StockCharts review: screener, scan workbench and pricing

What StockCharts is for and who it suits

StockCharts is a browser-based charting platform that surrounds its charts with a Screener, a scan engine, alerts, saved chart lists called ChartLists and market commentary. It covers US stocks, ETFs and mutual funds, Canadian, UK and Indian stocks, and indexes, commodities, currencies, bonds and cryptocurrencies. It suits chart-focused traders and investors who use technical analysis and like to review organized lists of charts.

How screening and scanning work on StockCharts

StockCharts gives you two ways to filter the market. The Screener starts with a universe on its Groups tab, such as an index, a sector or one of your ChartLists, then adds criteria from the Key Properties, Price/Performance, Technicals, Chart Patterns and Fundamentals tabs. Results update as you add criteria and can be shown as a summary table, full-size charts or CandleGlance mini-charts.

• Convert to Scan turns a screen into scan syntax in the Advanced Scan Workbench, where you can add more complex conditions.
• The workbench inserts pre-built scan clauses from menus and supports a cross operator, minimum and maximum functions and arithmetic.
• Scans run on daily, weekly or monthly bars, not intraday bars, and the scan engine keeps about 3,000 daily data points, roughly 12 years, for more than 50,000 symbols.
• While the market is open, the latest data point can be up to three minutes old.
• A Sample Scan Library and predefined scan results help you learn the syntax, and Extra and PRO members can schedule scans that save their results to a ChartList.

Charts and alerts on StockCharts

Charts are the core of StockCharts. You can build intraday, daily, weekly and monthly charts as bars, candlesticks, lines, Heikin-Ashi, Renko, Kagi and more, plus Point & Figure, Seasonality, Relative Rotation Graph and PerfCharts views. The free level allows 3 indicators and 3 overlays per chart; paid levels allow 25 of each along with intraday charting and saved charts and templates. Quarterly and yearly charts and price history back to 1900 are PRO features, while Basic and Extra history starts in 1980.

Alerts come in two kinds: price alerts, and advanced alerts built on technical criteria, with notifications by email, text or web. Scans can also become automatic alerts, so a condition you found once can notify you the next time it appears. The number of alerts depends on the service level, as the table below shows.

StockCharts pricing and subscription cost

StockCharts sells three paid service levels, Basic, Extra and PRO, billed monthly or annually; annual billing prepays 12 months and adds a 13th month free. Official real-time data plans are separate monthly add-ons. StockCharts states that subscription and data plan charges are non-refundable, and that a cancelled account is billed for the current month but not again.

• Basic and higher levels remove advertisements and add members-only commentary, SCTR reports and the option to trade directly from StockCharts.
• Extra and PRO add ChartPacks, user-defined indexes and public ChartLists.
• PRO refreshes charts every 5 seconds instead of 15 and allows 10 price datasets per chart instead of 6.

Every account includes a free data plan with BATS real-time data for US stocks and delayed data for other markets. Official real-time data from NYSE and NASDAQ, from the TSX and TSX Venture, or from the London Stock Exchange costs $9.95 a month per region.

StockCharts free plan and free trial

StockCharts has a free level with advertisements, 3 indicators and 3 overlays per chart and a 900-pixel chart width, without saved charts, scans or alerts. New members can start a free 1-month trial, which begins at the Extra level. You can move up or down a level during the month, and afterwards your card is charged for the level you last chose unless you cancel first.

Predefined scan results on StockCharts can be reviewed without a subscription. If you were a member within the past year, StockCharts says your saved charts, lists, scans and alerts should still be there when you rejoin.

StockCharts pros and cons

These points come from StockCharts' pricing, feature and support pages.

Strengths:

• A wide range of chart types and long price histories, back to 1980 on Basic and Extra and to 1900 on PRO.
• Two levels of scanning: a menu-driven Screener and a workbench for more complex scans.
• Scheduled scans and alerts connect scanning to ChartLists for a repeatable review routine.
• Coverage beyond the US, including Canada, the UK and India.

Trade-offs:

• Scans use daily, weekly and monthly bars only.
• Basic allows just one saved screen and one scan, so regular scanners need Extra or PRO.
• Official exchange real-time data costs extra.
• Advanced scans take practice; StockCharts itself says the workbench requires time and effort to master.
• Charges are non-refundable.

StockCharts for beginners, swing trading and long-term investing

StockCharts is built around charts, which shapes how it fits each style.

• Beginners: ChartSchool, the Scan Writing Resource Center in the Support Center and the Sample Scan Library teach chart reading and scan writing, and the Screener is the easier starting point before the Advanced Scan Workbench.
• Swing trading: daily scans, scheduled scans that refill a ChartList, technical alerts and intraday charts on paid levels fit a routine of reviewing setups after the close.
• Long-term investing: the Fundamentals tab, weekly and monthly charts, Point & Figure charts and long price histories support slower analysis, with quarterly and yearly charts on PRO.

StockCharts alternatives and how they differ

If you need to scan intraday bars, TrendSpider lists scanning down to 1-minute bars on its higher plans, and Trade Ideas streams real-time alerts. If fundamentals come first, Stock Rover is built around financial metrics, and Finviz offers a free menu screener for US stocks. Our guide to choosing a stock screener helps you weigh these trade-offs.

TradeClever, which publishes this guide, also works on daily data from published sessions. Its CleverScan rules are written as readable text with AND, OR and NOT, and its Backtest Scan is an event study that follows a rule's past matches from a start date to an end date and reports their equal-weight price return rather than a trading simulation. 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 StockCharts worth it? Test it during the free month

The free month starts at the Extra level, so use it to test the features that separate the paid levels.

1. Rebuild one screen in the Screener, then convert it to a scan and add one condition by editing the scan text.
2. Schedule the scan and check the ChartList it fills the next day.
3. Turn the scan into an alert and note how and when the notification arrives.
4. Count the screens, scans, alerts and ChartLists you need and match them to Basic, Extra or PRO.
5. Decide whether BATS real-time data is enough or whether you need an official data plan.
6. Change level or cancel before the month ends if Extra is more than you need, since charges are non-refundable.