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

If you've spent any time looking at modern charting platforms, you've run into TrendSpider — one of the most recognizable names in automated technical analysis. It made its reputation by doing the tedious chart work for you: drawing trendlines algorithmically, plotting Fibonacci levels, flagging candlestick patterns, and stitching multiple timeframes together on a single canvas. On top of that it has grown into a genuine end-to-end automation suite — point-and-click backtesting, no-code trading bots, and broker execution via webhooks. Scanr.ai comes at the market from a narrower, sharper angle: it is a scanner first, built around composable filter logic.

This post is a head-to-head from the team that builds Scanr. We've tried to be fair: TrendSpider is a deep, polished, well-engineered platform, and there are whole categories — automated charting and strategy backtesting in particular — where it is genuinely stronger than we are, and we'll say so plainly. 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 technicals and fundamentals in one filter, 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 find out which of those ideas are working.
• TrendSpider is an automation-first charting and strategy platform. Its center of gravity is automated technical analysis — algorithmic trendlines, Fibonacci, pattern detection, Raindrop charts, multi-timeframe overlays — and a mature, point-and-click strategy backtester that feeds directly into no-code trading bots and broker execution. Best for traders who live inside a chart and want to design, test, and automate a strategy end to end.

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 own scans truly perform — try Scanr. If your process revolves around a rich automated chart and a backtested, automatable strategy — TrendSpider is hard to beat at what it's built for.

Feature comparison

How the scanners actually compare

1. Automated technical analysis — TrendSpider's moat

Let's lead with TrendSpider's biggest genuine advantage, because it's real and we won't pretend otherwise. TrendSpider was effectively the platform that popularized automated technical analysis: trendlines drawn algorithmically instead of by hand, auto-Fibonacci levels, candlestick and chart-pattern detection, and multi-timeframe overlays that drop a higher-timeframe study onto a lower-timeframe chart without juggling windows. Its proprietary Raindrop charts — which fold a VWAP-based volume profile into each period — are a genuinely distinctive way to read participation.

Scanr does detect chart patterns and supply/demand zones, and exposes them as scan conditions. But "load a chart and let the machine draw the structure for you" is TrendSpider's home turf, and it does it better than we do. If automated chart annotation is central to how you read a name, TrendSpider wins this category outright.

2. Scan flexibility & filter depth

This is where Scanr pulls ahead. Both products screen on technicals and fundamentals — TrendSpider's Market Scanner exposes 70+ built-in scans and 160-plus fundamental fields, which is a lot — 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 the 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 — TrendSpider included — let you filter on an indicator's value or a simple crossover. 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.

TrendSpider's scanner is powerful, and its visual scripting editor is capable. But it's designed primarily to drive watchlists, alerts, and backtests — not to let you stack arbitrary behavioral modifiers on arbitrary studies. That compositional depth is Scanr's reason for existing.

3. Backtesting vs. scan-performance tracking — a real distinction

This is the comparison most likely to get muddled, so let's draw it carefully, because the two things sound similar and are not.

TrendSpider has a mature strategy backtester, and it's a real strength. You define entry/exit rules through point-and-click menus, run them against decades of historical data, and get trade-by-trade results plus summary metrics — Sharpe, Sortino, win rate, reward-to-risk, max drawdown. Those strategies feed directly into no-code trading bots that can fire alerts or route live orders to a broker via webhooks. For designing and validating a strategy, and then automating it, TrendSpider is well ahead of us. Our own backtesting and replay tooling is partial today, and we'll say so honestly.

Scanr's automated scan-performance tracking is a different thing entirely. A backtester asks: "if I had traded this hypothetical rule over the past N years, what would have happened?" Scanr asks: "the scans I actually saved — how are the tickers they surface going on to perform, forward, right now?" Scanr re-runs your saved scans in the background and tracks the real subsequent performance of what each one surfaces, building up win-rate and edge analytics per scan, with per-ticker breakdowns — automatically, without you re-running anything.

So these aren't competing answers to the same question. TrendSpider tells you how a strategy would have done historically; Scanr tells you how your live scanning workflow is doing. If you want to backtest and automate a strategy, TrendSpider is the better tool. If you want a feedback loop on which of your own saved scans is quietly carrying the others, that's Scanr.

4. AI scan generation

Both platforms have leaned into AI, and credit where it's due — TrendSpider's is real. Its scanner lets you describe a scan by text or voice and builds it for you, its Sidekick assistant can summarize charts and backtests, and its AI Strategy Lab trains models to generate signals. That's a serious investment.

Scanr's AI is pointed squarely at the scan itself. You describe a setup in plain English and get back a runnable, editable filter payload: "small-caps breaking out of a multi-week base on rising relative strength with insider buying in the last quarter" becomes a real Scanr scan you can run, fork, and refine — and it's available even on the free tier (with daily limits). The difference is less about whether AI exists and more about what it produces: Scanr's output is a transparent, typed filter you fully control and can stack modifiers onto, not a black box. Both are strong here; pick based on whether you want the AI embedded in a charting/automation suite or focused on composable scans.

