Our rating: 4.5 / 5
Best for: traders who scan US stocks every session and want event-driven alerts plus AI signals that retrain nightly.
NOT for: casual traders, buy-and-hold investors, or anyone who checks the market a couple of times a week.
Price: TI Basic is the scanner: $89/month billed annually ($127 month-to-month). TI Premium adds Holly AI signals, OddsMaker backtesting, and full trade automation: $178/month billed annually ($254 month-to-month). A free plan runs on delayed data.
Pros: Event-driven real-time scanning across 500+ configurable alerts and filters. Holly AI re-optimizes dozens of strategies nightly with fresh backtests.
Cons: All sales are final, the strictest refund terms among direct peers. Steep learning curve on the Windows desktop platform.
Trade Ideas is the deepest real-time stock scanner a retail day trader can buy, and the only one whose AI rebuilds its own strategies every night. It’s also Windows-first software with a real learning curve and a zero-refund billing policy, so understand exactly what you’re signing before you take the annual discount. This review is part of our stock scanner rankings and the wider trading software hub; everything below was verified against trade-ideas.com’s pricing page, help center, and user guide.
What Trade Ideas is and who makes it
Trade Ideas, LLC has been building market-scanning technology since 2003, per its official site. It’s subscription software, not a brokerage: the pricing page carries a plain warning that nobody from Trade Ideas will ever ask you to deposit funds or trade on your behalf, and anyone who does is running a scam. That’s the right posture in a niche full of signal-room hustlers, and it earns a point of goodwill before the software even loads.
The product comes in three layers: a free browser account on 15-minute delayed data, the TI Basic scanner, and TI Premium, which carries the AI. The serious work happens in a Windows desktop application; a slimmer browser version covers Mac and mobile users. More on that split below, because it matters.
Scanning: the core engine
The scanner is the reason this software has survived two decades of competition. Alert windows fire the moment a configured event triggers: a stock crossing above resistance, a new high on a spike in relative volume, an opening-range breakout, a halt resume. No refreshing, no end-of-minute polling. You build scans from a library of more than 500 alerts and filters, documented item by item in the public help index, covering everything from bid/ask ratio to float, short interest, and position-in-range across a dozen timeframes.
Two details separate it from screener-grade tools. First, premarket and after-hours data are live on both paid tiers, which is where gappers are found and watchlists get built. Second, the formula editor lets you scan on derived metrics, like the percentage of float traded in the last few minutes, that canned screeners simply don’t expose. If your morning routine is premarket gappers, RVOL leaders, and halt watch, this is the category benchmark. Our scan settings and setup guide walks through the build.
Holly AI: signals that rebuild themselves nightly
Holly is the headline feature and the reason most people pay for Premium. Per the official documentation, Holly runs dozens of named long and short strategies (Breakout, Quarterback, Bon Shorty, Power Hour, and so on), generates entry and exit signals in real time, and posts each signal’s target, hold time, and stop type in the AI window. No configuration required. The part that’s genuinely unusual: the system re-optimizes every night against fresh simulated backtests, so the strategy mix that trades Tuesday isn’t necessarily the one that traded Monday. We break down how the engine works in our Holly AI explainer.
Now the part the marketing doesn’t dwell on. Holly’s signals go to every Premium subscriber at the same moment, and the strategy descriptions published by Trade Ideas show a heavy tilt toward lower-priced stocks: several strategies cap out under $20, one trades 50-cent to $5 names, another filters for floats under 20 million shares. Same signal, same second, thousands of subscribers, thin stocks. The arithmetic is unforgiving: fills on those names will trail the model’s printed entry, and the slippage comes straight out of the edge. Holly works best as a high-grade idea feed you filter through your own plan, not an order queue you copy tick for tick.
One more calibration point. The public Holly showcase highlights its biggest winners, triple-digit runners included. Past winners on a highlight reel tell you what the engine can do, not what your account will do. Run the signals in the built-in simulator before a dollar goes live, and keep your expectations anchored to the base rate: most day traders lose money, with or without AI.
There’s also a second-generation engine, the Money Machine, which takes Holly-class signals and automates the whole trade: position sizing, stop, profit target, and exit timing, executed through a connected broker with no code. Trade Ideas itself says it isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it system and recommends weeks in Simulation Mode first. Good advice; take it literally.
