By Realtime Options ResearchUpdated
Free options screener: what free means, tool by tool
A free options screener is usually free in one of five different ways: bundled with a funded brokerage account, published free but delayed 15 to 30 minutes, freemium with the useful filters withheld, free for a fixed trial period, or genuinely free forever with a limited feature set. Barchart, Fidelity, Market Chameleon, OptionStrat, optionDash and the Cboe calculator each sit in a different one of those categories. Realtime Options is the trial kind: seven days of every dashboard on 15-minute delayed data with no card, then $25 per month. It has no permanently free public screening page.
- Meanings of free
- Broker-bundled, delayed, freemium, trial, free-forever
- Realtime Options trial
- 7 days, no card, all dashboards
- Trial data timing
- 15-minute delayed
- After the trial
- $25/month, one plan, cancel anytime
- Not offered
- A permanently free public screener page
- Snapshot date
- Checked August 2026; verify vendor pages
Five different things the word free means
Free is doing a lot of work in this category, and the five versions of it are not interchangeable. Establish which one a product means before entering an email address, because the cost usually reappears as a funded account, a data delay, a withheld filter or a renewal date.
| Kind of free | What you actually get |
|---|---|
| Broker-bundled | Strong screening inside a funded brokerage account, tied to that broker |
| Free but delayed | Full screens on data typically stale by 15 to 30 minutes |
| Freemium | A working screen with the advanced filters, history or exports withheld |
| Free trial | Everything for a fixed window, then a paid plan or the door |
| Free forever, limited | A small permanent feature set, sometimes with no account required |
The free options screeners that exist, and what each is good at
These are the products that consistently appear when people search for a free options screener, with the job each does best. Details were checked in August 2026; pricing and free-tier limits change often, so confirm on the vendor's own page before relying on any row.
Realtime Options has no affiliate arrangement with any product listed here. The list exists because naming the real answer is more useful than pretending there is only one.
| Screener | Kind of free, and what it is good at |
|---|---|
| Barchart | Free tier with options data disclosed as delayed roughly 25 to 30 minutes; broad general chain screening |
| Fidelity market scanner | Broker-bundled; strong chain filters for account holders, no market-wide flow |
| thinkorswim Option Hacker | Broker-bundled; deep custom filters inside a desktop platform |
| Market Chameleon | Freemium plus a paid tier; earnings, volatility and event-driven screens |
| Option Samurai | Time-limited trial; pre-built screens for common strategy shapes |
| optionDash | Free tier with an account; covered-call and cash-secured-put yield screening |
| OptionVisualizer | Free with a large filter set; general chain screening without a card |
| OptionStrat | Free tier described as delayed with limited feature access; strategy building and payoff diagrams |
| Cboe options calculator | Free single-contract theoretical pricing, not a screener |
| Realtime Options | 7-day no-card trial on 15-minute delayed data, then $25/month; flow, not chain screening |
What free tiers usually withhold
Free tiers are rarely crippled at the filter you first try. They are usually trimmed at the point where a screen becomes repeatable: saving it, running it on fresh data, or checking whether the same screen worked last month.
- Intraday refresh, replaced by a delay or an end-of-day snapshot.
- Implied volatility rank or percentile against the name's own history.
- An earnings-date filter that excludes expiries containing a scheduled report.
- Saved screens, exports and result history.
- Historical depth, so you cannot see what the same screen returned weeks ago.
Free screening is not the same as free flow scanning
Screening filters a snapshot of the option chain by contract attributes such as delta, days to expiry, open interest, spread width or premium yield. Flow scanning reads executed transactions as they print: size, premium, strike and where the trade occurred relative to the bid and ask. Both get called free options tools and they are not substitutes.
This page covers the screening side. The separate free options scanner page covers the flow side, including what a delayed trade feed can and cannot support. If you are trying to find contracts that match rules, you want this page. If you are trying to see what just traded, you want that one.
| Free screening | Free flow scanning |
|---|---|
| Input is a chain snapshot | Input is a stream of executed trades |
| Filters delta, DTE, IV, OI and spread | Filters premium, size, side estimate and repetition |
| Output is a candidate list | Output is a record of activity that already happened |
| Delay matters little at 30 to 45 DTE | Delay matters a great deal intraday |
Where Realtime Options sits, stated plainly
Realtime Options is not a free options screener and is not trying to be listed as one. It is a $25 per month research platform of 10 core dashboards and 8 specialist research views, with a seven-day trial that requires no card and runs on 15-minute delayed data.
It also does not do several things people expect from a screener, and that is worth knowing before the trial rather than during it.
- No chain-parameter screening by delta, days to expiry or bid-ask width.
- No implied volatility rank or percentile screening.
- No covered-call or cash-secured-put yield screening.
- No options strategy builder or payoff diagram.
- No public API, no order entry, no broker connectivity and no mobile app.
Is delayed screening data good enough?
For a screen aimed at a position 30 to 45 days out, a 15 to 30 minute delay changes very little; delta, open interest and spread width do not move meaningfully in half an hour. For same-day expiration research the same delay is disqualifying, because the contract can lose most of its remaining life inside the delay window.
That is why the honest answer to whether free is enough depends entirely on horizon. A free delayed screener is a reasonable permanent tool for a monthly-cycle workflow and a poor one for anything intraday.
Questions people ask about this
What is the best free options screener?
For general chain screening without an account, Barchart's free tier and OptionVisualizer are the usual answers, with Barchart disclosing its options data as delayed roughly 25 to 30 minutes. If you already hold a funded brokerage account, the broker's own scanner is normally stronger than any free web tool. Realtime Options is not a free screener and is not the answer here.
Is there a genuinely free options screener with no account?
A few exist with limited feature sets, including free chain screens and the Cboe options calculator for single-contract theoretical pricing. Expect delayed data, capped filters and no saved screens. Checked August 2026; free-tier terms change often.
Does Realtime Options have a free options screener?
No. There is a seven-day trial of every dashboard on 15-minute delayed data with no credit card, and Pro is $25 per month. There is no permanently free public screening page and no free real-time tier.
Can I just use my broker's built-in options screener?
Often yes. Broker scanners at Fidelity, Schwab's thinkorswim, Interactive Brokers and tastytrade are capable and cost nothing on a funded account. Their weakness is scope: they screen the chain well and rarely show market-wide executed flow, cross-ticker premium concentration or exposure context.
How much does a paid options screener cost?
Observed August 2026, the ladder runs from free tiers, through roughly $20 to $30 per month for entry paid plans, $35 to $60 for mid-tier screeners, $44 to $99 for flow-heavy platforms, and up to about $149 for the most expensive alert-led products. Realtime Options is $25 per month.
Why do free screeners not show whether volume was bought or sold?
Because no data source reports it. Exchange records show the transaction, not the initiator. Some tools estimate an aggressor side from where the trade printed relative to the bid and ask, and that estimate breaks on spread legs, rolls and hedges.
What should I test during a free trial?
Test the repeatable sequence, not one exciting result. Check whether you can go from market-wide activity to two or three tickers, whether strike and expiry context is faster than your current chain screen, and whether you can find contradicting evidence before forming a view.
Sources and further reading
Realtime Options is a data analytics and visualisation platform. It does not provide financial advice or trading recommendations, and it is not a registered investment advisor or broker-dealer. Options trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors.