Active investors need a reliable source of data and analysis to conduct stock research. Two leading services for self-directed investors are Seeking Alpha and Yahoo Finance, both of which provide in-depth data on stocks, ETFs, and more. Both platforms offer plenty of tools for free, but they also offer premium plans with access to more research and stock recommendations.
In this Seeking Alpha vs. Yahoo Finance comparison, we'll take a closer look at these two services to help you decide which is better for your search.
About Alpha and Yahoo Funding Search
Seeking Alpha is an online investing community founded in 2004 that now has over 20 million active users. It focuses on stocks and ETFs and provides access to highly detailed fundamental research and checks. Seeking Alpha is perhaps best known for its research articles, which are contributed by thousands of financial professionals including analysts and fund managers.
Yahoo Finance was launched in 1997, making it one of the oldest online hubs for stock research. The platform has more than 90 million monthly users in the US alone and is known for the free data it offers on stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, and bonds.
Seeking Alpha Funding vs Yahoo: Similarities
The free plans at Seeking Alpha and Yahoo Finance have a lot in common. Both provide access to detailed fundamental research and financial data for thousands of stocks. You can pull up balance sheets, view Wall Street analyst ratings, and read short news articles related to each stock.
You can also create custom watchlists to monitor your favorite stocks with a free account on either platform.
Seeking Alpha Funding vs. Yahoo: Stock Research
While both Seeking Alpha and Yahoo Finance offer stock research, the depth of that research varies between the two sites. Most of the data offered by Yahoo Finance is available with a free account. On the other hand, most of the data offered by Seeking Alpha requires a paid subscription.
Seeking Alpha digs deep into each stock and provides actionable analysis. The platform offers nearly 20 rating metrics, for example, and ranks each company on each AF scale based on how it compares to its peers. There are nearly as many metrics—each with their own AF ratings—for growth, momentum, and profitability.
In contrast, Yahoo Finance offers a few common financial metrics like price-to-earnings and price-to-sales. There is no analysis or reviews similar to those found on Seeking Alpha. However, Yahoo Finance offers fair value analysis (with a Plus subscription), which Seeking Alpha does not include.
Both platforms rate stocks to help investors quickly identify good investments. But they do it in very different ways.
Seeking Alpha uses a quantitative model that ranks stocks on a scale of 1 to 5, with factor ratings for value, growth, and momentum. It also provides another rating from 1 to 5 based on what Seeking Alpha analysts think about the stock.
Yahoo Finance provides a stock score on a scale from 0 to 100 based on analysis of fair value, earnings, innovation, employment trends and internal sentiment.
Seeking Alpha Funding vs. Yahoo: Screeners
The screening tools at Seeking Alpha and Yahoo Finance offer somewhat different levels of customizability.
Using Seeking Alpha's stock screener, you can filter stocks based on any of the available ratings or valuation, growth, profitability, and momentum metrics. You can also filter based on standard fundamental metrics or financial data metrics. Having the ability to filter based on ratings is especially great, as you can limit your search to highly rated stocks through the quantitative model or analysts on Seeking Alpha.
Seeking Alpha also offers several pre-built screeners covering categories like strong buy stocks with short squeeze potential, top growth stocks, and more.
Screening for Yahoo Finance stocks is more limited. You can filter by a wide range of key metrics, but the only unique filters revolve around fair value analysis. You can filter by earnings consistency, revenue consistency, and price to fair value.
Both Seeking Alpha and Yahoo Finance offer ETF screeners, which are more similar in their filtering options. Notably, Yahoo Finance lets you search for funds based on their Morningstar Rating. Seeking Alpha does not include data from Morningstar.
Yahoo Finance has additional screening tools for mutual funds and futures. There is also a Technical Event Scanner, which provides a way to search Yahoo Finance for bullish or bearish technical patterns such as Japanese candlestick patterns or moving average crossovers.
Searching for Alpha Premium vs Yahoo Finance Plus
An Alpha Premium search is required to access stock ratings and screens, while Yahoo Finance provides most of its data for free. Let's take a closer look at what you get with paid services.
Analyst research
One of the main advantages of Seeking Alpha is that the platform provides dozens of analytical articles on each stock it covers from professional contributors. Contributors include Wall Street analysts, hedge fund managers, financial bloggers, and others. Analytical articles often show ups and downs for a stock, so they are great for looking at the same company from several different angles.
Yahoo Finance Plus provides access to detailed research reports written by analysts who track the company. These research reports only provide one point of view, but they are easy to read and usually provide a clear conclusion for the stock.
Stock recommendations
Alpha Premium subscribers looking for access to a list of top stocks. Recommendations are based on companies with high ratings from the Seeking Alpha quantitative model, its contributors, and Wall Street analysts. Investors still need to do their own research on recommendations, but this list provides a great starting point for choosing the best stocks.
Yahoo Finance Plus offers a list of investment ideas, which acts sort of like an additional screening tool. Each stock is categorized as bullish, bearish, or neutral, and you can filter through the list based on detected technical events, the idea's target price, and more. The ideas are designed to be highly actionable, but Yahoo Finance doesn't provide any details about the return of its previous ideas.
Searching for Alpha vs. Yahoo Finance: Compare prices
Find Alpha Premium costs $239 per year. You can try it free for seven days.
Yahoo Finance Plus offers a Lite plan for $250 per year that includes fair value analysis and investment ideas. The Basic plan, which costs $350 per year, adds historical data and candle pattern recognition for charts.
What is the best service?
If you're looking for a free stock research service, it's hard to beat Yahoo Finance. You get access to a lot of inventory data, inventory results, and a fairly detailed screening tool at no cost. You can also create portfolios and research ETFs, mutual funds, futures, and more.
If you're willing to pay for stock research, Seeking Alpha offers more powerful tools. Analysis articles are a major differentiator of this platform and give you multiple perspectives on a stock so you can look at it from every angle. Stock Screening is one of the best we've tested, and there are few platforms that offer such an impressive range of valuation metrics. The list of top stocks is also highly actionable.
special offer
Try Search Alpha Premium for free for 7 days.
For the money, Yahoo Finance Plus is good but doesn't offer as many unique or actionable tools as Seeking Alpha Premium.
Alternatives to searching for Alpha and Yahoo funding
Other stock research platforms to consider in addition to Seeking Alpha and Yahoo Finance include Stock Rover and Zacks Premium.
Stock Rover is somewhat similar to Seeking Alpha in that it offers in-depth financial metrics and comprehensive screening. But it also focuses more on portfolio construction and has some great portfolio analysis tools. Stock Rover pricing starts at $79.99 per year.
Zacks Premium combines financial data, stock research reports written by analysts, and a #1 ranked list to help you find investment opportunities. In some ways, it feels like a beefed-up version of Yahoo Finance Plus with more actionable tools to help you spot opportunities. Zacks Premium costs $249 per year.
Conclusion: Searching for Alpha vs. Yahoo Finance
Seeking Alpha and Yahoo Finance both offer in-depth stock data to help you research investments. Yahoo Finance offers a large number of tools for free while Seeking Alpha puts its notable features behind a paywall. So, we prefer Yahoo Finance for stock research on a budget and recommend Seeking Alpha if you're willing to pay for a subscription.
Check out our full Seeking Alpha review and our full review of Yahoo Finance Plus for more details on these two platforms.
