Finviz alternative — sector-relative stock research

If you've spent any time screening US stocks, you've used Finviz. It's the default. Fast filters, a heatmap everyone recognizes, and a free tier that covers most casual use cases. Tessera Alpha is a different kind of tool: less about filtering a universe and more about scoring one, backtesting rules against it, and managing the resulting portfolio through changing market regimes.

This isn't a "Finviz is bad" post. It's a straight comparison so you can pick the right tool, or use both.

TL;DR

What each tool is best at

Finviz is a filtering and visualization engine. You point it at the US equity universe, apply a stack of absolute filters (P/E less than 15, market cap over $5B, RSI under 30, whatever), and it returns a list with inline sparklines. The heatmap is genuinely great for eyeballing what sectors are moving today. The free tier is generous by any standard, and Elite adds real-time data, better charting, email alerts, and removes ads. It covers equities, ETFs, forex, and crypto. Ten-plus years of community content means almost any question you have has been answered on a forum somewhere.

Tessera Alpha is a systematic investing platform. Instead of filtering down a list, it scores the investable universe on 24 quality factors, ranks candidates by P/E discount relative to their sector median rather than an absolute cutoff, and feeds those scores into a portfolio simulator with real rules: 7% max position size, competitive rotation when a candidate outscores a holding by >=0.20, regime-adjusted trailing stops, and exit signals. You can backtest any of this over multi-year windows with point-in-time universes and as-reported financials, which matters more than people realize — most "backtests" you see online are contaminated by survivorship and look-ahead bias.

When Finviz wins

• Day-trading watchlists. If your holding period is hours, Finviz's real-time filters and charts are closer to what you need.
• Quick visual market overview. Nothing beats the heatmap for a morning glance at what's green and red.
• Simple absolute filters. "Show me profitable small caps with P/E under 12" is one click. Tessera can express this, but it's overkill if that's really all you need.
• Free-tier users. Finviz's free screener is more capable than most paid tools from ten years ago.
• Forex, crypto, broader asset coverage. Tessera is US equities only. If you trade across asset classes, Finviz has you covered.
• Real-time native charts. Tessera integrates charts; Finviz draws them itself and does it well.

When Tessera wins

• Multi-week or swing-trade horizons. Anything where the question is "is this a good position to hold through the next rebalance" rather than "is this moving right now."
• You actually want to backtest your rules. Finviz Elite has a light backtester bolted onto the screener — it's useful, but it's not portfolio-level. Tessera's backtester is the product: point-in-time universe discovery, full rotation logic, trailing stops, benchmark comparison.
• Quality and valuation in one score. Finviz filters are AND/OR gates. Tessera combines quality scoring with sector-relative valuation so you don't have to choose between "cheap junk" and "expensive quality" — the score weights both.
• Regime awareness. Tessera detects 5 market regimes from breadth (CRISIS, BEAR, NEUTRAL, BULL, STRONG_BULL) and adjusts exposure accordingly. Finviz shows you the market; Tessera responds to it.
• Honest backtests. Point-in-time universe, as-reported financials, no survivorship cherry-picking. This is table stakes for systematic work and it's surprisingly rare.

Pricing comparison

Finviz is straightforward: free tier with most basics, Elite at roughly $39.50/month or $299/year (check their site — the annual rate is the one that matters if you're going to stay). Elite pays for itself quickly if you rely on real-time data or alerts.

Tessera runs a tiered model — a free tier for exploring the platform and paid tiers that unlock backtesting, signals, and the full portfolio simulator. See the /pricing page for current numbers; we won't quote them here because they change, and a stale blog post quoting stale prices is worse than no post. As with Finviz, comparing monthly to annual plans matters: annual commitments are meaningfully cheaper per month on both platforms.

Feature-by-feature breakdown

When you'd use both

Honestly, plenty of people will. A reasonable workflow:

• Finviz in the morning for the heatmap, intraday watchlists, and quick "what's moving" scans.
• Tessera on the weekend for the weekly rebalance: run the screener, check scores, inspect signal changes, look at the regime, paper-trade or execute.

They don't overlap much once you use them this way. Finviz is the market monitor; Tessera is the strategy engine.

Honest caveats

• Tessera is newer and has a smaller userbase than Finviz. If community and existing tutorial content matter to you, Finviz has a decade-plus head start.
• Finviz covers more asset classes. Tessera is deliberately narrow — US equities, done carefully — and that won't change soon.
• Neither tool is a brokerage. You still need a broker to execute, and paper-trading results are paper.
• Backtest results, even honest ones, are not guarantees. Tessera surfaces biases rather than hiding them, but the future still doesn't owe the past anything.

Related reading

• Tessera vs Koyfin
• Tessera vs Seeking Alpha
• Methodology: why sector-relative beats absolute P/E