What Is a Stock Screener?
A stock screener is a tool that filters the entire stock market by criteria you define, like price, volume, market cap, P/E ratio, or technical indicators. It returns a list of stocks that match your specific conditions, saving you from manually reviewing thousands of tickers.
How It Works
You set your filters. The screener queries a database of stock data and returns every ticker that passes all your conditions. Most screeners support fundamental filters (earnings, revenue, market cap), technical filters (RSI, moving averages, volume), and sometimes sector or industry filters.
Basic screeners run once when you hit “search.” More advanced tools refresh continuously. The key limitation of traditional screeners is that they only find what you already know to look for. You have to define the rules upfront. For a deeper look at how screeners compare to momentum scanners, see our guide to how stock screeners work.
Example
A swing trader sets up a screener with three filters: stock price between $5 and $50, average daily volume above 500K shares, and RSI between 30 and 40 (oversold territory). The screener returns 47 stocks. The trader reviews each chart manually, picks 3 that show clean support levels, and adds them to a watchlist. Total time: 20 minutes instead of 4 hours scanning charts by eye.
Related Terms
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best free stock screener?
Finviz offers a solid free screener for basic fundamental and technical filters. Yahoo Finance and TradingView also have free tiers. For momentum-specific screening with social sentiment data, Banana Farmer's free tier shows the top-ranked signals across 9,000+ assets. The "best" depends on what you're filtering for. Static criteria? Finviz. Dynamic momentum? A scanner like Banana Farmer.
What is the difference between a stock screener and a stock scanner?
A screener lets you set fixed filters (market cap over $1B, P/E under 20) and returns all stocks that match right now. A scanner actively monitors the market for emerging patterns like momentum shifts, volume surges, and sentiment changes. Screeners are reactive (you define rules, then check). Scanners are proactive (the system finds setups for you in real time).
How many filters should I use in a stock screener?
Start with 3 to 5 filters. Too few and you get hundreds of results you can't review. Too many and you filter out good setups that miss one criterion by a hair. Common starter combos: price range + average volume + sector for fundamentals, or RSI range + relative volume + price above 20-day MA for technicals. Refine from there based on what you actually trade.
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