OddsMaker backtesting: useful, with documented limits
The OddsMaker backtests any scan against recent history and reports win rate, profit factor, average winner versus loser, equity curve, and drawdown, with an optimization tab that breaks results down by filter so you can see which slice of the trades carries the strategy. For validating whether a scan idea has any pulse before you trade it, it’s excellent.
Know its boundaries, which to its credit the user guide states plainly: the database holds roughly 64 days of history, the engine runs on 1-minute OHLC candles rather than tick data, it ignores the spread on exits, it doesn’t test premarket or after-hours sessions, and it’s explicitly not built for fast scalping strategies. Translation: it can tell you whether a momentum setup had positive expectancy over the last quarter; it cannot prove a sub-minute scalp works, and it won’t model the spread that eats thin-stock trades alive. Trade Ideas recommends backtest, then paper trade, then go live. That’s the correct order, and the software supports all three steps natively.
Automation and broker connections
Brokerage Plus is the order-management layer, included on both paid tiers. It handles one-click orders from scans and charts, position management, and rule-based automation of your own strategies, plus a built-in real-time simulator. As of June 2026, the user guide lists four participating brokers: Interactive Brokers, Alpaca, and TradeStation (live and paper accounts each), and E*TRADE (live). If your broker isn’t one of those four, the scanner still earns its keep; you’ll just execute on your broker’s platform with Trade Ideas running alongside.
Platforms: Windows first, browser second
The desktop application is Windows software, full stop; the pricing page says Mac users should run it through Parallels or a cloud Windows machine like AWS. The alternative is the browser version, and the user guide is specific about the trade: all 500+ alerts and filters work there, Holly is available on Premium, and there’s no speed difference, but the web version drops the Market Explorer, Brokerage Plus, and external linking, and caps you at 5 charts. Phones and tablets get the same two routes, browser or remote Windows box. If you trade from a Mac and want the full feature set, budget for virtualization or accept the slimmer browser build.
Pricing and plans
Verified against the official pricing page in June 2026:
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | Browser dashboards on 15-minute delayed data, 1 chart |
| TI Basic | $127/mo | $89/mo ($1,068/yr, saves $456) | Real-time data, event-driven scanning, 500+ alerts/filters, formula editor, 10 charts, paper trading, Brokerage Plus, premarket and after-hours data |
| TI Premium | $254/mo | $178/mo ($2,136/yr, saves $912) | Everything in Basic plus Holly AI signals, OddsMaker backtesting, auto trading, Smart Risk Levels, Channel Bar templates, 20 charts |
Add-ons exist on top: an Anchored VWAP module, the GoNoGo trend package, and a $17/month Swing Picks newsletter. The tier split is clean which-do-you-need guidance: Basic is the scanner, and it’s the full scanner; Premium is for the AI, the backtester, and automation. If you’re buying for Holly, nothing below Premium gets you there. Full tier-by-tier math, including the daily-cost framing and the annual-versus-monthly breakeven, lives on our Trade Ideas pricing breakdown.
Billing and cancellation: read this before taking the annual discount
Here’s where the category stands, verified against official policy pages in June 2026: monthly plans are non-refundable essentially everywhere, and on annual plans the refund window is 14 days at TradingView and 72 hours at TrendSpider. Trade Ideas sits at zero. Its billing policy states all sales are final, with store credit or exchanges as the only remedy, and adds that subscriptions auto-renew until cancelled and that it’s the customer’s responsibility to confirm the cancellation went through. That’s the strictest stance among its direct peers, and on a $2,136 annual Premium plan, a forgotten renewal is an expensive mistake with no undo button.
The protection play, in order: sample the product through a quarterly Test Drive event (1–2 weeks of Premium access for a small fee; it ends automatically and never converts into a subscription) or the free plan before subscribing. If you’re still deciding, start on monthly billing; $254 for one real month of Premium is cheaper tuition than an annual commitment you can’t unwind. When you do take the annual discount, set a calendar reminder two weeks before renewal, cancel by email as well as in Account Management, and keep the written confirmation. One more line item: promo codes discount only the first installment, so whatever you pay in year one, expect the full advertised rate in year two. Current public savings routes are tracked on our discount and promo page.
