Choosing and managing investments involves large amounts of information. The ability to process that information quickly and efficiently is a key part of making effective investment decisions. The best investing tools are designed to help you do that.
There is no one investing tool that’s best for everyone. Different tools are designed for different investing styles and your choice will depend heavily on your specific needs. This review should help you narrow down your options.
Technical/Fundamental Analysis Tools
Finviz
Is it free?
There is both a free and paid version.
What is it?
Finviz is a comprehensive toolbox for investors and traders with a focus on US markets. Its stock market portal offers many features from stock screeners, news feeds, portfolio management, stock charts and more.
Finviz’s mission is to provide leading financial research, analysis, and visualization to its users.
Given the amount of information available, the website is remarkably easy to use. Although it looks dated from a user interface perspective, it loads quite fast, which is great if you’re constantly trying to find information to act on.
Finviz’s stock screener is one of the most popular screeners available today. In fact, Finviz is used extensively by beginner and professional traders, including investment firms.
Read our Finviz review.
TradingView
Is it free?
There is both a free and paid version.
What is it?
TradingView is a powerful charting system for traders and investors of all experience levels. On top of that, it has a social network where people share ideas, scripts, and set up topic-based chats to discuss their views.
With a professional commercial data feed, it is possible to analyze prices, volume and historic asset prices with ease. Furthermore, company fundamentals’ data is also available, allowing us to screen through them and follow companies that match our criteria.
Read our TradingView review.
Wallmine
Is it free?
There is both a free and paid version.
What is it?
Wallmine’s goal is to help anyone gain insights and understand the abundant stock market data and information.
Their small team is fusing their financial expertise with technical talent and bringing an alternative to the expensive, inflexible and old-fashioned tools available to track your investments.
ETFdb
Is it free?
There is both a free and paid version.
What is it?
ETF Database’s goal is to be the premier source of information on ETF, proving high-quality ETF tools, content and resources.
The information you can find at EFTdb is truthful, unbiased and authoritative.
They provide daily valuable coverage of the ETF industry, they educate investors on EFT investing by mentioning the benefits, drawbacks and complexities, and they provide the resources investors need to make intelligent and informed ETF investments.
FinBox
Is it free?
There is both a free and paid version.
What is it?
Finbox is an intelligent toolbox, with a wide range of investing tools designed to help you navigate every step of the investing process:
- Find promising companies
- Research companies with ease
- Automate your spreadsheets
- Monitor for market movements.
Magic Formula Investing
Is it free?
Yes
What is it?
Magic Formula Investing’s website was built to give everyone the ability to use a free and simple stock screening tool to select Magic Formula stocks, as described in Joel Greenblatt’s book The Little Book That Beats the Market.
Personal Capital
Is it free?
Yes
What is it?
Personal Capital gives you a 360-degree view of your money. You can see all your accounts in one place, including your investments. Also, you can go deeper with their planning and analytics tools which include the following:
- Net Worth
- Budgeting
- Cash Flow
- Retirement Planner
- Fee Analyzer
- Education Planner
Stock Charts
Is it free?
There is both a free and paid version.
What is it?
StockCharts.com provides online investors with high-quality technical charts for stocks, funds and indexes from the USA, Canada, UK and India. Their website has been awarded the prestigious “Readers Choice Award for Best Technical Website” from the readers of Stocks & Commodities magazine for every year since 2002.
Optionistics
Is it free?
There is both a free and paid version.
What is it?
Optionistics offers a comprehensive set of stock screeners and options calculators. They offer screeners that scan the options market and identify preferred option trades. Screeners are available even for the most common complex option trades including covered calls, spreads, and straddles.
Lending Tools
Lendary
Is it free?
It is free to sign up. You will then pay 20% of the generated interest.
What is it?
Lendary is a software service that allows you to engage in a completely new form of investing: lending USD to crypto traders so they can use your capital to leverage their positions.
Traders are willing to pay annualized rates of more than 10% for your capital. At the same time, you don’t have to lock up your capital for long.
It might sound risky to invest your money in anything related to crypto, so how does Lendary make it less risky? In Lendary, traders can only use your capital for opening crypto positions. Those are monitored and can be force liquidated around the clock (24/7). This eliminates traditional credit default risk while still earning constant returns.
General Purpose Tools
Google Finance
Is it free?
Yes.
What is it?
With Google Finance, you can monitor the market, get free stock quotes and up-to-date financial news.
Yahoo! Finance
Is it free?
There is both a free and paid version.
What is it?
In Yahoo! Finance you can find financial news, both from their own internal team and from multiple external websites, financial data and commentary including stock quotes, press releases, financial reports and original content. It also offers online tools for personal finance management.
Their app is supported in both web and mobile (Apple and Android apps).
