Scanr vs. MarketSurge: which stock scanner is right for you?

If you trade growth stocks, sooner or later you'll run into MarketSurge — IBD's flagship research platform and the successor to MarketSmith. It's the home of the CAN SLIM methodology and the proprietary IBD ratings that a generation of O'Neil-style traders grew up on. Scanr.ai comes at the same problem — finding the right names — from a very different angle.

This post is a head-to-head from the team that builds Scanr. We've tried to be fair: MarketSurge is a serious, battle-tested product with data and ratings you genuinely can't get anywhere else. There are traders for whom it's clearly the right call. If you find anything inaccurate, email us and we'll fix it.

TL;DR

• Scanr.ai is built around composable, deeply-configurable scans. You can stack technical study modifiers (slope, correlation, crossovers, divergences) on any indicator, mix in fundamentals, generate scans from plain-English prompts, hit everything from a public API or MCP server, and let an automated system re-scan your saved scans in the background so you can see which ones actually perform. Best for traders who want to express precise ideas as filters — and know which of those ideas are working.
• MarketSurge is the institutional-grade home of CAN SLIM. Its center of gravity is IBD's proprietary 1–99 rating system (Composite, RS, EPS, SMR, Acc/Dis), curated expert lists like the IBD 50 and Growth 250, AI pattern recognition tuned to O'Neil bases, and deep integrated fundamental + technical charts. Best for dedicated CAN SLIM / O'Neil traders who want the original ratings and a proven methodology baked into every screen.

If you want the deepest, most flexible filter logic, AI-assisted scan building, an API/MCP server, a useful free tier, and feedback on which of your scans truly perform — try Scanr. If your entire process runs on IBD's proprietary ratings and the CAN SLIM framework, and you're happy to pay for it — MarketSurge is hard to beat at what it's built for.

Feature comparison

How the scanners actually compare

1. The IBD ratings — MarketSurge's moat

Let's lead with MarketSurge's biggest genuine advantage, because it's real and we won't pretend otherwise. IBD's 1–99 rating system — Composite Rating, Relative Strength Rating, EPS Rating, SMR (Sales + Margins + ROE), and Accumulation/Distribution — is proprietary, computed across roughly 18,000 stocks, and simply isn't available anywhere else. If your process is "screen for Composite ≥ 95 and RS ≥ 90," MarketSurge is the only place you can do that with the actual IBD numbers.

Scanr gives you the raw ingredients — relative strength, earnings and sales growth, margins, ROE, institutional accumulation signals — and lets you compose your own rankings from them. That's more flexible, and you're not locked to one vendor's formula. But if you specifically want O'Neil's ratings, computed O'Neil's way, MarketSurge wins this category outright.

2. CAN SLIM as a first-class citizen

MarketSurge doesn't just support CAN SLIM — it's built around it. Buying checklists, the Earnings Line, David Ryan's Ants indicator, pattern recognition tuned to O'Neil bases (cup-with-handle, flat base, double bottom), and curated lists like the IBD 50 and Growth 250 all assume you're trading the methodology. For a committed CAN SLIM trader, that cohesion is the whole point: the platform, the education, and the screens all speak the same language.

Scanr is methodology-agnostic. You can absolutely build a CAN SLIM-style scan in Scanr — high EPS growth, strong relative strength, accumulation, breakout from a base — and it'll run fast and flexibly. But you're assembling it from parts rather than dropping into a pre-built O'Neil world with coaching attached. If CAN SLIM is your religion, MarketSurge is the cathedral.

3. Scan flexibility & filter depth

This is where Scanr pulls ahead. Both products screen on fundamentals and technicals, but the moment you want something outside the built-in vocabulary, the gap opens up.

In Scanr, every preset is a typed filter payload you can edit, fork, and combine. You can mix technical conditions ("price closing above 50-day EMA for 3 sessions") with fundamental conditions ("free cash flow yield > 5% and net debt/EBITDA < 2") in the same scan, against a ~7,000-symbol universe, narrowed without page reloads.

Where Scanr really separates is modifier depth. Most scanners — MarketSurge included — let you filter on an indicator's value. Scanr lets you filter on how that indicator is behaving: apply a slope to RSI to find momentum that's accelerating, correlate a stock's SMA against its sector, or layer crossovers and divergences on top of any study.

You're not limited to "RSI(70)" — you can express "14-day RSI sloping up while price diverges from the 50-day SMA" as a single, reusable filter. That compositional logic extends across chart patterns, supply/demand zones, relative strength, insider (Form 4) activity, short interest, and even order-book microstructure.

MarketSurge's screener is powerful within the IBD worldview, and the January 2026 rebuild added 100+ indicators and studies. But it's not designed for arbitrary, composable modifier logic — it's designed to surface CAN SLIM candidates, and it does that very well.

4. Knowing which scans actually work

Most scanners — MarketSurge included — stop at "here are the matches." Scanr keeps going. Its automated scan-performance system re-runs your saved scans in the background and tracks how the symbols they surface actually go on to perform, so over time you get win-rate and edge analytics on each scan, plus per-ticker performance breakdowns.

In practice that means you stop guessing which of your setups are pulling their weight. The scan you thought was your best idea might be quietly underperforming a throwaway you forgot about — and Scanr tells you which is which, automatically, without you re-running anything.

