Finviz Review: The Screener Everyone Uses, What Elite Adds for $39.50, and Where It Stops

Finviz is the tool everyone has open in a tab and almost nobody reviews properly, because the free version has been good enough for so long that the question "is Elite worth it" gets answered by habit. This review answers it by use case: what the screener, maps, charts and data pages actually do, exactly what changes at $39.50 a month, where the product stops and where TradingView or Trade Ideas take over, how it fits a Smart Money morning, a gap-and-go session worked from screen to chart, and a filter builder that writes the screener string for four setups. Prices checked September 2026.

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What is Finviz?

Finviz — Financial Visualizations — is a US-stock research site built around one very good idea: a screener that applies dozens of fundamental and technical filters to the whole market instantly and shows the results as a table, a wall of charts or a map. It has been around since 2007, it looks like it, and it is still the fastest way to answer "which stocks are doing X right now" that exists for the price. The free version is genuinely free and genuinely useful; Finviz Elite, at $39.50 a month or $299.50 a year, turns the delayed data real-time and adds the features an active trader needs — intraday charts, pre-market and after-hours data, alerts, exports, backtests, and no ads.

This review is for the trader deciding whether Elite earns its fee, and for the free user who wants to know what they are missing. It covers what the screener, maps, charts and news actually do, what changes with Elite, where the product is weak (charting, non-US markets, options), how it compares with TradingView's screener and Trade Ideas, how it fits a Smart Money workflow, and a filter builder that writes the screener string for four common setups. Prices checked September 2026.

At a glance: the verdict

Rating: 4.2 / 5. The best value in stock screening, with a free tier that embarrasses paid competitors and an Elite tier that is worth it the moment you trade intraday or pre-market. Loses points for charts that belong to another decade, US-only depth, no options chain, no broker integration, and a mobile experience that is really the desktop site squeezed.

Best for: US stock day and swing traders who need a fast, reliable list — gappers, relative-volume leaders, pullbacks, breakouts — and will do the chart work elsewhere; anyone who reads the market by sector map. Not for: forex, crypto and futures traders (thin coverage), options traders (no chain), and anyone who wants the screener and the charting in one place — that is TradingView.

What Finviz does

◆ Screenshot · the screener with filters applied

• Screener — descriptive (exchange, sector, market cap, price, volume, float, optionable, shortable), fundamental (P/E, EPS growth, margins, debt, dividend, insider and institutional ownership) and technical (performance, volatility, RSI, moving-average position, gaps, 52-week position, candlestick and chart patterns) filters, combinable in one click, with results as a table, charts, tickers or a bubble plot. The filter set is the reason the site exists.
• Maps — the S&P 500, full market, ETF, world and crypto heat maps: tiles sized by market cap, coloured by change, over any period from a day to a year. The fastest read of what led and what lagged.
• Charts — daily and (on Elite) intraday charts with automatic trendline and pattern detection. Serviceable for a glance; not a charting platform.
• News and blogs — an aggregated headline feed per ticker and for the market, with the blog column many traders skim at the open.
• Insider trading — the latest Form 4 filings, filterable by buy or sell and by value; one of the more useful free pages on the internet.
• Groups — sector and industry performance tables over multiple periods, the "where is money rotating" page.
• Futures, forex, crypto — overview pages with quotes and performance bars; enough to check the tape, not enough to trade from.
• Portfolio — watchlists with P&L; on Elite, 100 portfolios with 500 holdings each and alerts on them.

Pricing and what Elite changes

The honest way to read that table: the screener's logic is free, its data is not. On the free plan a "gap up 4% with relative volume over 2" screen is the same query with delayed prices and no pre-market, which for a gap-and-go trader is the difference between a list at 08:30 and a list at 09:31. If you trade intraday or pre-market, Elite pays for itself in a week. If you swing trade off daily closes, the free plan plus TradingView charts covers almost everything, and the annual plan is a luxury rather than a tool. There is a free Elite trial with a card on file; the usual advice applies about the calendar.

