Best Premarket Scanner 2024: Best Stock Screeners for Premarket Trading

If you’re wondering what the best premarket scanner on the market is, then this review is for you!

As a former hedge fund manager, I know the importance of preparation. In trading, the one thing you never want to be is a “deer caught in headlights”; that freezes in high-pressure situations.

Premarket stock screeners are a great way to mitigate this from happening, as they allow you to narrow your focus on a handful of high-probability winners before the day begins. This helps you filter out the day-to-day noise in markets, and avoid the perils of information overload.

I have rigorously tested all of the stocks scanners mentioned, and lay out all of their features, benefits, and shortcomings below. You will also find details about any free trials and discounts available.

So, are you keen to improve your win rates with a fraction of the effort?

If so, I suggest you keep reading…

Before we do though, you should know that Trade Ideas are currently offering a -25% discount on your first subscription! However, you will have to be quick, as this time-limited offer expires at midnight on November 21st. All you need to do to take advantage of this offer is follow the link below and use coupon code: “TESTDRIVE25”.

What is a Premarket Scanner?

A premarket scanner is a tool used by day traders to find stocks with interesting price action before the market open. In essence, it’s a special type of stock screener that streams real-time data in premarket hours.

This allows day traders to build a watchlist of stocks before the morning bell and prepare a plan of action for the day ahead.

Some common technical criteria for a premarket scan include:

• Gap Up/Down
• High Relative Volume
• Low Float
• Breakouts
• Biggest % Gains

Below, I will show you how to perform these scans in some of the most popular premarket screeners. In the process, you will learn about their merits and shortcomings, and decide which one is best for you!

The Best Pre Market Stock Screeners of 2023

Scanner	Trade Ideas	Scanz	Finviz Elite
Best For	Overall	Level II Data	Value For Money
Technical Scanning
Fundamental Screening	Limited	Limited
Charts
Backtesting
AI Signals
News Scanning
Level 2 Data
Stocks & ETFs
In-Platform Trading
Company Financials
Exchanges	NYSE, Nasdaq, AMEX, OTCQB, OTCQX, Pink Sheets, BATS, Small Exchange, TSX	Nasdaq, NYSE, AMEX, BATS (OTC)	Nasdaq, NYSE, AMEX
Free Trial	2-week "Test Drive"	14-day Free Trial	30-day Money Back Guarantee
Discount	15% Off 1st Month or Year		-40% With Annual Subscription

Trade Ideas – The Best Overall Pre Market Scanner

Trade Ideas takes the overall crown for the best pre market screener, due to its zero-latency trading signals, extensive range of technical filters, and pre-configured scans.

Since its founding in 2003, Trade Ideas has evolved into a pioneer of the day trading industry. With over 500 alerts and filters, it boasts one of the most flexible stock scanning platforms, providing you with endless customization.

What’s more, their servers are located directly next to the exchanges, which delivers trading alerts to your screen in nanoseconds.

Premium members also gain access to its AI trading bot: “Holly”, backtesting, and autotrading through their brokerage account, which my Trade Ideas review covers in more detail. Holly runs millions of backtests each day to find the best risk/reward opportunities in markets, providing you with about 3-10 trading signals every day. As you can see, the historical performance of Holly is very impressive.

Trade Ideas Premarket Channel

The great thing about Trade Ideas, is that it has multiple pre-configured “Channels” that target specific “themes”. One of these channels is called “Premarket”, which as the name suggests, identifies trading opportunities in the premarket.

As you can see in the image above, this channel includes some ready-made premarket scans:

• Up Gappers: List of stocks with the biggest “Up Gaps” in the premarket
• Down Gappers: List of stocks with the biggest “Down Gaps” in the premarket
• Premarket Movers: Real-time alerts of stocks hitting new highs or lows in the premarket

Not only is this great for beginners who aren’t confident creating their own scans yet, it’s also a huge time-saver for advanced traders.

Trade Ideas Pre Market Data

Trade Ideas streams pre market data from 4:00 am EST, which gives you about 5 1/2 hours to prepare for the day ahead. This is more than enough time to run multiple scans, conduct research, and setup your watchlist for the day.

Also, as mentioned, their servers are located right next to the stock exchanges and powered by high-end technology. This is something that Trade Ideas prides itself on, as it means users benefit from super fast, zero-latency data streams. Needless to say, this is vital for serious stock investors.

Trade Ideas Pre Market Scan

To give you a little taster of what’s possible with Trade Ideas, I’m about to show you a custom premarket scan that led me to a highly profitable trade idea.

First of all, here is the scanning criteria I used:

• Float < 50,000,000 shares
• $0.5 < Price < $10
• Gap > 2%
• Volume Today > 200,000 shares

And here are some of the stocks meeting that criteria in the premarket on 25th October 2022.