5. Charts

TrendSpider's charting is a core strength and the thing many people buy it for. Beyond the automated trendlines and Fibonacci, you get Raindrop charts, a large indicator library, multi-timeframe overlays, Smart Checklists that grade a setup green/red on load, Dynamic Price Alerts that attach to lines and indicators, and recently real-time options data via OPRA woven through the charts. For a chart-centric workflow across many asset classes, it's deep and polished.

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, TrendSpider 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, not a limitation.

6. Data breadth: alt-data Scanr scans that TrendSpider doesn't

Scanr scans on signals that most charting platforms — TrendSpider included — don't surface as first-class filter conditions. Insider (Form 4) activity and short interest are scannable fields you can combine with anything else. So is Level 2 / order-book microstructure: Scanr scans order-book microstructure via feature windows, so "unusual bid-side depth building under a breakout" can be part of a filter, not just something you eyeball.

TrendSpider has real-time and historical price, fundamentals, options, and some alternative data, and you can even bring your own data via upload or API. But insider/short/order-book signals as native, composable scan conditions are a place Scanr genuinely goes further. If alt-data edges matter to your process, that gap is worth weighing.

7. Multi-asset coverage

Credit where it's due: TrendSpider is broader by asset class. It covers US equities, ETFs, options (with OPRA/CBOE data), futures (CME, ICE), forex, crypto, OTC/pink sheets, and global indices. If you trade across futures, FX, and crypto from one platform, that breadth is a real advantage, and it's something we don't match today.

Scanr's depth is concentrated on its ~7,000-symbol US equities universe (plus the fundamental, insider, short-interest, and order-book data layered on top). That focus is intentional — it's what lets us go deep on modifiers and alt-data signals — but if multi-asset coverage is a hard requirement, TrendSpider is the broader tool.

8. Maturity, ecosystem & mobile

TrendSpider is the more established product by a wide margin. It's a popular, well-reviewed platform with a large retail-trader community, hundreds of pre-built Smart Watch Lists, a developer program, broker/exchange connectivity to 30-plus venues, and mature iOS and Android apps plus a Chrome extension.

Scanr is younger and growing quickly. Our preset library and community are expanding fast, but we won't pretend they carry TrendSpider's tenure. Our iOS app is now live on the App Store (with Android on the way), though TrendSpider's iOS and Android apps are more mature today. Where we focus instead is filter depth, alt-data breadth, and giving you the tools to validate your own edge.

9. Pricing

This is a meaningful gap. TrendSpider is paid-only, with plans that (as of mid-2026) run roughly $82, $137, $183, and $321/month for Standard, Premium, Enhanced, and Advanced, with annual billing discounting the entry tier to around $52/month. There's a 14-day paid trial but no permanent free plan — you get some free public tools and 25 monthly Sidekick AI messages on paid plans, but no free tier.

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 want to do serious scanning before paying anything — or who just don't need a full charting-and-automation suite — that gap matters.

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

10. API and automation

Both platforms automate, but in different directions. TrendSpider automates execution: webhooks, no-code bots, and connections to 30-plus brokers and exchanges let a backtested strategy place live trades. You can also bring your own data in via upload or push API. What it doesn't offer is a public REST API to run your scans programmatically, or an MCP server.

Scanr automates research: a public API and an MCP server mean 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. For traders building their own dashboards or LLM-driven research workflows, that's often the deciding factor. You can see the rate limits, tiers, and the full list of MCP tools on the Scanr API pricing page.

So if you want to automate orders, TrendSpider's bots-and-webhooks model is the better fit; if you want to automate scanning and research and pull results into your own tooling, Scanr's API/MCP is the one that does that.

11. Who each one is for

Pick TrendSpider if:

• Automated technical analysis — algorithmic trendlines, Fibonacci, pattern detection, Raindrop charts, multi-timeframe overlays — is central to how you read a chart.
• You want a mature, point-and-click strategy backtester feeding no-code trading bots and live broker execution.
• You trade across multiple asset classes (equities, options, futures, FX, crypto) and want them all in one platform.
• You want mature, established iOS and Android apps and a popular product.

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, short-interest, and order-book data in a single scan.
• You want to generate scans from plain-English prompts and keep a transparent, editable filter you fully control.
• You want an automated system telling you which of your saved scans actually perform, forward, in real time.
• You want a public 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.

Final word

There is no objective winner here — these are different tools built on different philosophies. TrendSpider is an automation-and-charting platform: it draws the chart for you, lets you backtest a strategy, and then automates the trade. If that end-to-end loop is your process, little else matches its polish. Scanr is a scanning platform: compose any idea as a filter, mix technicals with fundamentals and alt-data, validate which of your scans actually work, and pull it all through an API or MCP server.

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.