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

Anyone who has spent serious time learning to scan has spent it inside thinkorswim, the desktop platform from Charles Schwab (formerly TD Ameritrade) whose Stock Hacker scanner and thinkScript language shaped how a generation of traders thinks about finding setups. We'll say this plainly, because it's true: thinkorswim was a huge inspiration for Scanr.ai. Its scriptable scanning model is one of the best anyone has built, and we set out to build on its strengths rather than reinvent them.

We build Scanr, and we wrote this with real admiration for the tool on the other side of the table. There are things thinkorswim does that Scanr can't do yet, and we say so below. If something here is wrong, email us and we'll fix it.

TL;DR

• thinkorswim is the deeply scriptable scanner everyone else measures against. Stock Hacker filters tens of thousands of stocks, options, futures and forex products on hundreds of technical, fundamental, and pattern criteria, and thinkScript lets you write your own studies and scan on them. It comes free with a funded Schwab brokerage account, real-time data included, backed by a deep community. Suits traders who want a programmable scanner welded to a full trading platform and can absorb a steep learning curve.
• Scanr.ai is the modern, broker-agnostic, AI-assisted scanner. Every preset is a composable typed filter you edit, fork, and combine; stack study modifiers (slope, correlation, crossovers, divergences) on any indicator, mix in fundamentals, generate scans from plain English, reach all of it from a public API or MCP server, and let a background system re-scan your saved scans so you can see which ones pay. No brokerage account, and there's a real free tier.

If you live inside a Schwab trading platform and want a battle-tested, scriptable scanner at no extra cost, thinkorswim is hard to beat at what it was built for. If you want a standalone, web-first scanner with plain-language scan building, an API and MCP server, scan-performance feedback, and no broker attached, try Scanr.

Feature comparison

How the scanners compare

1. A debt we're happy to acknowledge

Start here, because it frames the rest. When we sat down to design Scanr, thinkorswim's scanner was the reference we kept returning to. A scan as a composable set of conditions; filtering not on an indicator's value but on logic you define yourself; scanning treated as a power-user activity rather than a checkbox bolted onto a charting app. All of that is thinkorswim DNA, and we won't pretend otherwise.

So this isn't a teardown. thinkorswim's scanning system is one of the best ever built and Scanr stands on its shoulders. What follows is where we think a modern, broker-agnostic, AI-assisted approach adds something, and where thinkorswim still leads.

2. thinkScript custom indicators

Here's the most important place thinkorswim leads, and we want to be straight about it. thinkScript is a full scripting language inside the platform. Write your own studies, strategies, and watchlist columns, then scan on them. Stock Hacker's custom filter editor drops you into either a human-readable Condition Wizard or the raw thinkScript editor, where you express multi-period moving-average crossovers, composite oscillators, or your own volatility metric and run it across the whole universe. Around it sits an enormous community (useThinkScript, tosindicators, others) sharing thousands of ready-made studies and scans.

Scanr has no thinkScript equivalent yet. User-authored scriptable indicators sit on our roadmap and we want them badly, but they're planned rather than shipped. If your workflow depends on writing and scanning your own scripted studies, thinkorswim is the clear choice today.

What we offer instead is a different shape of customizability.

3. Modifier depth without writing code

thinkorswim's answer to "the built-ins don't cover this" is: write thinkScript. Powerful, and it asks you to become a programmer. Scanr's answer is typed modifiers you compose in the UI.

Every Scanr preset is a typed filter payload you edit, fork, and combine, run against a ~7,000-symbol universe, and refine incrementally without a page reload. Most scanners filter on an indicator's value. Scanr filters on how the indicator is behaving: put a slope on RSI to catch momentum that's picking up, correlate a stock's SMA against its sector, or layer crossovers and divergences onto any study. "14-day RSI sloping up while price diverges from the 50-day SMA" saves as one reusable filter with no code, and the same composition carries across chart patterns, supply/demand zones, relative strength, insider (Form 4) activity, short interest, and order-book microstructure.

The honest framing: thinkScript expresses more than our modifiers in absolute terms, since it's a Turing-complete language. It also demands coding, and Schwab throttles complex scripts in the scanner to protect performance. Scanr's modifiers cover a large fraction of what traders want from custom logic, with no scripting and no throttling. Different trade-off, same goal.

4. 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, ready to fork and refine. It's on the free tier too, with daily limits.

thinkorswim has no plain-language scan builder. A non-trivial scan means chaining predefined filters or writing thinkScript: a higher ceiling for an expert, a much higher floor for everyone else. To go from a sentence to a scan in seconds, Scanr is the one that does it today.

5. Knowing which scans work

Most scanners end at the list of matches, thinkorswim among them. Scanr's scan-performance system re-runs your saved scans in the background and tracks what the symbols they surface do next, so each scan accumulates a win rate, edge analytics, and a per-ticker breakdown.