Portfolio Analytics Tools
DIY.Fund
Is it free?
No.
What is it?
Beyond a dashboard, DIY.FUND features a sophisticated goal engine that monitors portfolios, enabling individuals to stay on top of their investments. Other features include asset and sector allocation, rebalancing tools, and risk analysis.
Kubera
Is it free?
There is both a free and paid version.
What is it?
Kubera helps you keep track of your net worth and store important documents.
It also ensures safe transfer of this critical information to your beneficiary if something unexpected happens to you.
PortfolioVisualizer
Is it free?
There is both a free and paid version.
What is it?
Portfolio Visualizer is an online software platform for portfolio and investment analytics to help you make informed decisions when comparing and analyzing portfolios and investment products.
Their suite of quantitative tools covers portfolio modeling and backtesting, Monte Carlo simulations, portfolio optimization, factor models, and tactical asset allocation models.
SigFig
Is it free?
No.
What is it?
SigFig helps you build an intelligent, tax-efficient, diversified portfolio for a fraction of the cost of traditional advisors.. They offer lower-cost fees compared to traditional advisors and they use funds with an average expense-ratio between 0.07% and 0.15%, depending on the brokerage.
TradeStops
Is it free?
No.
What is it?
TradeStops is a web-based stock tracking and alerting program for online investment portfolios. With TradeStops, you can set alerts on certain positions, so that you will be notified when there is a change in those positions.
Their most popular alert type is the Volatility Quotient alert, that uses TradeStop’s proprietary algorithm to tune the trailing stop percentage to market volatility. You can find other alert types such as entry signals, option alerts, gain/loss alerts, and price targets.
Besides the alerting feature, they also provide useful investing tools and charts to help investors understand and manage their risk, position size of their portfolios, and make the investing experience more enjoyable.
Personal Finance Tools
CountAbout
Is it free?
No, but there is a free trial.
What is it?
CountAbout® is an easy-to-use online personal finance application. With no software to install, you can access CountAbout anywhere you have an Internet connection.
CountAbout has a large number of great features, including importing data from Quicken and Mint and automatic transaction downloading from tens of thousands of financial institutions. They recently added a “side-hustle” option where you can create and send invoices for your small business.
Bankrate
Is it free?
Yes.
What is it?
Bankrate provides many financial calculators including certificate of deposit calculator, savings calculator, investment calculator and annuity calculator.
They also publish investment articles such as the best investments for the current year, the best online brokers, detailed brokerage reviews and general investment advice.
Compound Interest Calculator
Is it free?
Yes
What is it?
With this free compound interest calculator, you can understand the impact of compound interest on your investments. You will find a chart that displays the difference between compounding interest and just saving your cash, and a pie chart that highlights the weight of the compounding interest in your overall balance.
FeeX
Is it free?
No
What is it?
FeeX provides mission critical platforms that unlock greater financial outcomes for both financial professionals and their end clients. Founded in 2012, they work with RIA’s, Broker Dealers, Custodians, and Recordkeepers including many of the largest financial institutions in the USA. Their platforms include the following:
- Held away account trading and management
- Fee Analyzer
- Rollover compliance
- Asset retention for retirement plan providers
FIRECalc
Is it free?
Yes.
What is it?
With the assets you have today, and your current expenses, can you retire and maintain the same lifestyle?
FIRECalc can tell you how much you would have needed to ensure that you wouldn’t have depleted your portfolio if the world’s financial situation got terribly bad.
Toshl Finance
Is it free?
No, but there is a free trial.
What is it?
With Toshl you can track all your cards and cash in one place. You can connect your financial accounts, or enter expenses using the quick and slick Toshl apps.
🛠 Need help budgeting, investing, or doing your taxes? You can find the right tool for each of them in our collection of the best personal finance software.
Robo-Advisor Tools
Betterment
Is it free?
Some features are free, while others are paid.
What is it?
Betterment helps you manage your money through cash management, guided investing, and retirement planning. After you answer a few questions, they will help you set financial goals and set you up with investment portfolios for each goal.
Their app is supported in both web and mobile (Apple and Android apps).
WealthFront
Is it free?
No
What is it?
WealthFront is a robo-advisor offering a competitive management fee.
At WealthFront, they believe technology can handle some things better than people. Their software executes time-tested investment strategies, automatically looking for opportunities to improve your portfolio’s performance.
Data Analysis Tools
DataRoma
Is it free?
Yes.
What is it?
An aggregator where you can track the portfolio movements of the biggest investors, among other things.
Estimize
Is it free?
Some features are free, while others are paid.
What is it?
Estimize aims at providing the most accurate and representative estimates data set available.
