VOL. XCIV, NO. 247
INVESTING TOOLS STATISTICS & PRICING BENCHMARKS
September 18, 2026
Updated September 18, 2026 · 362 tools · 120 categories
The State of Investing Tools
What stock research actually costs: pricing benchmarks, free tiers, billing commitments, and what really moves the price.
Every figure on this page is computed from the Find My Moat dataset of 362 curated stock research and investing tools; nothing is estimated or sampled. The numbers refresh as the dataset changes, so what you are reading is the current state of the market for investing software, not a snapshot from last year.
$22.00/mo
Median entry price
170 of 362 tools price comparably
$24.95/mo
All-in-one platform
16 platforms cover all four core jobs
81%
Free tier
295 of 362 tools
77%
No card needed
Verified no card; 14 unconfirmed
19%
AI features
34 tools offer AI chat
41%
Annual-only billing
Entry prices sold only as annual plans
Key Findings
- The median paid tool starts at $22.00/mo, and 82% of comparable subscriptions cost less than $50.
- 81% of tools offer a permanent free tier, though 58% of those require an account first.
- 41% of entry prices are annual-only plans advertised as a monthly rate, and that share is a floor: 40 more state no billing period at all.
- AI does not carry a consistent premium: 19% of tools ship it, medians sit at $24.92 vs $22.00, and the averages run the other way.
- Only 170 of 362 tools carry a comparable base subscription; the rest are free-only, transaction-priced, one-time, or contact-led.
- Tools with $29.00/mo API access start above the $17.99/mo median of tools without one, the largest price premium in the dataset.
- All-in-one platforms covering every core research job start at $24.95/mo, far below the $83.50/mo sum of four category medians.
“Half of all paid investing tools cost between $10.00 and $39.99 a month.”
What Paid Investing Tools Cost
Entry price is the cheapest paid base subscription for each tool, normalized to US dollars per month. Add-ons and trial-only plans are excluded. 170 of 362 tools qualify; the other 192 price differently: permanent free access only (79), transaction-priced brokerage (40), subscription without a numeric base price (38), contact-only or contact-led (28), one-time purchase (7).
is the median across 170 tools with verified pricing. Half fall between $10.00 and $39.99, and the average is $48.55.
A full research stack
Covering the four core research jobs with one median-priced paid tool each comes to $83.50/mo, roughly $1002 per year. Treat that as a ceiling, not a budget. 22 tools already carry all four category tags, 20 of them with a permanent free tier, and the 16 with comparable pricing start at $24.95/mo. All 16 of them undercut the stack sum. Category tags describe breadth, not depth, so a bundle and a specialist stack are not interchangeable.
A monthly rate is not a monthly commitment
Every figure above is normalized to a monthly rate, which is how vendors advertise annual plans. 69 of the 170 entry prices are only available on an annual plan, so the cheapest advertised price costs a year upfront. That 41% is a floor: another 40 records do not state a billing period at all.
Truly monthly
59 of 170 (35%)
Pay month to month at the advertised rate.
Annual commitment
69 of 170 (41%)
A year upfront to reach the advertised rate.
Unstated or other
42 of 170 (25%)
No billing period stated, or an unusual cadence.
Grouping folds the 40 unstated records in with other cadences, so the annual share is a floor, not a ceiling.
Price Ranges by Category
The 25th and 75th percentile columns bracket the middle half of entry prices in each category; the bar on the right plots that band with a tick at the median. Only categories with at least 15 priced tools are shown. Each category name opens its directory page, where you can filter by price and free access.
What Tracks Price, and What Doesn’t
Price signals ranked by how far they move the median entry price across the same 170 priced tools, strongest first. Bars run right when tools with the trait start dearer and left when they start cheaper, on one shared scale. Categories overlap and tags describe products rather than plans, so these are descriptive associations, not causal effects.
3 of these 3 splits keep their direction below $100. The two large ones describe who a product is built for rather than what a feature costs to ship; the AI gap is small and reverses on averages.
API access. Maps to quants, developers, and workflows that already pay for data infrastructure. Among plans under $100 it still starts at $25.00/mo against $16.84/mo.
Free tier. Points the other way: it marks a product priced for retail budgets all the way up the ladder.
AI features. Do not read this as a premium. The averages run the other way, $35.21 against $53.35, and below $100 the medians are $23.46 against $20.00, a gap of a few dollars on 45 priced tools.
Feature breadth. Never moved the price at all: counting categories measures breadth, not the depth of the data behind them.
Access, AI & Platforms
How the 362 tools are offered: what you can use without paying, how far the AI wave has spread, and where the tools run.
How access narrows
Most of this market is open before you pay anything. Four in five tools keep a permanent free tier rather than a countdown trial, and 94% of those are verified to need no card. Free is rarely frictionless, though: 58% of free tiers require an account, and every one carries at least one documented limit.
AI is a feature, not a price tier. 19% of tools ship AI research features and 9% include a chat assistant. Medians sit at $24.92 against $22.00, and $23.46 against $20.00 below $100, but the averages run the other way: $35.21 vs $53.35. Small gaps in opposite directions are not a premium.
Almost everything lives in the browser. 98% of tools run on the web, while 39% ship mobile, 35% ship an API, 11% ship desktop.
Use the benchmark
Methodology
DatasetFind My Moat maintains a catalogue of 362 investing tools: screeners, research platforms, portfolio trackers, data APIs, news services, and more. Entries are compiled through AI-assisted discovery and then reviewed, edited, and organized by hand, and every price is recorded against a cited vendor source: a pricing page, support document, or app store listing. Tools are added and updated continuously, and 100% of records were added or updated within the last 12 months. Discontinued tools are archived and excluded from all figures.
PricingFigures use the cheapest paid base subscription plan per tool, normalized to US dollars per month, with annual plans converted to monthly equivalents. Add-on plans, one-time purchases, and trial-only plans are excluded, as are tools with contact-only pricing. 170 of 362 tools meet these criteria, so the pricing figures describe that subset rather than the whole catalogue. Billing period is read from the plans that set each entry price: annual-only counts prices available exclusively on a yearly plan, and the 40 records with no stated period make that share a lower bound. Category figures are only reported for categories with at least 15 priced tools. The research stack figure sums the median entry price of the screener, financials, portfolio, and news categories; it is a ceiling for comparison, not a recommendation or a required budget.
DefinitionsA free tier means permanent free access, however limited; tools whose only free access is a time-limited trial are not counted. The no-card figure counts tools verified not to require a card, with 14 free tiers still unconfirmed. AI adoption counts tools with at least one AI research or AI chat capability in their category tags, and API access comes from the platform field. Price splits compare median entry prices between tools with and without a tag, alongside averages and a median recomputed below $100 to show whether a gap survives outliers. Feature breadth uses the Spearman rank correlation between category count and entry price. All-in-one covers tools tagged with all four research-stack categories. Free trial length uses the longest advertised trial per tool.
Updates & citationFigures recompute as the dataset changes; this page was last generated on September 18, 2026. To cite these statistics, link to this page and mention Find My Moat. For questions, corrections, or the underlying data, use the feedback button in the bottom right corner or start from the full tools directory.
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Curation & Accuracy
This directory blends AI‑assisted discovery with human curation. Entries are reviewed, edited, and organized with the goal of expanding coverage and sharpening quality over time. Your feedback helps steer improvements (because no single human can capture everything all at once).
Details change. Pricing, features, and availability may be incomplete or out of date. Treat listings as a starting point and verify on the provider’s site before making decisions. If you spot an error or a gap, send a quick note and I’ll adjust.