Finviz stock screener review: Free vs Elite and pricing

What Finviz is for and who it suits

Finviz is a browser-based research site built around a stock screener, with market maps, sector and industry groups, insider trading pages, futures, forex and crypto pages, portfolios and calendars. Its stock coverage is US-listed stocks on NASDAQ, NYSE and AMEX. It suits investors and traders who want to sweep the US market quickly with ready-made filter ranges, and who either accept slightly delayed quotes on the free tier or pay for Elite to get real-time data.

Finviz states that it has no plans to add other markets, and that you can ask it to add a ticker from an exchange it already covers. Quotes on the free tier are delayed by 1 minute, while fundamental data on both tiers is recalculated every hour as new information is released.

How the Finviz screener works

You pick filters from drop-down menus arranged in Descriptive, Fundamental, Technical, News and ETF tabs, or show them all at once. Most filters offer preset ranges, such as market cap bands or relative volume thresholds, while entering your own values is marked Elite only. A Signal menu narrows results to lists such as top gainers, new highs, unusual volume or stocks near chart patterns like channels, wedges and double bottoms.

• Views switch the same results between overview, valuation, financial, ownership, performance and technical tables, chart grids, snapshots and maps.
• Filter combinations can be saved as presets: 50 on the free tier and an unlimited number on Elite.
• A results page shows 20 rows on the free tier and 100 on Elite, and auto-refresh runs every 3 minutes on the free tier and every 10 seconds on Elite.
• The screener help page defines each filter; for example, 1-week performance uses the last 5 trading days, and relative volume divides current volume by the 3-month average.

Charts, alerts and backtesting in Finviz

Free accounts see charts but not the interactive charting suite. Elite adds interactive intraday charts, layouts of up to 12 charts, saved chart templates, automatic chart pattern recognition and a newer tool for finding similar charts. Alerts are an Elite feature as well: unlimited stock, price, screener, portfolio and calendar alerts, sent by email or push notification, including notices when new stocks match a saved screen.

Elite also exports screener results, prices, portfolios and other data to Excel or CSV. If strategy testing is part of the research job, define that requirement separately and compare the documented testing workflow before subscribing.

Finviz pricing and subscription cost

Finviz has two tiers: Free, for registered users, and Elite, a paid subscription billed monthly or annually with the same features either way. Paid plans renew automatically, and you can cancel at any time to stop the next charge. Finviz offers refunds on written request during the initial 30-day period; later payments are non-refundable.

Elite's real-time quotes include premarket data from 4:00 to 9:30 AM and after-hours data from 4:00 to 8:00 PM. Elite also raises portfolio limits from 50 portfolios of 50 holdings each to 100 portfolios of 500 holdings, shows full ETF holdings data instead of a limited view, and adds a comparison tool for up to 25 stocks over a custom time range.

Finviz free plan and free trial

The free tier costs $0 and covers the core screener with quotes delayed by 1 minute, so you can learn Finviz without paying. Elite comes with a free trial. A credit card is required to start it, the trial converts to the paid plan you selected unless you cancel before it ends, and accounts that already used a trial are asked to choose a paid plan right away.

Finviz pros and cons

These points come from the screener, pricing and help pages Finviz publishes.

Strengths:

• The free tier screens the whole US market with descriptive, fundamental, technical, news and ETF filters.
• Many result views and market maps make large result sets quick to review.
• Elite combines real-time quotes, extended-hours data, alerts and exports in one subscription.
• Help pages explain how each filter is calculated.

Trade-offs:

• Coverage is limited to US stocks on NASDAQ, NYSE and AMEX.
• Custom filter values, alerts, exports and interactive charts require Elite.
• Backtesting ended in March 2026.
• The free tier shows 20 rows per page and refreshes every 3 minutes.

Finviz for beginners, swing trading and long-term investing

How well Finviz fits depends on your holding period and on whether you need Elite.

• Beginners: the free tier and the filter definitions in the help pages make it practical to learn screening without a subscription. Start with a few descriptive filters, then add one technical or fundamental condition at a time.
• Swing trading: technical filters for moving averages, RSI, gaps, relative volume and 20-day, 50-day and 52-week highs and lows, plus the pattern signals, cover common swing setups. Real-time quotes and interactive intraday charts require Elite.
• Long-term investing: valuation, growth, profitability, dividend and ownership filters support fundamental screens, and insider and institutional ownership data sit beside them. Free accounts see 3 years of financial statements and Elite accounts 8 years.

Finviz alternatives and how they differ

Look elsewhere when Finviz's scope does not match the job. For listings beyond the US, ChartMill and StockCharts cover Canadian and other markets. For testing rules on past data, TrendSpider documents a strategy tester, and Stock Rover offers historical and equation-based screening on its higher plans. Our guide to choosing a stock screener helps you list your requirements first.

TradeClever, which publishes this guide, takes a written-rule approach. CleverScan combines AND, OR and NOT with comparisons between fields, such as close > sma50 and volume > avgVol20, over daily data from published sessions, and its Backtest runs an event study of a rule's past matches. Its stock analysis works without an account, and its screener and heatmap offer a preview without one; running your own scans and saving scans, watchlists and notes need an account.

Is Finviz worth it? Test Elite against your routine

Because the free tier costs nothing, the practical question is whether Elite is worth paying for. Use the trial to test only the Elite features you would actually use.

1. List the Elite features you expect to use, such as real-time quotes, alerts, exports or custom filter values.
2. Rebuild a screen you run today and check whether the preset ranges are precise enough.
3. Set one screener alert and note how quickly the email or push notice arrives.
4. Export a result set and confirm that the columns you need are included.
5. Compare the monthly and annual Elite prices with how long you expect to keep the subscription.
6. Cancel before the trial ends if the test does not justify the cost; refunds are considered only on written request in the first 30 days.