list backtesting as an Elite selling point; as of June 2026 it does not exist. If strategy testing is a requirement, it now has to come from somewhere else entirely. Factor that into the price comparison below, because it used to be a chunk of the Elite pitch.
The way it ended also belongs in the trust ledger. A paid feature was retired and user-saved work was not preserved. The subscription terms were honored and the platform never promised perpetual features, so this is not a billing problem, but it is a reminder that anything you build inside a subscription tool can disappear with it.
Pricing, billing, and the refund window
| Plan | Price | Data | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Delayed 15–20 min | Screener, heatmaps, news, no account needed; ads |
| Elite monthly | $39.50/mo | Real-time stocks | All Elite features |
| Elite annual | $299.50/yr | Real-time stocks | $24.96/mo equivalent; saves $174.50/yr vs monthly |
The annual math: twelve months at $39.50 is $474, so the annual plan saves $174.50 a year, about 37%. There is a 7-day free trial of Elite; it requires a credit card and converts to a paid plan automatically when the trial ends unless you cancel first, which the signup page discloses right under the button. Auto-renewal on monthly and annual plans is the category standard, and Finviz follows it.
On refunds, Finviz sits well above the norm for this category. Refunds are issued during the initial 30-day period on written request to support; after 30 days, or without a prior request, payments are non-refundable, per the official FAQ. For comparison, TrendSpider’s refund policy gives 72 hours after a charge (verified June 2026). Thirty days is room to actually evaluate the product on your own trading, not just click around.
The protection play is still simple: cancel from the Subscription page (you keep Elite access through the end of the prepaid period), and if you want money back, cancel and email the refund request inside the first 30 days, in writing. One quirk worth knowing: there is no mid-cycle switch from monthly to annual billing. You cancel the monthly plan, ride out the prepaid month, then buy the annual plan; saved screens and portfolios stay attached to your account email through the gap.
Learning curve and support
The first load is dense. The homepage drops you into a wall of quotes, signal lists, heatmaps, and headlines with no onboarding beyond a guided tour and the help section’s articles on the screener, maps, groups, and technical analysis. Most traders get oriented by doing: run a screen, click a result, follow the links. Support runs through a contact form and the FAQ; there is no documented phone line or live chat. Education is reference material, not a curriculum. That’s an acceptable trade at this price, but if you want hand-holding, you won’t find much.
Who should buy it, and who shouldn’t
Buy Elite if you trade US stocks off a researched watchlist and the free tier’s delayed data is the only thing stopping you. At $24.96 a month billed annually it is the cheapest real-time research stack covered on this site, and the screener plus extended-hours data covers the premarket routine most gap traders actually run. Stay on the free tier if you are still in the simulator or trade a few times a month; delayed data costs you nothing when you are not timing entries with it.
Skip it entirely if you need streaming alerts to drive intraday entries, if you trade futures off live data, or if your market is not NYSE, Nasdaq, or Amex. And keep the base rate in view regardless of tooling: most day traders lose money, and no screener changes that by itself.
Alternatives
The serious head-to-head is Trade Ideas, the always-on scanning platform. Verified against its pricing page in June 2026: Trade Ideas Basic runs $1,068 a year billed annually ($127 monthly), against $299.50 for Finviz Elite. The $768.50 gap buys a desktop scanning platform with 500-plus alert and filter data points, paper trading, and in-app trading; the Premium tier at $2,136 a year adds the Holly AI signals and backtesting. Whether that gap is worth seven hundred dollars depends entirely on whether your edge needs live alerts or a morning list; the full breakdown is in Trade Ideas vs Finviz, and the Trade Ideas review covers that platform on its own terms.
For a screener-plus-news workflow at a different angle, see our Scanz review. For where Finviz lands against the whole field, the ranked list is in our best stock scanners comparison.
Verdict
Finviz earns 4.4 out of 5 under our rating methodology. Core capability: 4.5. The screener is deep, fast in practice, and covers the filters day traders actually use, with float, RVOL, gap, and short float all first-class; alerts exist but arrive by email and push rather than a live window, which caps it for intraday signal work. Value: 5.0. A free tier this usable plus real-time data at $24.96 a month is the price floor of the category, scored for the watchlist-driven trader it serves. Ease of use: 4.0. No install, no account needed to start, but a dense first screen and thin onboarding. Trust and transparency: 4.0. A 30-day refund window beats the category norm and the auto-renew terms are disclosed where you can see them; the backtesting shutdown with unrecoverable saved work costs half a point. Support and education: 3.5. A solid help section and contact form, nothing more.
Weighted overall (core capability 40%, value 20%, ease of use 15%, trust 15%, support 10%): 4.4. The next step depends on which gap you are filling: if it is delayed data, take the Elite trial and test it against your own premarket routine inside the 30-day window; if it is live alerts, read Trade Ideas vs Finviz before spending anything, because those are two different purchases that happen to share the word screener. Either way, Finviz stays in the stack; the only question is whether it is the whole stack. Browse the rest of the category from the apps hub.
FAQ
Is Finviz Elite worth it for day trading?
Worth it if delayed data is your current bottleneck: $24.96 a month billed annually buys real-time quotes, premarket data from 4:00 AM, and screener alerts. Not worth it if you need streaming alert windows for entries; that is scanner territory at several times the price.
Does Finviz have a free trial?
Yes. Elite comes with a 7-day free trial that includes every Elite feature. A credit card is required, and the trial converts to a paid subscription automatically when it ends unless you cancel before then.
How do I cancel Finviz Elite?
From the Subscription page in your account. Cancelling stops the next auto-renewal and you keep Elite access until the end of the period you already paid for. Refunds are available within the initial 30 days on written request to support; after that, payments are non-refundable.
Does Finviz still have backtesting?
No. Backtesting was discontinued on March 26, 2026. Saved backtests were not preserved, and the retirement notice states no replacement is planned. Strategy testing now requires a different tool.
Is the free version good enough for day trading?
For research and watchlist building, yes; the screener, heatmaps, and news are full-strength. For live trading decisions, no: free quotes run 15 minutes delayed on Nasdaq and 20 minutes on NYSE and Amex, which is an eternity intraday.
What markets does Finviz cover?
US stocks listed on NYSE, Nasdaq, and Amex, plus quote pages for futures, forex, and crypto. Futures data is delayed 20 minutes on both the free and Elite tiers, and there are currently no plans to add non-US stock markets.