MarketSurge gives you decades of methodology and back-tested rules of thumb, but not a built-in feedback loop on your own saved screens. If "which of my scans is actually making money?" is a question you care about, this is a meaningful differentiator.

5. AI scan generation

Scanr lets you describe a setup in plain English and get back a runnable scan. "Show me small-caps breaking out of a multi-week base on rising relative strength with insider buying in the last quarter" becomes a real, editable filter payload you can run, fork, and refine — and it's available even on the free tier (with daily limits).

MarketSurge uses AI too, but pointed at a different problem: pattern recognition — algorithmically identifying cup-with-handle and other O'Neil bases on charts. That's genuinely useful, and it's a place MarketSurge is ahead of Scanr today. What it doesn't offer is a conversational, plain-language scan builder. So if you want AI to read charts for classic bases, MarketSurge delivers; if you want AI to turn a sentence into a filter, Scanr is the one that does that.

6. Charts

MarketSurge's charts are a core strength and tightly integrated with its fundamentals — earnings and sales overlays, the Earnings Line, buy/sell signals, and the proprietary ratings all live on the same canvas. The January 2026 rebuild on Dow Jones' data infrastructure added 100+ indicators and studies (ATR, Bollinger Bands, VWAP, regression channels, and more) and customizable chart types. For a fundamentals-on-the-chart workflow, it's deep.

Scanr takes a deliberately different stance. We believe a scanner's job is to scan — to surface the right names — not to reinvent the charting wheel. Our charts are clean and focused: multi-timeframe analysis, indicator stacking, and direct annotation of fundamental events (earnings beats, guidance changes, insider activity) on the time axis — enough depth to make a decision and not so much that you drown in it. If living inside a richly-configured chart is central to your day, MarketSurge will feel more powerful. If you want to find setups fast and glance at a clean chart to confirm them, Scanr's simplicity is the point.

7. Maturity, ecosystem & education

Credit where it's due: MarketSurge is the more established product by a wide margin. It's backed by Investor's Business Daily, carries decades of CAN SLIM research, and ships with an ecosystem most tools can't match — weekly webinars, free coaching, model-book studies, and a community of O'Neil traders. The education isn't an add-on; it's part of why people pay for it.

Scanr is younger and growing quickly. Our preset library and community are expanding fast, but we won't pretend they carry the heritage of IBD's training apparatus. Our iOS app is now live on the App Store (with Android on the way), though MarketSurge's iOS and Android apps are more established — albeit ones that draw occasional stability complaints in reviews. Where we focus instead is filter depth, flexibility, and giving you the tools to validate your own edge rather than relying on a single methodology.

8. Pricing

This is a stark one. MarketSurge runs $149.95/month or $1,499/year, with a paid 6-week trial (around $49.95) and no permanent free plan. It's a premium, institutional-grade price for an institutional-grade dataset.

Scanr's paid plans start at $39.99/mo, and there's a genuinely free tier that gives you real-time scans plus a generous number of saved presets and daily AI-generated scans. For traders who can't justify ~$1,500 a year — or who just want to try serious scanning before paying anything — that gap matters.

Pricing is a moving target — see Scanr pricing for the current numbers and compare directly.

9. API and automation

This is where Scanr leans into something MarketSurge doesn't offer: a public API and an MCP server. Every scan you can build in the UI you can also run from your own code, or from inside an AI client like Claude or Cursor. Want a daily cron job that pings you when a specific setup fires across the Russell 2000? That's a few lines against the Scanr API.

MarketSurge is a closed, self-contained platform — you work inside its apps, not on top of its data. For traders building their own dashboards or LLM-driven research workflows, the API and MCP server are often the deciding factor. You can see the rate limits, tiers, and the full list of MCP tools on the Scanr API pricing page.

10. Who each one is for

Pick MarketSurge if:

• You trade CAN SLIM / O'Neil style and want the methodology baked into every screen, list, and chart.
• You rely on IBD's proprietary 1–99 ratings (Composite, RS, EPS, SMR, A/D) — the real ones, which exist nowhere else.
• You value curated expert lists (IBD 50, Growth 250) and AI pattern detection tuned to classic bases.
• You want decades of education, webinars, and coaching bundled in, and the price isn't a barrier.

Pick Scanr if:

• You want the deepest, most flexible filter logic — slope, correlation, crossovers and divergences stacked on any indicator.
• You want to combine technicals, fundamentals, chart patterns, supply/demand zones, relative strength, insider and short-interest data in a single scan.
• You want to generate scans from plain-English prompts.
• You want an automated system telling you which of your saved scans actually perform.
• You want an API or MCP integration so your scans show up in your own tools, scripts, or AI clients.
• You want a useful free tier and paid plans from $39.99/mo rather than ~$1,500/year.

Final word

There is no objective winner here — these are different tools built on different philosophies. MarketSurge is a methodology-first platform: if you've committed to CAN SLIM and IBD's ratings, nothing replicates it. Scanr is a flexibility-first platform: compose any idea, validate it, and automate it.

If you tell us what your workflow looks like, we'll honestly tell you whether Scanr is the right fit. And if it isn't, we'll point you somewhere else.

Want to try Scanr? Run your first scan — no credit card required.