What’s the best stock screener? It all depends what you’re looking for. There are numerous free online stock-screening tools available. We’ll cover a few of the highlights below:

Best Stock Screener Criteria

Let’s start with the best stock screener criteria (in our opinion). For us that means technical screening criteria, along with a free intraday stock chart. We’re technically-oriented when it comes to stocks, basing things solely on price and volume action in the charts, along with other technical criteria such as RS (Relative Strength) rank, EPS (earnings per share) rank, and the cumulative Accumulation Distribution (A/D) percentage.

The Gigascanner is a free online technical stock screener that can screen for these attributes, and many others. On the surface it’s essentially a free CANSLIM stock screener (CANSLIM is an investment methodology created by legendary investor William J. O’Neil, popularized by his famous book, How To Make Money In Stocks). But look a little deeper, and it can also show you these amazing, precision buy and sell signals. This is probably the most important feature of all. The Gigascanner signals were inspired by the volume-related work of William O’Neil but are based on independent research. They work on daily price bars, often catching the exact high or low of a run.

Use the Gigacanner to scan for the usual auspicious technical setups like Up On Big Volume, or a Moving Average Crossover, or you can look for our amazing market-timing signals mentioned above. You can filter the results for EPS rank, RS rank, price range, and average volume, and the results can be sorted by key criteria such as the price percentage change, the volume surge above average, percent of 52-week high, the Accumulation-Distribution percentage, the market cap, the dividend yield, and more.

To top it all off, you see the results of the stock screen as a list sorted list of gorgeous, annotated stock charts. You can see the hottest stocks in the market, and flip through the charts at the touch of a button. For added deluxe-ness, there’s also an account upgrade available. The upgrade gives you the ability to save and track lists of stocks, in a variety of customizable workspaces.

In case the Gigascanner doesn’t do it for you (which hard to imagine actually) here are some other popular free stock screeners:

Best Free Stock Screeners

The Gigascanner — This is our hands-down favorite free stock screener, combining the uncanny market timing signals with the unique ability to flip through a sorted list of free intraday charts at the touch of a button.

Zacks Stock Screener — This is a good all-around stock screener. Free fundamental data is available in addition to a range of technical screens.

Bigcharts Stock Screener — A simple tabular presentation, with a range of preset stock screens.

Market Watch Stock Screener  - Another good stock screener with a range of fundamental and technical parameters.