Scanz Review 2024: Is This Stock Scanner Worth it?

In this Scanz review, you’re going to learn everything you need to know about this leading penny stock scanner and news feed platform.

As a trader of 10 years, I know what a good stock screener looks like – and Scanz is right up there.

But there always seems to be one lingering question about Scanz: is it worth the money?

Let’s find out…

Scanz Review Highlights

What is Scanz?

Scanz is a real-time news feed and stock scanning platform for day traders.

It lets users scan the entire US market with live prices, including penny stocks in OTC markets.

Scanz excels at finding intraday trading opportunities at speed. Breakouts, gaps, and volume spikes are easy to identify with the plethora of technical indicators at your disposal.

And what’s more, with real time news from 100 different news sources, you can be sure to have your finger on the pulse at all times. This is ideal for event-driven traders, who base decisions off of price-sensitive news like SEC filings.

Pre and post market scanning is available alongside regular exchange hour trading, which helps you plan your trades in advance. This gives Scanz users an edge over their competitors.

Read this article to learn the basics of how to use a stock screener.

Pros

• Powerful real-time stock scanning capabilities with custom filters
• Extensive news coverage
• Customizable alerts mean you never miss an opportunity
• Easy platform to navigate
• Real-time charts with extensive range of drawing tools and technical indicators
• Comes with level II data
• Includes dollar volume data
• Broker integration allows trading straight from charts

Cons

• Data limited to US stock market
• No trading community
• Have to purchase OTC data separately
• Broker integration limited to Interactive Brokers and TD Ameritrade at the moment
• No backtesting

Scanz Price

There used to be 3 different packages available for Scanz: News, Pro Scanner, and Total Package (News + Scanner).

However, Scanz has done away with this recently and now only offers the Total Package.

You can purchase this as a monthly subscription, or an annual subscription at a discounted price.

This link shows you the most up-to-date price for Scanz.

Note, that if you plan to use Scanz for penny stock trading, you need to purchase OTC data as an add-on.

Free Trial

You can also get a 14-day free trial by clicking the link below. No credit card is required for this.

Scanz Features

Easy Scanner

The Easy Scanner is useful for finding trade ideas when speed and simplicity is of the essence.

You can filter stocks according to their market or stock type, and apply a handful of basic filters such as price change, volume, and market cap.

The markets available are:

• Nasdaq
• NYSE
• AMEX
• OTC

There are also 18 different stock types, including ordinary shares, preferred shares, ETFs, convertible bonds, and warrants.

Results are displayed alongside volume and price change statistics for either today’s or yesterday’s trading day. This gives you full market transparency and a birds-eye view of the most active stocks throughout the day – in the pre-market from 4am all the way to 8pm EST in the post-market.

If you want to run simple scans, for example, to quickly find low float stocks that are up at least 5% on the day and traded at least 500,000 shares, the Easy Scanner is your bread and butter.

You can also narrow your focus to specific sectors, ETFs, or indexes, which helps you hone in on particular areas of the stock market.

The “Short View” tab displays the key metrics required for finding short squeeze stocks, such as days to cover and % of float shorted.

Sorting stocks by the short % of float column is a great way to find the next short squeeze opportunity with minimal effort.

All in all, the Easy Scanner is a great way to pinpoint heightened intraday activity across the whole US stock market in one window. This is a dream for day traders who desire fast, effortless trading prompts at their fingertips.

It is also a good starting point for beginners who aren’t quite ready for the advanced features in the Pro Scanner. My Finviz Elite review covers another screener that’s suitable for beginners.

Pro Scanner

The Pro Scanner allows you to filter stocks based on more complex rules than the Easy Scanner.

These rules are fully customizable with a combination of over 100 price, volume, technical, and fundamental indicators. As you can see below, the rule builder is incredibly intuitive and flexible.

What’s more, you can scan in the pre- and post-market between 4am and 8pm EST, so you’re ready to hit the ground running at the morning bell. In fact, Scanz features in my list of the best premarket stock screeners.

The best thing about the Pro Scanner is having scan results live-streamed to you with zero latency. Once you’ve run the scan, simply sit back and watch the results update in real-time before your eyes.

This means that you’re always first to see the stocks matching your trading criteria.

After all this, you can export your results to a CSV file for further analysis.

Having said all this, I think Scanz could improve by including some pre-configured scans. Competitors like ChartMill and TC2000 have a wide range of ready-made screens for users to dig their teeth into, which potentially make them more beginner-friendly.

However, Scanz say that more than 50 pre-configured scans are coming soon, so watch this space.

News Scanner

Ever wondered how professional traders are always first to react to new information?

It’s because they’re plugged into some live news streaming service such as Bloomberg or Reuters.

Unfortunately, these 2 options are out of most retail traders’ budgets, however the idea behind the News Scanner is similar.

And for a fraction of the cost.

In that respect, the Scanz news scanner helps level the playing field between retail traders and Wall Street.

Real-time news such as press releases, M&A deals, earnings and other market-moving events are streamed to you as and when they occur from over 100 different news sources.

And what’s more, you can filter this news according to market, stock type, news type (filings, deals), or any keyword you’re interested in.

This helps you remove the clutter and hone in on the news that matters to you.

In addition, you can have news alerts for individual stocks delivered to your email or desktop. This means that you’ll never miss another fundamental catalyst for stocks on your watch list.

Combine this with any momentum scan, and you have a powerful trading tool for event-driven day traders looking for the most volatile stocks.

The News Scanner sets Scanz apart from other stock scanning platforms like Trade Ideas, which doesn’t include this feature. Having said that, Trade Ideas offers things that Scanz doesn’t, like backtesting, AI signals, and a social community.

