Options flow on a budget: the best tools under $50 a month

Dedicated options flow platforms are not cheap. FlowAlgo lists $149 a month, Cheddar Flow $85 to $99, InsiderFinance $75 and OptionStrat's Live Flow plan $99.99. If you trade part-time, or just want to know when big money shows up in stocks you own, that is a lot to pay for a screen you check twice a day.

So we looked only at what you can get for under $50 a month, including free tiers and annual-billing prices, and at what each cheap tier really shows: real-time or delayed, complete or capped, and whether it tells you when something happens or waits for you to look. Disclosure: OptionsBell is our product, so it is listed first. All other prices come from the vendors' own pricing pages and can change.

The short list

1. OptionsBell - $24.99 for alerts that come to you

OptionsBell is built as an email product rather than a dashboard. You set up to 10 alerts, each watching as many as 150 tickers, with the filters that matter to you: calls or puts, minimum premium, Vol/OI ratio, implied volatility, days to expiration, volume and open interest. The tape refreshes every 5 minutes during market hours, and when a contract on one of your tickers clears your filters, the contracts land in your inbox.

• Price: $24.99/mo, one plan, cancel anytime, 14-day refund window. There is no free tier.
• Included: email alerts, the REST API (2,000 requests a day) and the MCP server for Claude, Cursor and other assistants.
• Free preview: the live options flow page shows the day's unusual prints without an account.
• Trade-off: no charting and no community chat. It tells you when something happens on your names; it does not replace a trading terminal.

2. Barchart Premier - the cheapest full unusual activity screener

Barchart's Unusual Options Activity screener is free to open, but free visitors only see the first 50 rows of a list that regularly runs into the thousands. Premier unlocks the full screener along with Barchart's Options Flow and Time and Sales views, and the screener offers morning, mid-day and end-of-day email reports.

• Price: $239.95/yr, about $20/mo, with the first 30 days free. The current pricing page shows annual billing only.
• Best for: a market-wide scan of unusual activity at the lowest paid price on this list.
• Trade-off: it is a screener first. Beyond the scheduled reports, you do the filtering for your own tickers.

3. Unusual Whales - a free tier, or Basic at $42 a month billed yearly

Unusual Whales has a free tier with limited, 15-minute delayed data, which is enough to learn how the platform works. The Basic plan is $50 a month, or $504 a year, which works out to $42 a month and brings it under this list's cutoff. Basic includes 25 custom alerts, delivered on the website, through the mobile app and in Discord.

• Best for: traders who want the best-known flow dashboard and are willing to commit for a year.
• Trade-off: alerts are capped at 25 on Basic (Pro, at $75/mo, removes the cap), and API access is a separate product starting at $150/mo.

4. BlackBoxStocks Options Basic - real-time flow at $47.20 billed yearly

BlackBoxStocks combines stock and options scanners with live trading rooms and a community. Options Basic includes real-time options flow; dark pool data and the live trading rooms start one tier up, on Options Plus.

• Price: $59/mo, or $566.40 a year ($47.20/mo). No trial is shown, and the pricing page states that all sales are final.
• Best for: traders who want a real-time flow scanner with a community around it.
• Trade-off: it only fits under $50 on annual billing, and you cannot get your money back if it is not for you.

5. InsiderFinance - a free, delayed look at the flow

InsiderFinance sells one all-inclusive plan at $75 a month, but its public flow page is free: it shows the 15 most recent trades, delayed by 30 minutes. That is not enough to act on, but it is a no-cost way to see what institutional-size flow looks like before paying for anything.

• Best for: learning to read flow before committing money.
• Trade-off: 15 trades, 30 minutes late, no alerts.

6. Tradytics Basic - free simple flow data

Tradytics is an AI analytics toolkit for options traders, available on the web, iOS and Android. The free Basic tier includes simple flow data and delayed analytics. The full Pro plan is $69 a month, with a $15 trial for the first 15 days.

• Best for: a free second view of flow data with some analytics on top.
• Trade-off: the useful analytics sit in Pro, above this list's cap, and paid plans are non-refundable.

7. Massive Options Starter - raw options data for $29, if you build

If you are comfortable writing a script, raw data is cheaper than a finished product. Massive, formerly Polygon.io, sells an Options Starter plan with greeks, implied volatility and snapshots on a 15-minute delay, with unlimited API calls.

• Price: $29/mo. A free Basic tier covers end-of-day data at 5 calls a minute.
• Best for: developers who want to build their own screens.
• Trade-off: no flow labels and no alerts. Deciding what counts as unusual is your job, and trade-level data starts on the $79 plan.

8. MarketData.app Starter - chains with greeks from $12 a month

MarketData.app is a straightforward chains-and-quotes API: bid and ask, volume, open interest, IV and greeks, with history. The Starter plan delivers options on a 15-minute delay; real-time data starts on the $75 Trader plan.

• Price: $30/mo, or $12/mo billed annually. A free tier gives 100 credits a day with 24-hour delayed options.
• Best for: spreadsheet and script users who want a cheap source of chains.
• Trade-off: each option symbol costs a credit, and there is no flow or unusual-activity layer.

9. ThetaData Options Value - real-time options data at $40

ThetaData is known for deep options history at retail prices. The Options Value plan is real-time, with one-minute history, greeks and IV, and unlimited requests. A free tier covers end-of-day history from mid-2023.

• Price: $40/mo. Tick-level data starts at $80.
• Best for: backtesting your own unusual-activity rules on historical data.
• Trade-off: licensed for individual personal use only, and there are no flow labels - you build the signal.

How to choose on a budget

The split is simple. If you want to be told when something unusual happens on stocks you care about, pay for alerts: OptionsBell at $24.99, or Unusual Whales Basic if you want its dashboard and can commit for a year. If you want to scan the whole market once or twice a day, Barchart Premier is the cheapest full screener. If you want to write your own rules, Massive, MarketData.app or ThetaData sell raw data for $29 to $40. And if you only want to look before you pay, the free tiers from Unusual Whales, InsiderFinance and Tradytics are a fine place to start.

For the full-price field, see our roundups of unusual options activity alert services and Unusual Whales alternatives.