Learning curve and support
This is professional software and it reads like it. The desktop platform is a field of dockable windows, each with deep configuration menus, and the 500-item filter library that makes the scanner powerful also makes the first week disorienting. Trade Ideas knows it: there’s a Getting Started video series, a chapter-by-chapter user guide, and pre-built scan templates in the Channel Bar so Premium users can run proven layouts before building their own. Plan on a few sessions of setup before the software pays rent.
Support is a genuine strength. Phone support runs Monday through Friday, 6:30–2:30 Pacific, alongside live chat and email. The free daily live trading room and the daily YouTube education session mean you can watch experienced users drive the software in a live tape every market day, free, before you’ve paid anything.
Who should buy it, and who shouldn’t
Buy it if you trade most sessions, your strategy starts with a scan (gappers, momentum, breakouts, relative strength), and you’ll actually use the depth: Basic if you build your own scans, Premium if Holly, the OddsMaker, or automation is the point.
Skip it if you trade occasionally. At $89/month on annual billing, the math only works for someone at the screen regularly; on a $5,000 account, Basic costs 21% of your capital per year before your first trade prints. Skip it too if you’re brand new: learn the job on a simulator and a basic scanner first, or start on the free plan’s delayed data and see whether scanning even fits how you trade. And if you want a polished native Mac or mobile experience, this isn’t built for you.
Alternatives
The closest decision most readers face is Trade Ideas vs TrendSpider; the winner depends on what you’re buying the software to do, and the head-to-head verdict lives on that page. If the subscription cost is the dealbreaker, the wider field, Finviz and Scanz included, is ranked with current pricing in our Trade Ideas alternatives roundup.
Verdict
Scored on our five-criteria methodology:
| Criterion | Score | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability (scan speed and alert quality) | 5.0 | Event-driven alerts, 500+ filters, premarket data, formula editor; the category benchmark |
| Value | 4.0 | Priced for its intended daily user; Basic at $89/mo annual is competitive, Premium needs Holly to earn its doubling |
| Ease of use | 4.0 | Powerful but dense; the Windows desktop platform demands setup time the slimmer web version can’t replace |
| Trust and transparency | 4.0 | Candid documentation and a no-contract cancel-anytime structure, against a zero-refund policy that sits below the verified category norm |
| Support and education | 4.5 | Phone, chat, full user guide, free daily live room and daily video sessions |
| Overall (weighted) | 4.5 | Excellent with real trade-offs |
Trade Ideas is the scanner the rest of the category gets measured against, and Holly remains the only retail AI that retrains itself nightly. The trade-offs are real and knowable in advance: a learning curve, a Windows-first build, broadcast signals that crowd thin names, and billing terms that forgive nothing. Go in with eyes open and the order of operations is simple: sample it through the Test Drive or free plan, check the current public savings routes before you pay full rate, and put the renewal date in your calendar the same day you subscribe.
FAQ
Is Trade Ideas worth it?
For a trader at the screen every session who builds scans or trades momentum, yes: the scanning engine is the deepest in the category and the AI layer is genuinely unique. For anyone trading a few times a month, no; at $1,068–$2,136 a year the subscription will out-earn most casual accounts.
Does Trade Ideas have a free trial?
There’s no conventional free trial; the official help center says exchange data requirements rule one out. Your options are a free account on 15-minute delayed data, or the quarterly Test Drive, which sells 1–2 weeks of full Premium access for a small fee and ends automatically without converting into a subscription. Details and the free-via-broker route are on our free trial guide.
How do you cancel Trade Ideas?
Cancel any time through Account Management or by emailing the billing team, and keep written confirmation: the official policy states it’s the customer’s responsibility to confirm the cancellation. All sales are final, so cancel before the renewal date, not after; there’s no refund window on either billing cycle.
Does Trade Ideas work on a Mac?
Not natively. The desktop software is built for Windows; the official guidance for Mac users is the browser version, which carries all 500+ alerts and filters plus Holly on Premium but drops Brokerage Plus and the Market Explorer and caps charts at 5, or a virtualization setup like Parallels or a cloud Windows machine.
Which brokers connect to Trade Ideas?
The user guide lists Interactive Brokers, Alpaca, and TradeStation for live and paper trading, and E*TRADE for live trading, all through the Brokerage Plus module. Any other broker means executing on that broker’s own platform while running Trade Ideas as the scanner beside it.