Fangdd Network (DUO) particularly caught my eye due to its extremely low float (3.44m) and high relative volume (4.94).

As you can see on the intraday chart below, I bought the breakout from the flag pattern on strong volume. In less than 2 hours, I was selling for a +40% profit!

This is the beauty of pre market scanners – I already knew where to look before the day started!

Pros

• More than 500 alerts and filters for endless customized scans
• Over 40 pre-configured scans to help you hit the ground running
• Almost 50 pre-configured “Channels” targeting popular themes with day traders
• Premium members have access to AI trading assistant, backtesting & autotrading
• Live trading room & simulated trading

Cons

• Clunky user interface
• Basic charting & technical analysis tools
• Limited fundamental research

Price

Trade Ideas are constantly offering discounts and promotions, so make sure to check if they’re currently offering a deal. For example, we are currently offering a 25% discount on your first month or year with Trade Ideas.

Free Trial

Unfortunately, Trade Ideas doesn’t offer a free trial “on demand”. Instead, they run 2-week trials a few times a year for a small fee of $11. These “Test Drives” give you full access to Trade Ideas’ Premium features, including its AI trading bot “Holly”. However, they only come around a few times a year, so you really need to take advantage of them while you can.

That’s why I recommend either signing up to our email list, or Trade Ideas’ own notification system. This way, you can ensure you won’t miss the next small window of opportunity.

Scanz – The Best Premarket Scanner for Level 2 Data

Scanz, formerly known as EquityFeed, starts streaming data from 4:00 am EST, making it another great choice for premarket scanning.

Best known for its user-friendly design, news scanner, advanced charting tools, and level II data, Scanz is a distinguished heavyweight in the retail trading world. For a more detailed look at these features, read my full Scanz review here.

The platform has 4 main scanners:

• Easy Scanner: Create quick, easy scans based on basic price and liquidity parameters
• Pro Scanner: Create complex scans with more than 100 indicators and an intuitive “point-and-click” rule builder
• Breakout Scanner: Catch momentum trading signals as they happen in real-time, including new highs/lows, volume spikes, and moving average breakout stocks
• News Scanner: A constant, uninterrupted real-time stream of press releases, news, and SEC filings for all U.S. public companies

While there is nothing particularly unique about the first 3 scanners, the News Scanner certainly sets Scanz apart. Not only can you live-stream news articles from over 100 different sources, you can also set specific news alerts for stocks on your watchlist. Whether that’s earnings releases, partnership agreements, or M&A rumours, you’ll be the first to know about any market-moving events.

Scanz also includes level II data, which shows you incoming orders for a stock at various market makers. This gives you a top-level view of a stock’s liquidity, which is a must-have tool for day traders.

Charts are another great feature in Scanz. There are 14 chart types, over 100 technical indicators, and about 30 drawing tools – all displayed on crisp, real-time charts.

Read my Trade Ideas vs Scanz review for a closer look at how these 2 platforms stack up against each other.

Scanz Pre Market Data

Scanz starts streaming live premarket data at 4:00 am EST, which gives you 5 1/2 hours preparation time before the market opens.

Scanz Pre Market Scan

Below is an example of a very simple premarket gap screen using the Scanz Pro Scanner. Specifically, it’s looking for high volume penny stocks that have gapped up from yesterday’s high by at least 3%.

Here is the criteria:

• Price < $5
• Price > Yesterday’s High by 3% and More
• Today’s Dollar Volume > $500,000

As you can see, this alerted me to a stock that rallied more than 300% intraday!

Pros

• User-friendly interface
• News scanner
• Extensive charting capabilities
• Level II data
• Broker integrations allow in-platform trading

Cons

• Have to purchase OTC data separately
• No pre-configured scans
• Limited to US stocks only
• No social or trading community
• No backtesting

Price

Click the link below to see what deals are currently available for Scanz.

Scanz Free Trial

Scanz offers a 14-day free trial with no strings attached. There’s no upfront fee and they don’t even ask for your card details.

Finviz Elite – The Best Value for Money Premarket Screener

Finviz Elite is a web-based financial research platform for stock traders, specializing in stock screening, backtesting, and data visualization. While this platform is by no means top of the range, you shouldn’t let that fool you, as this scanner provides great value for money.

Finviz is more than capable of performing the most common pre market scans, such as gappers, biggest % gainers, and new highs.

Of course, the cheaper price tag comes with certain limitations compared to the other 2 screeners mentioned. For example, Finviz only has around 67 fundamental and technical filters, and scan results only update every 10 seconds (as opposed to real-time).

However, it shines in plenty of other areas.