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5

Exchanges

400+

Pairs

<50ms

Fills

Where it is genuinely good

◆ Screenshot · a chart page with the earnings panel

• Speed. Every filter applies instantly across the whole US market; there is no "run" button and no waiting.
• The filter library. Float, relative volume, gap, average true range, 52-week position, pattern detection, insider and institutional ownership — the descriptive and technical sets are the best in the price bracket.
• The maps. Nothing reads sector rotation faster; the year-to-date and one-month views are a weekly ritual for many swing traders.
• Insider trading and the news feed — two free pages that would justify a subscription elsewhere.
• Exports and alerts on Elite. A screener that emails you when a stock enters the list is a scanner, and $39.50 is cheap for one.
• Stability. The site is fast, rarely down and has not changed its layout in years, which for a tool you use at 09:29 is a feature.

Where it falls short

• Charts. Static images with auto-drawn lines, no drawing tools worth using, no indicators beyond the basics. The chart work happens on TradingView; Finviz is the list.
• US stocks only, in depth. The forex, crypto and futures pages are overview pages, not screeners.
• No options chain, no IV data. Options traders need a second tool.
• No broker integration and no execution; it is research only.
• Fundamental data is snapshot-level — enough to filter, not enough to analyse; there are no financial statements or estimates to speak of, which is Koyfin's territory.
• Mobile is the desktop site in a small window; the alerts arrive fine, the screener is a chore on a phone.
• The interface is dated. It works; it will never be pleasant.

Finviz vs TradingView screener vs Trade Ideas

For most traders on this site the pairing is Finviz for the list and TradingView for the chart, and it costs nothing until you need real-time. Trade Ideas is the step up for someone who scans all day and wants streaming alerts and pre-built strategies; it is also three times the price. The how to find stocks for day trading guide covers the scanning process itself; the best indicator for stocks guide covers what to do with the chart once you have the name.

Screener filter builder

Pick a setup, a minimum price, a minimum average volume, a market-cap floor and whether you want optionable names only. The tool writes the Finviz filter string — the same one that appears in the address bar when you click the filters by hand — and tells you which parts need Elite's real-time data to be useful.

How it fits a Smart Money workflow

A screener finds candidates; it does not find trades. The Finviz half of a Smart Money morning is a list — the gappers with relative volume, the names at a 52-week high, the sector that led yesterday — and the TradingView half is the read: where the liquidity sits above the pre-market high, whether the gap filled into an order block, whether the open swept the low and reversed. The Institutional Key Levels script puts the pre-market high and low and the prior-day levels on the chart, the Liquidity Sweeps script flags the sweep of them, and the Institutional Volume Profile shows where the gap's volume actually traded. The premium engine, Zeno Stocks, prints the signal with a stop and targets on the names the screener surfaced. The stock trading basics guide and the PDT rule guide cover the account side for anyone starting out.

Reference data

Worked example: a gap-and-go morning with Finviz and TradingView

08:05 ET, Elite screener, filter string from the builder: price over $5, average volume over 500K, gap up over 4%, relative volume over 2, optionable. Eleven names. Sort by relative volume; the top three are a mid-cap with an earnings beat, a small-cap biotech on trial data, and a large-cap that gapped on a broker upgrade. The biotech is out — a binary-news gap with a 40% float turnover is a lottery ticket, not a setup. The upgrade name is the cleanest: gapping into a level, not out of nowhere.

On TradingView the upgrade name shows the gap opening exactly into a 4-hour supply zone left by the last failed rally — the kind of level the Order Blocks with Volume script marks — with the pre-market high just above it. The plan is the standard one: if the open sweeps the pre-market high and closes back under it on the 5-minute, short toward the gap fill; if it holds above the zone on a retest, long toward the next daily level. At 09:34 the sweep prints and the candle closes back inside; short at $48.20, stop $48.95 above the sweep, first target the gap midpoint at $46.60, 2.1R. Filled at 10:12. Finviz found the name in seconds; it had nothing to say about the trade, and it never claims to.

Mistakes traders make with Finviz

• Trading from the screener. It is a list; the trade is on the chart.
• Running gap screens on the free plan at 08:00. The data is delayed and there is no pre-market; the list is wrong until Elite.
• Sorting gappers by percentage change. Sort by relative volume; the biggest gap is usually the thinnest.
• Using Finviz charts for levels. Auto-drawn trendlines are decoration; mark the levels on TradingView.
• Expecting fundamentals. The numbers are filter-grade; use Koyfin or the filings for analysis.
• Forgetting the trial has a card on file. Set a reminder if you do not intend to keep it.
• Screening for patterns and believing them. The pattern filter is a detection, not a confirmation — the same caveat as any pattern indicator.