For a more in-depth comparison of these 2 platforms, read my Scanz vs Trade Ideas review.

SEC Filings

One of the key news filters in Scanz is SEC filings.

These are things like annual and quarterly reports, which tend to be released before the press gets hold of them.

As such, Scanz puts you one step ahead of the pack with this feature.

Breakout Scanner

The 4th and final stock scanner available in Scanz is the Breakout Scanner.

The Breakout Scanner provides a live-stream of stocks displaying abnormal price action. The kind of price action that usually indicates sustained moves in either direction.

Essentially, the breakout stock scanner helps you monitor stocks with actionable trading signals throughout the day.

I find this particularly helpful for keeping an eye on stocks in my watchlist, which I tend to setup in the pre-market.

The 4 breakout scans available are:

• New Highs
• New Lows
• Price Breakouts
• Volume Breakouts

While the breakout scanner is very easy to use, it is limited in the number of signals it produces. For example, in my TrendSpider review, I show you how to screen for stocks breaking out of different chart patterns.

New Highs

Stocks hitting new highs, by definition, have broken above a previous point of resistance. This likely means there’s a wave of new buyers ready to take a stock on its next leg higher.

The “New Highs” stock scanner gives you a live feed of stocks hitting new highs across 7 different time frames. This is a great way to identify breakout in stocks.

In the above example, I am scanning for stocks breaking above their intraday or 10 day high.

If any stock catches your eye, simply click on it to open its “Montage” window – which is something we’ll come onto later.

Essentially, the Montage window collates a stock’s chart, news, fundamentals, and level I and level II data in one window.

New Lows

The New Lows scan carries exactly the same logic as the New Highs scan, except instead of finding stocks hitting new highs, it finds stocks hitting new lows.

If you’re a short seller looking for intraday or longer-term short ideas, this is the scan for you.

Price Breakouts

Momentum traders are always looking for stocks breaking through points of support or resistance.

Why?

Well, because whenever this occurs, a new trend may have been established. And these trends can turn out to be extremely profitable.

The Price Breakout scan allows you to find these situations. Choose between any of the moving averages in the image below to scan for stocks breaking through them in real-time.

Volume Breakouts

Finding stocks breaking new highs or points of support and resistance is all well and good.

But if they don’t have the volume there to support it, the initial move may peter out quickly and give you a false signal.

Therefore, ensuring stocks have sufficient volume to support a sustained move is equally as important.

This is where the Volume Breakout scanner comes in, because it identifies all the high relative volume stocks.

Scanz Trading

Broker Integrations

Scanz includes broker integration with 2 of the most popular trading platforms: Interactive Brokers and TD Ameritrade.

And there are plenty more broker integrations coming soon according to Scanz.

This means you can seamlessly trade from the Scanz platform without any delay.

Needless to say, this is paramount for successful day trading.

Charting

Charts are one area where Scanz has seriously upped its game in recent years.

The live streaming charts display real-time stock market data along with 14 different chart styles, including:

• Candle
• Bar
• Line
• Mountain
• Renko
• Heikin Ashi
• Kagi
• Point & Figure

And 12 different time intervals, ranging from 1 minute intraday bars all the way up to 1 month bars.

Moreover, perform any technical analysis you desire with the extensive range of technical indicators and drawing tools at your disposal.

Scanz includes over 100 different technical indicators, including:

• MACD
• Bollinger Bands
• RSI
• Historical Volatility Indicator
• Aroon Oscialltor
• Stochastics

And much, much more.

Read these articles to learn how to use the MACD effectively and how to find oversold stocks with improving RSI.

In addition, there are around 30 different drawing tools and line studies, including:

• Fibonacci Retracements
• Gann Fan
• Pitchfork
• Regression Channels

While the charts in Scanz have definitely improved with recent updates, MetaStock still remains my favourite charting platform.

Scanz Montage

The “Montage” window is an all-in-one module for your decision making.

Here, you will see everything you need to know about a stock before making a trade.

• Chart
• News
• Fundamentals
• Level 1 and level 2 data

You can also trade straight from this module if you have a broker integration.

Scanz Level II Data

Scanz level 2 data gives you an in-depth look at a stock’s order book and market maker activity. Essentially, it summarizes the incoming supply and demand for a stock.

If you trade illiquid penny stocks, you’ll know that big orders cause big swings in price.

Therefore, being able to see whether a big order was just placed or removed is an invaluable tool.

It can also help you see whether there’s any market manipulation going on, as is sometimes the case with penny stocks.

Education

If you’re worried about how to use the platform or anything mentioned in this Scanz review, fear not.

The Scanz website has a broad range of educational resources to help you.

From video tutorials to blog posts, you’ll never be left hanging or at a loss for inspiration.

I recommend starting with the Scanz Platform Walkthrough to get yourself up to speed with all of the Scanz modules.

FAQs

Scanz Review Summary

In summary, Scanz is a powerful scanning and news streaming platform for day traders, who want to stay on top of market-moving news and actionable trading opportunities as and when they arise throughout the day.

Now, in answer to the question at the start of this Scanz review: is it worth the money?

I’d have to say, it depends.

Paying up for quality is a natural facet of life – and Scanz certainly delivers in the “quality” department. In fact, there are very few scanners out there like it.

But if I’m being honest, to make it a worthwhile investment, you need to be confident that you’ll make your money back through trading.

So in that sense, it’s probably more suited to experienced traders.

However, if you’re still unsure, the 14-day free trial is a great way to see whether it improves your trading results. There’s no strings attached to this, so you might as well give it a go!