For example, Finviz has an excellent pattern recognition screener, which lets you find stocks displaying certain chart patterns, including:

• Support & resistance lines
• Channels (ascending, descending)
• Wedges (bullish, bearish)
• Triangles (ascending, descending)
• Double tops & bottoms
• Head & shoulders (bullish, bearish)

And what’s more, the charts include automated support and resistance levels, which helps you see these patterns more clearly. They also include more than 15 chart drawing tools, 19 technical indicators, and 11 chart overlays.

Another one of my favourite features in Finviz Elite is the backtester, which lets you backtest over 100 different technical screening criteria on 24 years of historical data. This includes a number of preset backtests with some impressive track records.

As well as this, Finviz has a whole host of data visualization tools, like heatmaps for stocks, futures, crypto, and currencies. This gives you a birds-eye view of the entire market in one screen, allowing you to quickly eye-ball where the value and momentum is in markets – on both and absolute and relative basis. This is great for those with a top-down trading or investing style who want to perform sector analysis.

For a deeper dive into everything Finviz has to offer, read my full Finviz review here.

Finviz Pre Market Data

While most features in Finviz are free, extended hours is not one of them. Pre market data is only available to Finviz Elite subscribers, and starts at 8:00 am EST.

This gives you 1 1/2 hours to run your premarket scans and prepare your watchlist for the day. A shorter amount of time compared to the other 2 scanners, but perhaps sufficient and worth it for the price difference.

Finviz Pre Market Gap Scan

I’m going to show one example of a premarket gap scan that alerted me to some pretty explosive intraday moves. The rules are almost identical to the previous scans above:

• Gap > 2%
• Float < 50,000,000 shares
• Trading Volume > 200,000 shares

One of the great things about Finviz is being able to display your screen results in any one of 15 templates.

One of these templates is “Charts”, which as the name suggests, lays out all of your screen results in chart format.

As you can see in the image below, this is a very efficient way of seeing individual stock price action in 1 screen, as well as where prices are currently trading in the premarket.

One important thing to remember is setting the refresh time to 10 seconds, so that you get the most up-to-date results possible.

A stock that particularly caught my eye was Arqit Quantum (ARQQ), due to the fact it was breaking out of a triangle pattern. The faded candles show where this occurred in the premarket.

As you can see, the stock rallied +33% in just over an hour after market open!

Once the market opens, I tend to make a small adjustment to the screening criteria. In particular, I add a “Change from Open” rule and set this to “Up 2%”. This only shows me stocks that are up at least 2% since the market open.

The reason I do this is because many stocks gap up in the pre market, but then fade throughout the day. Personally, I like stocks that sustain their pre market momentum after the open, which is what this rule ensures.

One of these stocks was Iveda Solutions (IVDA), due to the fact it was breaking out of a triangle pattern.

As you can see, the stock rallied +40% in the space of 4 hours!

Pros

• Great platform for fundamental & technical screening
• Technical analysis backtester with 24 years of historical data
• Insider trading information & analyst recommendations
• Extensive news coverage for individual stocks
• Data visualization tools
• Advanced, intraday charts
• Access to a company’s financial indicators & 8 years of financial statements

Cons

• Limited number of filters compared to other screeners
• Only US listed stocks and exchange traded fund (ETFs)
• No mobile app
• Free version has delayed data, ads, & basic charting features

Price

Finviz offers 3 different plans: Free, Registered, & Elite.

The first 2 of these are free and offer basic functionality, while the 3rd is a paid plan with more advanced features.

Paid members can choose either a monthly or yearly subscription, with annual subscribers enjoying an almost 40% discount compared to monthly users. However, monthly subscribers get a 30-day back money guarantee if they’re not satisfied.

Summary

So now you know what the best premarket stock screeners are.

Firstly, there’s Finviz Elite, which offers great value if you’re looking to perform basic premarket scans. It’s web-based platform is incredibly simple to use, and comes with a broad range of research tools like backtesting, financial analysis, news, analyst ratings, interactive charts, and heatmaps. Essentially, everything you need to build a well-rounded investment workflow. Just be aware that the number of screening filters is limited, and scan results only update every 10 seconds.

Next is Scanz, which is the best choice for news scanning and level II data. It starts streaming data at 4:00 am EST, which gives you hours to prepare for the day ahead. The Pro Scanner has over 100 indicators built into a “point-and-click” rule builder, providing an intuitive way to create complex scanning criteria. Along with advanced charts, level II data, in-platform trading, and news scanning features, this is a great all-in-one day trading platform.

Lastly is Trade Ideas, which takes the crown for the best overall premarket screener. With over 500 alerts and filters, 40 pre-configured scans, and a dedicated premarket “Channel”, the level of flexibility and customization is unrivaled. Moreover, its servers are located directly next to the exchanges, which delivers trading signals instantly. And that’s before you even mention AI trading, backtesting and autotrading!