Trade Ideas Review: The Day Trader’s Scanner, at a Day Trader’s Price
Trade Ideas is a real-time scanning and AI-signal platform built for active intraday trading, delivered as Windows desktop software with brokerage integration for trading directly from the scanner. It is one of the most capable live-scanning engines a retail trader can buy, and one of the most expensive, with paid plans running $89 to $254 a month depending on tier and billing. The buyer it fits is a committed day or momentum trader who will use it every session. For anyone screening on a slower clock, the price buys speed that the strategy never cashes.
The Scanning Engine
Scanning is the core product, and the spec that matters most is stated plainly on the pricing page: every paid tier runs on real-time data, with pre-market and after-hours data included. There is no delayed paid tier, which is the right call for a product aimed at traders who act during the session, where anything slower fails for the reasons laid out in real-time vs delayed data.
The filtering surface is deep. The platform advertises more than 500 data points available as alerts and filters, driving fully customizable scans and screeners, with a formula editor available in-app on both paid tiers for building custom conditions. A Market Explorer section adds curated, prebuilt screens for traders who want to start from a working template rather than a blank filter panel. Price alerts, sound alerts, and earnings and halt notifications on charts round out the monitoring side.
This is the purest example of the live-alerting model described in screener vs scanner: the product’s job is not to produce a research list but to fire signals while conditions are forming. A trader who mostly builds end-of-day watchlists is buying the wrong category here, not just the wrong tool.
Holly, Backtesting, and Automated Trading
The headline features all live on the Premium tier. Holly, the platform’s first-generation AI, generates entry and exit signals from its ongoing analysis of market data. System design and backtesting, the tools for building and validating a strategy against history before risking money on it, are Premium-only as well. So is auto trading: paired with the Brokerage Plus order-management layer, Premium can execute strategies automatically through connected brokers.
The broker list is a real differentiator. The site names integrations including TradeStation, Interactive Brokers, E*TRADE, CenterPoint Securities, Cobra Trading, and Alpaca, and both paid tiers include in-app trading, chart trading, one-click order entry, and order management. A scanner that fires a signal and a platform that places the order are usually 2 products; here they are one, which is precisely what justifies the price for the trader who uses it that way.
One roadmap note, kept short because the product is not fully released: the company is rolling out a second-generation automation product called the Money Machine in staged waves, positioned as a fully automated momentum-trading system. It is marketed heavily on the homepage and is not part of the standard subscription tiers reviewed here.
Charting and Workspace
The workspace is built for multi-monitor trading desks: customizable layouts, multi-monitor support, color coding, and full quote windows on both paid tiers. Chart capacity is tiered, 10 simultaneous charts on Basic and 20 on Premium, with drawing tools, styling, comparison, and flexible timeframes included on both. TI Wave, the platform’s visual signal overlay that tunes EMA bands per stock in real time and prints buy and sell markers directly on the chart, is included on both paid tiers.
Premium adds the workflow extras: the Channel Bar with more than 20 curated trading templates, multi-strategy windows, compare-count windows, customizable stock races, and unlimited personal watchlists. That last one is worth noticing, because watchlist capacity on Basic is not listed as unlimited, and a scan-heavy workflow generates lists constantly, as anyone following the process in how to build a watchlist will.
Pricing
Three plans, with annual billing cutting the monthly rate sharply. Prices as listed on the pricing page.
| Plan | Monthly billing | Annual billing | What it includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 1 chart on screen. Every listed scanning, alerting, trading, and customization feature is marked as not included. |
| Basic (“The Core”) | $127 per month | $89 per month ($1,068 billed annually) | Real-time data, custom scans and screeners, 500+ filter data points, Market Explorer, TI Wave, 10 charts, paper trading, in-app and one-click trading, Brokerage Plus |
| Premium (“The Apex”) | $254 per month | $178 per month ($2,136 billed annually) | Everything in Basic plus Holly AI signals, backtesting and system design, auto trading, Smart Risk Levels, RBI/GBI window, Channel Bar templates, stock races, unlimited watchlists, 20 charts |
The annual discount is substantial: the site states annual billing saves $456 a year on Basic and $912 on Premium against monthly rates. Paid add-ons exist beyond the tiers, including an Anchored VWAP module, the GoNoGo momentum indicator package, and a weekly swing-picks email with 5 curated ideas, priced separately from the plans.
Two structural facts about the pricing deserve plain statement. First, the free tier is a registration shell, not a free screener: the comparison grid marks every meaningful feature as excluded and allows a single chart, so it exists to create an account, not to screen with. Second, the features that appear in every advertisement for the product, Holly and the automation, sit exclusively on the $178-to-$254 tier, so the real price of the product most buyers think they are buying is the Premium price, not the Basic one.
Restrictions That Matter Before Paying
The platform is Windows software. The pricing page states the Mac position directly: Trade Ideas Pro is designed for Windows, and Mac users must run it through virtualization such as Parallels or a cloud-hosted Windows desktop. That is a real cost in money and friction on top of an already premium subscription, and for a Mac-based trader it is reason enough to look elsewhere.
Coverage centers on US equities. Everything the site presents, from the live scan examples to the exchange and broker partners, is US-listed stock trading, and nothing in the source material describes options screening or international market coverage. A trader whose focus is options flow or non-US exchanges is outside this product’s lane.
The pricing page also carries an unprompted warning worth repeating for its practical value: the company states it is subscription software only and never asks users to deposit funds or let anyone trade on their behalf, and that anyone claiming otherwise is running a scam. Impersonation scams around trading tools are common enough that the vendor felt the need to say it, and the statement doubles as sensible guidance for the whole category.
Bottom Line
Trade Ideas is the most complete real-time scan-to-execution pipeline in the retail stock screener category: 500+ filterable data points on live data, AI-generated signals, backtesting, and automated order routing through major brokers, all in one Windows application. That is why it holds a top active-trading position in the best stock screeners roundup, and why its price is defensible for the trader who uses all of it daily. The same math runs hard in reverse. At $1,068 to $2,136 a year with no meaningful free tier, a swing trader or investor screening a few times a week is paying scanner prices for screener usage, and cheaper tools cover that workflow with money to spare.
Pros
- Real-time data, including pre-market and after-hours, on every paid tier with no delayed option sold
- More than 500 data points available as scan filters and alerts, with an in-app formula editor for custom conditions
- Holly AI signals, backtesting, and fully automated trading through integrated brokers including TradeStation, Interactive Brokers, and E*TRADE
- Scan-to-order workflow in one platform: chart trading, one-click orders, and order management on both paid tiers
- Paper trading on real-time data included from the Basic tier up
Cons
- Windows-only desktop software, with Mac support requiring third-party virtualization at extra cost and friction
- The advertised headline features, Holly and automation, are exclusive to the Premium tier at $178 to $254 a month
- The free tier allows 1 chart and excludes every scanning and alerting feature, making it a signup shell rather than a usable product
- US equities focus, with no options screening or international coverage described anywhere in the source material
- Unlimited watchlists are gated to Premium, an odd cap for a product whose scans generate candidate lists all session