Estimize crowdsources earnings and economic estimates from hedge funds, brokers, independent and amateur analysts. By collecting estimates from a diverse community of individuals, they then built a highly accurate and representative data set of true market expectations.
Multpl
Is it free?
Yes.
What is it?
Multpl is a small website that provides a number of very important statistics on the World economy, the US economy, real interest rates, US treasury rates and the S&P500 index.
Some of these stats include GDP growth rates, earnings growth, dividend growth among others.
Given its simplicity, it’s a great place to find some of the most important stats needed to build and maintain a portfolio.
Portfolio Charts
Is it free?
Yes.
What is it?
Portfolio Charts explores practical worldwide index investing strategies using intuitive charts and real-world examples that look beyond the raw numbers.
Quandl
Is it free?
Some features are free, while others are paid.
What is it?
Quandl delivers financial, economic and alternative data to over 400,000 people worldwide.
Their clients include the world’s top hedge funds, asset managers and investment banks.
Quandl offers essential financial and economic data alongside a suite of unique, alpha-generating alternative datasets.
Stock Brokers
eTrade
Is it free?
No.
What is it?
E*TRADE is the pioneer of online trading for retail investors. It is a leading online financial services firm that specializes in a first-class experience for the digitally inclined investor and trader, backed by personal professional guidance. The company also has a high-tech custody platform for advisors and the industry’s number one rated stock plan administration platform.
Their app is supported in both web and mobile (Apple and Android apps).
FreeTrade
Is it free?
Some features are free, while others are paid.
What is it?
Freetrade is an award-winning, commission-free investing app.
Their mission is to get everyone investing by making it simple and commission-free, with a stockbroker you can trust.
By June 2020, Freetrade is used by 150 000 customers. To apply for a FreeTrade account, you need to be a UK resident. They are planning to expand to Europe and then to the rest of the world.
Their app is supported in both web and mobile (Apple and Android apps).
Robinhood
Is it free?
Some features are free, while others are paid.
What is it?
Robinhood offers commission-free stock, ETF, options trades, a streamlined trading platform and free cryptocurrency trading.
By June 2020, Robinhood has over 10 million users. To apply for a Robinhood account, you need to follow a few requirements, including having a legal U.S. residential address within the 50 states or Puerto Rico. They are planning to be available in the UK as well and you can register for early access.
Their app is supported in both web and mobile (Apple and Android apps).
Earnings Research Tools
BamSEC
Is it free?
Free trial and then paid.
What is it?
Transform how you work with SEC filings and earnings transcripts. Focus on what matters, save time, and do better work — no matter what other tools you have.
EarningsCast
Is it free?
Yes.
What is it?
With EarningsCast, you can follow companies, add them to a personal feed and set alerts, so you never have to hunt for a call or jump through hoops again.
Rank and Filed
Is it free?
Yes.
What is it?
SEC filings for humans. Rank and Filed gathers data from Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval (EDGAR), indexes it, and returns it in formats meant to help investors research, investigate and discover companies on their own.
Stock Research Tools
Stock Rover
Is it free?
There is both a free and paid version.
What is it?
Stock Rover is a popular stock scanner and research platform for long term investors. A lot of thought has gone into keeping the layout straightforward and easy to navigate. Stock Rover will give you a great deal of information on any stock, including 10 years of historical data and 8-page research reports.
Stock Rover will be one of the top options for investors looking for lots of data at a budget friendly price.
Guru Focus
Is it free?
There is both a free and paid version.
What is it?
GuruFocus.com believes that investors make a lot fewer mistakes investing if they select stocks from the ones that have been researched by the best investors in the world. It tracks the stock picks and portfolio changes of the best investors in the world.
MarketSmith
Is it free?
No.
What is it?
With MarketSmith, you can leave behind your old stock research routine. Instead of spending hours reading dozens of websites, newsletters and magazines, you can streamline your investing research into a single window.
Trefis
Is it free?
Free trial and then paid.
What is it?
At Trefis, at the core of each piece of content is a rigorous and deep analytical model, but what makes their research different is the Trefis Interactive Experience. It transforms those analytical models into easy-to-use, visual interactive experiences that let you drill down into the data and create your own “what-if” scenarios.
Create upside and downside alternatives, or test the analyst’s investment hypothesis against your own. Just click through the model, make changes and save scenarios right now. No delay, no more human latency, just faster, better-informed investment decisions.
Zacks
Is it free?
No.
What is it?
Zacks has a strong commitment to independent research and sharing its profitable discoveries with investors. This dedication to giving investors a trading advantage led to the creation of their proven Zacks Rank stock-rating system.
For more than a quarter-century, Zacks has more than doubled the S&P 500 with an average gain of +23.52% per year. These returns cover a period from January 1, 1988 through May 4, 2020.
