Trade Ideas review: excellent at stock discovery—if that is your bottleneck.

Bottom line

Trade Ideas is strongest for active U.S. equity traders who need the market narrowed in real time. Standard already includes the core scanner/screener engine, real-time data, price alerts, paper trading, and in-app trading. Premium becomes the relevant tier when Holly AI, backtesting, smart risk tools, or automation-oriented features are part of the reason you are subscribing.

It is a weaker match when your process is primarily chart-first across global asset classes, news-terminal driven, or satisfied by lower-complexity screening.

What the platform does unusually well

Event alerts and ranked lists are separate tools

Trade Ideas distinguishes Alert Windows—which stream events in real time—from Top Lists, which continually rank symbols meeting filters. That makes it possible to build one view for “tell me when X happens” and another for “show me the strongest X right now.”

Scanner depth starts in Standard

The current Standard plan lists real-time data, customizable scans and screeners, more than 500 data points across alerts and filters, price alerts, paper trading, and in-app trading. The scanner itself is therefore not locked behind Premium.

Where Premium changes the product

Premium adds Holly AI signals, OddsMaker backtesting, smart risk levels, auto-trading features, Compare Count windows, multi-strategy windows, customizable Stock Races, and unlimited personal watchlists. The upgrade is most defensible when one of those Premium-only capabilities is part of your weekly workflow—not simply because Premium is the “complete” plan.

See Standard vs Premium in detail →

Important limitations

• Mac/browser parity: the browser version supports the scanner core but is slimmer than the Windows desktop application; Trade Ideas documents missing modules such as Market Explorer, Brokerage Plus, and external linking, plus a five-chart limit in the web version.
• Learning curve: configurable scanners are only useful if you can define and test conditions rather than chase every alert.
• Backtest limitations: Trade Ideas states OddsMaker uses one-minute candle data and does not account for slippage.
• No profit guarantee: a faster discovery engine can improve information flow without making a trading strategy profitable.

Who should buy—and who should compare