Scanr vs. Scanz: which stock scanner is right for you?

Scanz has spent years as the day trader's console. A real-time scanner sits beside a news feed, a Level 2 window and a breakout ticker, and the whole thing answers one question: what is moving right now. Scanr.ai answers a different one: which names fit the setup you defined, and does that setup pay.

We build Scanr, so read this with that in mind. We've tried to be fair. Scanz does several things we don't do at all, and we say where below. If something here is wrong, email us and we'll fix it.

TL;DR

• Scanz is a session tool. Its Breakouts module streams new highs, volume spikes and block prints as they happen, its news scanner pulls 100+ wires and full SEC filings, and its Level 2 montage tracks market-maker moves. Suits the intraday momentum trader who wants the tape, the news and the scan in one window.
• Scanr.ai is a setup tool. Scans are composable filter payloads you save, fork and refine: stack slope, correlation and crossovers on any indicator, mix in fundamentals, describe a setup in plain English, then let a background system re-scan your saved scans and tell you which ones pay. Suits the swing and position trader who wants to express a precise idea and find out whether it works.

Trading the open off news and order flow? Scanz is built for that, and Scanr isn't. Building a repeatable setup you'll run for months? That's ours.

Feature comparison

How the scanners compare

1. Two different clocks

Scanz is built around the next ten minutes. Breakouts streams new highs and lows, price and volume breakouts and block prints as they cross the tape, counts how often each symbol has fired today, and pushes the busiest names to the top. Open it next to Level 2 and the news scanner and you have a cockpit for trading the session.

Scanr is built around the next few days or weeks. A scan is a definition you keep: price closing above the 50-day EMA for three sessions, free cash flow yield above 5%, net debt/EBITDA under 2, insider buying in the last quarter. The scanner runs server-side across the whole 7,000-symbol universe and returns a list you work before the open or after the close, then refines it without a page reload when you narrow a filter.

Neither clock beats the other. A momentum trader who needs to know which small-cap just printed a 300k block will get more out of Scanz in one afternoon than out of Scanr in a month. A trader building a setup they intend to run for a year will find most of what Scanz charges for sitting idle.

2. Filter depth and modifier stacking

Scanz advertises over 100 variables in its Pro Scanner, plus 70-odd preconfigured scans on top: price, volume, moving averages, MACD, Bollinger Bands, float, market cap, short data, and a set of security-type filters that let you exclude ETFs, foreign issues or bankrupt shells. As a list of conditions to pick from, that's a wide surface.

The split shows up in how you combine them. Scanz filters on what an indicator reads. Scanr filters on how it's behaving: put a slope on RSI to catch momentum that's turning up, correlate a stock's SMA against its sector, layer crossovers and divergences onto any study in the catalogue. So "14-day RSI sloping up while price diverges from the 50-day SMA" becomes one saved filter you reuse, and the same composition carries across chart patterns, supply and demand zones, relative strength, Form 4 activity and short interest.

Every preset in Scanr is a typed filter payload you can open, edit and fork. Nothing in the product is a black box you can only switch on.

3. Fundamentals in the same scan

Scanz gives you the fundamental fields a day trader reaches for: float, market cap, short interest, share count. That's the right set for the job it does. Ask it to combine a technical condition with a balance-sheet one and you run out of room.

Scanr treats financials as first-class filter material. Revenue growth, margins, free cash flow, leverage ratios and earnings surprise history sit in the same builder as the technicals, so a single scan can say "breaking out of a six-week base, relative strength above the sector, and profitable with falling debt". For a swing or position trader that combination is the scan.

4. Knowing which scans work

Most scanners end at the list of matches, and Scanz is no exception. Scanr's scan-performance system re-runs your saved scans in the background and tracks what the symbols they surfaced went on to do, so each scan builds up a win rate, edge analytics and a per-ticker breakdown.

A hunch turns into a number. The scan you'd have called your best idea may be trailing something you saved once and forgot, and you learn that without re-running anything yourself.

