Best Penny Stock Screeners: 10 Free and Paid Tools Compared

For most traders, Finviz is the best penny stock screener: it is free, its price filter lists every stock under $5 on the NYSE, Nasdaq and NYSE American (AMEX) in one click, and its paid Elite plan adds real-time data; for stocks quoted over the counter, use the OTC Markets screener. Beginners who want a ready-made list can start with Yahoo Finance's Most Active Penny Stocks preset; traders who want to exclude the tiniest companies can use Investing.com's preset, which keeps only market caps over $50 million. A penny stock screener is a filter that narrows thousands of listed stocks down to the cheap ones that also match your volume, price change or technical rules. We checked each of the ten tools below on its official page on October 30, 2026, and rechecked the prices and presets of seven of them on November 1. The list is not a ranking.

What counts as a penny stock

The common $5 line comes from the SEC rule behind the term. 17 CFR 240.3a51-1 defines a penny stock as an equity security that is not excluded, and one of the exclusions is a security with a price of five dollars or more; stocks listed on a national exchange that meet its standards are excluded too. That is why most presets below use $5 as the line. Read our guide to penny stocks for the risks, and how to find penny stocks for a step by step method.

Which screener fits which trader

You want a free screener that works now

On Finviz, set the Price filter to Under $5: the free screener returned 1,703 stocks on October 30, 2026 and 1,719 on November 1, with quotes delayed by 1 minute. The count moves with every session, because prices cross the $5 line in both directions; November 1 was a Sunday, so a single session, Friday, October 30, separates our two readings. Add a volume filter to drop the illiquid ones. Elite costs $39.50 a month, or $24.96 a month billed annually as $299.50, and adds real-time data. Yahoo Finance's preset lists stocks priced at $5 or less with the highest daily volume and a high percentage change; it matched 98 US stocks on October 30 and 66 on November 1; the list is short because a stock must also have risen 3% or more in the session. Stock-Screener.org is free too and filters price in whole dollars, with candlestick and technical filters on top.

You want to filter out the smallest companies

Investing.com's Penny Stocks preset combines a last price under $5 with a market cap above $50 million; it matched 1,196 stocks on October 30 and 1,201 on November 1, and columns such as Fair Value are reserved for its Pro+ plan. OTC Markets' screener covers stocks quoted over the counter and shows whether each one is exempt from the penny stock rules.

Each filter in that screen removes a different risk: the price line keeps the cheap stocks, the volume filter drops the ones you could not sell quickly, and the exchange filter leaves out the thinly reported over the counter names. The last step is the one no screener does for you.

You trade every morning and want one platform

Schwab clients get thinkorswim for no charge, and its Stock Hacker scans fundamental, technical and option data. StocksToTrade sells a trading platform built for active traders at $179.95 a month or $1,899.50 a year. Morningstar's old free screener address now leads to Morningstar Investor, at $34.95 a month or $249 a year, with a seven-day free trial. Zacks keeps a free screener and sells extra screens with Premium. CNBC's old screener address now leads to its CNBC PRO screener; the page we read does not state a price.

For screening beyond penny stocks, see our best stock screeners, rehearse your setups in one of our paper trading apps, compare the penny stock trading apps, or browse all our trading reviews.