INVESTING TOOLS STATISTICS & PRICING BENCHMARKS
VOL. XCIV, NO. 247
August 9, 2026
Updated August 9, 2026 · 361 tools · 121 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 361 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.
$20.83/mo
Median entry price
160 of 361 tools price comparably
$24.95/mo
All-in-one platform
17 platforms cover all four core jobs
80%
Free tier
289 of 361 tools
74%
No card needed
Verified no card; 16 unconfirmed
17%
AI features
31 tools offer AI chat
31%
Annual-only billing
Entry prices sold only as annual plans
Key Findings
- The median paid tool starts at $20.83/mo, and 84% of comparable subscriptions cost less than $50.
- 80% of tools offer a permanent free tier, though 58% of those require an account first.
- 31% of entry prices are annual-only plans advertised as a monthly rate, and that share is a floor: 53 more state no billing period at all.
- AI is a baseline, not a surcharge: 17% of tools ship it, and both medians land at $20.00/mo once plans of $100 and up are excluded.
- Only 160 of 361 tools carry a comparable base subscription; the rest are free-only, transaction-priced, one-time, or contact-led.
- Tools with $27.00/mo API access start above the $18.12/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 $83.53/mo sum of four category medians.
“Half of all paid investing tools cost between $10.00 and $39.00 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. 160 of 361 tools qualify; the other 201 price differently: permanent free access only (82), transaction-priced brokerage (41), subscription without a numeric base price (40), contact-only or contact-led (27), one-time purchase (8), no qualifying paid subscription (3).
is the median across 160 tools with verified pricing. Half fall between $10.00 and $39.00, and the average is $39.47.
A full research stack
Covering the four core research jobs with one median-priced paid tool each comes to $83.53/mo, roughly $1002 per year. Treat that as a ceiling, not a budget. 23 tools already carry all four category tags, 20 of them with a permanent free tier, and the 17 with comparable pricing start at $24.95/mo. All 17 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. 50 of the 160 entry prices are only available on an annual plan, so the cheapest advertised price costs a year upfront. That 31% is a floor: another 53 records do not state a billing period at all.
Truly monthly
53 of 160 (33%)
Pay month to month at the advertised rate.
Annual commitment
50 of 160 (31%)
A year upfront to reach the advertised rate.
Unstated or other
57 of 160 (36%)
No billing period stated, or an unusual cadence.
Grouping folds the 53 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.
What Tracks Price, and What Doesn’t
Price signals ranked by how far they move the median entry price across the same 160 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.
Only 2 of these 3 splits survive the outlier check, and both describe who a product is built for rather than what a feature costs to ship.
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 $16.63/mo.
Free tier. Points the other way: it marks a product priced for retail budgets all the way up the ladder.
AI features. Ignore this gap. The averages run the other way, $38.93 against $39.63, and once the $100-and-up plans are excluded both medians land at $20.00/mo.
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 361 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 93% 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 baseline feature, not a surcharge. 17% of tools ship AI research features and 9% include a chat assistant. The headline medians differ, $24.92 against $20.83, but the averages are almost identical and both sides land at $20.00/mo once institutional plans are excluded.
Almost everything lives in the browser. 97% of tools run on the web, while 39% ship mobile, 34% ship an API, 11% ship desktop.
Methodology
DatasetFind My Moat maintains a catalogue of 361 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. 160 of 361 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 53 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 16 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 August 9, 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.
Found a number worth quoting? Cite it with a link and help other investors find the data.
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.