TradingView Review: The Free Global Standard
The TradingView screener is the filtering engine inside the TradingView charting platform, and it is the strongest free starting point in stock screening: more than 500 fundamental and technical fields across 150+ exchanges in 50+ countries, usable without paying anything. The paid tiers buy speed, alert capacity, and workflow depth rather than access to the screener itself. For a global investor or swing trader, this is the default recommendation. The catch sits in the data fine print, where official exchange real-time feeds are a separate purchase on top of any subscription.
Coverage and Filter Depth
Coverage is the headline, and it is documented in the platform’s own plan comparison: screeners for stocks, ETFs, crypto, and DEX markets, spanning more than 150 exchanges across more than 50 countries, on a platform whose pricing page cites direct access to over 3.5 million instruments. Most screeners in this category are US tools with international coverage bolted on or absent. This one is global by construction, which matters to every reader outside the US and to anyone screening across markets.
Filter depth matches the breadth. The comparison table lists more than 500 fundamental and technical fields, and the screener interface organizes them into column sets that read like a tour of the whole discipline: overview, performance, technicals, extended hours, analyst forecasts, valuation, dividends, profitability, income statement, balance sheet, cash flow, and per-share data. Relative volume and analyst ratings sit in the default view alongside price, market cap, P/E, and dividend yield. A value investor, a dividend hunter, and a momentum trader are all filtering from the same engine, just from different column sets, which is the workflow described in how to use a stock screener.
Two workflow features documented in the plan table deserve a mention because most competitors lack them. Watchlists can be used as screener filters, so a screen can run against a curated list instead of the whole market, closing the loop described in how to build a watchlist. And a chart view mode displays screen results as charts rather than table rows, which suits traders who qualify candidates visually.
What Free Actually Gets, and What Paid Changes
The free Basic plan includes the screener, and the plan grid states its limits precisely rather than vaguely. Screener auto-refresh runs at 1-minute intervals on Basic and at 10-second intervals on every paid tier. Screener timeframes on Basic are daily, weekly, and monthly, while paid tiers unlock all timeframes, which is the line separating research screening from intraday screening on this platform. Flagged symbol colors go from 1 to 7. Basic also carries ads, which every paid tier removes.
The practical reading: the free screener is a complete research tool. Screening on daily bars with a 1-minute refresh covers watchlist building, value and dividend screening, and end-of-week swing preparation with nothing missing. What the free tier cannot be is an intraday tool, since intraday timeframes are paid, and the 10-second refresh on paid tiers is what moves the screener toward live-scanning behavior, the divide covered in screener vs scanner.
Around the screener, the tier ladder is steep and documented to the digit. Watchlists on Basic hold 30 symbols in a single list, while paid plans allow 1,000 symbols per list. Price alerts run 3 on Basic, then 20, 100, 400, and 1,000 up the tiers. Technical alerts on indicators and drawings do not exist on Basic at all, starting at 20 on Essential and scaling to 1,000 on Ultimate. A Pine Screener, tied to the platform’s Pine Script language for custom programmatic screening, appears in the paid feature set, extending the screener beyond built-in fields for users who script their own conditions.
Pricing
Five tiers. Prices below are per month billed annually, exactly as the pricing page currently displays them under its listed special pricing, with trial terms as stated.
| Plan | Price | Screener-relevant differences |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $0, no credit card required | Full screener on daily, weekly, and monthly timeframes, 1-minute auto-refresh, 1 watchlist of 30 symbols, 3 price alerts, ads shown |
| Essential | $12.95 per month billed annually | All screener timeframes, 10-second auto-refresh, 1,000-symbol watchlists, 20 price and 20 technical alerts, no ads |
| Plus | $29.95 per month billed annually | 100 price and 100 technical alerts, 4 charts per tab, larger workflow limits |
| Premium | $59.95 per month billed annually | 400 alerts of each type, watchlist alerts, second-based intervals and alerts |
| Ultimate | $199.95 per month billed annually | 1,000 alerts of each type, 15 watchlist alerts, tick-level data, highest platform limits |
Every paid tier carries a 30-day free trial except Ultimate at 14 days. The billing terms are stated plainly on the page: subscriptions can be canceled anytime and do not renew after the paid term, refunds exist only for annual plans and only within 14 calendar days, and monthly plans are explicitly non-refundable even on the day of purchase. Payment methods include cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, and cryptocurrency. Professional users, as the platform defines them, can only subscribe to Ultimate.
For a buyer whose interest is the screener specifically, the honest read of this table is that Essential is the complete screener product. Everything above it buys alert volume, chart capacity, and data granularity for active trading, not additional screening capability.
The Data Add-On Layer
The restriction that most affects active traders is documented in the pricing page’s own FAQ: official real-time and intraday data for exchanges such as NASDAQ, NYSE, NYSE ARCA, OTC, and CME is purchased separately, added per exchange on top of a paid plan, and unavailable to free users entirely. The plan grid caps how many of these market data subscriptions an account may hold: 2 on Essential, 4 on Plus, and 6 on Premium.
The implication runs exactly along the lines drawn in real-time vs delayed data. A subscription price on this platform is not the full cost of trading it intraday on official exchange feeds, because the exchange data is a second bill, and the number of exchanges that can be added is itself tiered. A swing trader or investor never encounters this layer and loses nothing. A day trader budgeting for the platform needs to price plan plus data, not plan alone.
Bottom Line
The TradingView screener is the best free screener available and one of the best screeners at any price for global coverage: 500+ fields, 150+ exchanges, and a free tier that is a real product rather than a demo. It holds exactly that position in the best stock screeners roundup. The fit is near-universal for research-driven users, from beginners running their first market-cap-and-P/E screen to multi-market investors no US-only tool can serve. The misfit is the trader who needs official real-time exchange data and heavy alerting, for whom the true cost is a mid-to-upper tier plus per-exchange data fees, and who should price that full stack against dedicated scanning platforms before committing.
Pros
- More than 500 fundamental and technical screening fields, from balance sheet items to relative volume and analyst ratings
- Coverage of 150+ exchanges in 50+ countries, with stock, ETF, and crypto screeners in one platform
- The free tier includes the full screener on daily, weekly, and monthly timeframes with no credit card required
- Watchlists usable as screener filters and a chart view mode for visually qualifying results
- Ten-second screener auto-refresh and all timeframes unlocked from the cheapest paid tier at $12.95 per month billed annually
Cons
- Official exchange real-time data (NASDAQ, NYSE, CME, and others) costs extra per exchange on top of every subscription, and free users cannot buy it at all
- Market data add-ons are capped by tier, at 2, 4, or 6 exchange subscriptions, so multi-exchange intraday coverage forces a higher plan
- The free tier’s screener is locked to daily and higher timeframes with a single 30-symbol watchlist, 3 alerts, and ads
- Technical alerts do not exist on the free plan, so free screening cannot notify on indicator conditions
- Monthly plans are non-refundable under the platform’s stated policy, even when canceled the same day