The best stock screener for UK investors
Five options compared on the things that actually differ: coverage, data depth, whether you get a valuation or a ranking, timing signals and price. Written by the founder of one of them, with the trade-offs stated plainly.
There isn't a single best screener
There's the one that matches how you actually invest. A quantitative investor building and backtesting screens needs something very different from someone who holds ten companies for years and wants to know what each is worth. Paying for the wrong one is the most common mistake — usually in the direction of far more data than anyone will ever use.
The five things that separate UK screeners
Coverage
How many securities, and which markets. UK-only is cheaper; global costs more, usually per region. Check whether AIM and smaller listings are included if that's where you hunt.
Depth of data
How many years of history, how many ratios, whether broker forecasts are included. More isn't automatically better — 500 ratios is only useful if you have a view on which ones matter.
Does it give you a value, or a rank?
This is the biggest structural difference. Some tools rank a company against its peers — useful, but a rank of 92 doesn't tell you what the business is worth. Others publish a fair value or intrinsic value figure in pounds, so you can see the gap against today's price. Different jobs entirely.
Timing
Whether the tool says anything about when, or only what. Some carry a full technical suite; some carry none at all. Neither is wrong — it depends whether you use charts.
News
UK investors need RNS. Check whether it's real-time or an end-of-day archive, and whether you can filter it to the announcements that actually move a price rather than reading every board change and TR-1.
The main options in 2026
Stockopedia
The most complete UK-focused service. Its StockRank system scores Quality, Value and Momentum out of 100 and has published live performance since 2013. Over 500 ratios, 350-plus screenable fields, six years of history plus three years of forecasts, a full technical suite, backtesting and pre-built guru screens across roughly 32,000 to 40,000 securities. It is the right answer for anyone who wants to build, test and iterate on screens. From about £32 a month for UK coverage, with additional regions costing more.
SharePad / ShareScope
The veteran. Unmatched depth of UK fundamental data and the most flexible filtering of the lot — you can combine almost any two measures into a condition, which the rank-based services can't do. Live RNS. Charting is professional-grade. Roughly £30 a month at the entry tier and around double that for the Pro level with Level 2 data. Steeper learning curve than anything else here.
Simply Wall St
The most approachable, and the cheapest of the paid options. Around 150,000 companies, each presented as a visual report with a five-axis “Snowflake” and a discounted cash flow fair value. Free tier gives five company reports a month; paid tiers raise or remove that cap. No technical indicators anywhere, and its own documentation notes that ETFs don't fit the company report model.
Free screeners
The London Stock Exchange's own site, Yahoo Finance, Finviz and most broker platforms include a basic screener at no cost. They will filter on P/E, yield and market cap perfectly well. What they don't do is judge quality, estimate what a business is worth, or tell you whether the cheap thing you found is a value trap. For a beginner they're a sensible place to start before paying anyone.
Oak Growth
Mine, so read it sceptically. It's deliberately narrow: roughly 1,000 companies across nine markets, each scored on Buffett's four pillars — moat, management, economics and value — with an estimated intrinsic value in pounds, the margin of safety against today's price, and moving-average and RSI signals on the chart. Filtered RNS and SEC 8-K news, ETF and commodity views. £18 a month, one price for all markets. It does far less than Stockopedia or SharePad, on purpose.
Side by side
| Service | Coverage | Fair value? | Technicals | From /month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stockopedia | 32,000+ | Rank only | Full suite | £32 (UK) |
| SharePad | UK, US, EU | No | Full suite | ~£30 |
| Simply Wall St | ~150,000 | Yes (DCF) | None | ~£9 |
| Oak Growth | ~1,000 / 9 markets | Yes (DCF) | MA, RSI | £18 |
| Free tools | Varies | No | Basic | £0 |
Which one, for which investor
You build and test your own screens. Stockopedia or SharePad. Nothing else here has the field count or the backtesting, and no amount of interface polish substitutes for that.
You hold a concentrated portfolio and want to know what each business is worth. You need a fair value figure, which narrows it to Simply Wall St or Oak Growth. Simply Wall St is cheaper and covers vastly more companies; Oak Growth adds moat and management scoring, entry signals and filtered news across a much smaller universe.
You're starting out. Use a free screener and read. Learn to read a balance sheet and what return on equity tells you. A paid tool amplifies a method; it doesn't supply one.
The honest test before you pay
Take a company you already know well. Open it in the trial. Ask whether the tool told you anything you didn't already know, and whether it would have taken you an hour to work out by hand. If the answer to both is no, it doesn't matter how good the marketing was.
See what nine markets look like on one screen
Oak Growth estimates intrinsic value and margin of safety across roughly 1,000 companies in nine markets, scores each on Buffett's four pillars, and flags entry signals on the chart. £18 a month.
Explore Oak GrowthCommon questions
What is the best stock screener in the UK?
There is no single best one. Stockopedia and SharePad are the deepest for building and testing screens; Simply Wall St and Oak Growth are the ones that publish an estimated fair value per company; free screeners from brokers and the LSE handle basic filtering. The right choice depends on whether you screen quantitatively or value businesses individually.
Is a paid stock screener worth it?
Only if you have a method it can accelerate. A screener filters and calculates faster than you can, but it can't decide what matters. If you can't yet say which three measures would make you reject a company, a free screener plus some reading will serve you better than a subscription.
Which UK screeners include RNS announcements?
SharePad and ShareScope carry live RNS. Stockopedia includes RNS on an end-of-day archive basis, published in the evening, because real-time exchange licensing is expensive. Oak Growth filters RNS and SEC 8-K announcements down to the ones likely to move a price. Check the timing basis before relying on any of them for news.
Can I screen for undervalued shares for free?
You can filter for low P/E or high yield free of charge on most broker platforms. What free tools generally don't do is estimate intrinsic value or check business quality, which is what separates a genuine bargain from a share that is cheap because the business is deteriorating.
Also see: Stockopedia alternatives → · Simply Wall St alternatives → · How to find value stocks →
Also see: Best stock market apps UK →