We're not aware of anything comparable in Scanz. It hands you the tape instead, which reports on the market rather than on your scan.

5. AI scan generation

Describe a setup to Scanr in plain English and you get back a scan you can run. "Small-caps breaking out of a multi-week base on rising relative strength with insider buying in the last quarter" comes back as an editable filter payload, and you fork and refine it instead of assembling conditions by hand. The free tier includes it, with daily limits.

Scanz doesn't advertise anything similar. You build scans there by choosing variables, which is fine once you know the variable list and slower on the day you don't.

6. News, the tape and the things Scanz does that we don't

Scanz's news scanner is better than ours, because we don't have one. It pulls over 100 sources, press-release wires, financial blogs and complete SEC filings into a filterable stream you can pin to a symbol. For anyone trading catalysts, that alone can justify the subscription.

The same goes for Level 2. Scanz ships a real montage with a proprietary market-maker activity log that tracks when a market maker changes position on the book. Scanr scans order-book microstructure through feature windows, so you can screen for it, but we give you no window to trade off. If you read the book, you want Scanz.

And Scanz runs as a desktop application on its Pro tier, with multi-monitor layouts and custom data columns. Traders who run four screens have asked us for that. We haven't built it.

7. Platform and mobile

Scanz reaches you through a browser, a desktop app on its Pro tier, and a mobile browser. There's no native mobile app, which fits how the product gets used: nobody trades a Level 2 montage from a phone.

Scanr is browser-first, and our iOS app is live on the App Store with Android on the way. The filter builder, saved scans, watchlists and push alerts all work on the phone, which suits the swing trader who wants a scan to find them during the day rather than the other way around.

8. API and automation

Scanz includes API access and automated trading hooks, on Ultra at $999/mo. If you have the volume to justify that tier, you get a genuine programmatic path plus concierge scan development.

Scanr's public API starts on our Starter plan, and we also run an MCP server, so any scan you build in the UI runs from your own code or from inside Claude or Cursor. A cron job that pings you when your setup fires across the Russell 2000 is a few lines against the Scanr API. Rate limits, tiers and the MCP tool list are on the Scanr API pricing page.

9. Pricing

Scanz publishes three tiers, month to month: Starter at $89, Pro at $199, Ultra at $999. A 7-day trial covers Starter and Pro; there's no permanent free plan and no annual discount. Starter is tight on purpose, capping you at one scan running at a time, one saved scan per type and a single 20-symbol watchlist, so the working plan for most traders is Pro.

Scanr's paid plans start at $39.99/mo, and our free tier is a real one: real-time scans, a reasonable allowance of saved presets, and daily AI-generated scans. Both of us change prices, so check Scanr pricing against theirs on the day you decide.

The gap is wide because the bill of materials is different. Scanz is paying for streaming news and Level 2 order-book data on every account. If you use both, you're getting value for it. If you don't, you're funding a feed you never open.

10. Who each one is for

Pick Scanz if:

• You trade intraday momentum and need breakouts, blocks and volume spikes the moment they print.
• News is your catalyst, and you want wires and SEC filings filtered in the same window as your scan.
• You read Level 2 and want a montage with market-maker tracking.
• You run multiple monitors and want a desktop app laid out across them.

Pick Scanr if:

• You want filter logic with depth: slope, correlation, crossovers and divergences stacked on any indicator.
• You want technicals, fundamentals, chart patterns, supply and demand zones, relative strength, insider and short-interest data in one scan.
• You want to generate scans from plain-English prompts.
• You want a system that reports which of your saved scans pay.
• You want an API or MCP integration without a $999 tier.
• You want a useful free tier and paid plans from $39.99/mo.

Final word

These two products overlap less than the word "scanner" suggests. Scanz sells you the session, and it does that with data we don't carry. Scanr sells you the setup, plus the evidence about whether your setups work. Plenty of traders should own the first. Some should own both.

Tell us what your workflow looks like and we'll tell you whether Scanr fits it. If it doesn't, we'll say so and point you elsewhere.

You can run your first scan without a credit card.