That turns a hunch into a number. The scan you'd have named your best idea may be trailing a throwaway you forgot you saved, and you find that out without re-running anything.

thinkorswim gives you OnDemand replay and backtesting of scripted strategies on historical data, both useful. What it doesn't give you is an always-on feedback loop on your own saved scans.

6. Fundamentals in scans

Both platforms bring fundamentals into a scan, and they're closer here than people assume. Stock Hacker exposes fundamental, technical, and options-related fields, and you can layer them with study filters.

Scanr leans on composability: a fundamental condition ("free cash flow yield > 5% and net debt/EBITDA < 2") sits in the same payload as technical and behavioral conditions, alongside relative strength, insider activity, short interest, and order-book signals. Both are capable. We push harder on combining fundamentals with behavioral and microstructure signals inside one filter.

7. Charts and platform scope

The two tools differ most in philosophy here, and it isn't a fair fight because they aren't trying to be the same thing. thinkorswim is a full trading platform: charts, the Analyze tab, an Active Trader ladder, options chains, order execution, multi-monitor layouts and the scanner all live in one configurable desktop application, with web and mobile counterparts. If you want everything in one place and you trade through Schwab, that integration is a real strength.

Scanr takes a narrower stance: a scanner's job is to scan. Our charts cover multi-timeframe analysis, indicator stacking, and fundamental events (earnings beats, guidance changes, insider activity) annotated on the time axis. Enough to make a decision, well short of a trading cockpit. We're broker-agnostic by design: Scanr places no trades and needs no account anywhere. For one application that scans, charts, analyzes and executes, thinkorswim is more complete. For a sharp standalone scanner that drops into whatever broker and tools you already use, that's us.

8. API, MCP, and automation

Here Scanr does something thinkorswim doesn't. Scanr has a public REST API with auth keys and an MCP server: any scan you can build in the UI also runs from your own code, or from inside an AI client like Claude or Cursor. A daily cron job that pings you when a setup fires across the Russell 2000 is a few lines against the Scanr API.

thinkorswim's automation story runs elsewhere. Schwab publishes a Trader API (successor to the TD Ameritrade API) built for trade execution, market data, and account management, not for building and running scans. The scanner stays inside the thinkorswim application, with no scan API and no MCP server. For traders who build their own dashboards or LLM-driven research, that difference tends to settle the decision. Rate limits, tiers, and the full list of MCP tools are on the Scanr API pricing page.

9. Pricing, and why the table doesn't compare dollars

We left a dollar-for-dollar row out of the table on purpose, because the two products don't sell the same thing. thinkorswim's scanner is free with a funded Charles Schwab brokerage account. No standalone subscription exists; the scanner, the charts, real-time data and the rest come with being a Schwab client. Schwab sets no minimum funding to open the account, but you do have to be inside their brokerage to use any of it.

Scanr is a standalone subscription with a free tier (real-time scans, a decent allowance of saved presets, daily AI-generated scans) and paid plans from $39.99/mo. No brokerage account, no funding, no broker relationship. So the question isn't "$39.99 versus free." It's whether you already bank with Schwab and live in their platform, in which case their scanner costs you nothing extra, or whether you want a broker-agnostic scanner you can start using without opening an account anywhere. Both of us move prices; check Scanr pricing for today's numbers.

10. Who each one is for

Pick thinkorswim if:

• You have (or want) a Charles Schwab brokerage account and a powerful scanner bundled in at no extra cost.
• You want to write your own studies in thinkScript and scan on them, with a huge community of shared scripts behind you.
• You want one application that scans, charts, analyzes and executes across equities, options, futures, and forex.
• You'll trade a steep learning curve for depth, and you want mature native desktop, web, and mobile apps.

Pick Scanr if:

• You want a standalone, broker-agnostic scanner with no brokerage account and no funding required.
• You want the deepest no-code filter logic: slope, correlation, crossovers and divergences stacked on any indicator.
• You want to generate scans from plain-English prompts.
• You want a system that tells you which of your saved scans pay.
• You want a public API and MCP server so your scans show up in your own tools, scripts, or AI clients.
• You want a free tier and paid plans from $39.99/mo, and you don't yet need thinkScript-style custom indicators (on our roadmap, not in the product today).

Final word

We'd be embarrassed to claim a win over a tool we admire this much. thinkorswim is a power-user landmark: a scriptable scanner welded to a full trading platform, free with a Schwab account, and rightly loved. Scanr is a younger, narrower, broker-agnostic take on the same idea. Compose any scan without code, generate one from a sentence, find out which of your scans work, and reach all of it from an API or MCP server.

Tell us what your workflow looks like and we'll tell you whether Scanr fits it. If thinkorswim is the better call for you, we'll say so. You can run your first scan without a credit card.