Morningstar is a popular market research firm that specializes in covering stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds. The platform has many helpful tools for investors, including portfolio analysis features and easy-to-interpret fund ratings. However, Morningstar’s focus on long-term value stocks isn’t ideal for every type of investor.
If you’re looking for Morningstar alternatives, this guide is for you. We’ll highlight five of the best stock research alternatives to Morningstar and explain what types of investors each is best for.
- Best for Expert Analysis – Seeking Alpha
- Best for Stock Picks – Motley Fool
- Best for Stock Ratings – Zacks
- Best for Basic Stock Analysis – Yahoo Finance
- Best for In-depth Stock Research – Stock Rover
Best Morningstar Alternatives
Let’s take a closer look at the best Morningstar alternatives and what makes them stand out.
Best for Expert Analysis – Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha is a powerful stock analysis platform designed for advanced investors. It offers a huge range of self-directed research tools, including detailed valuation metrics that you won’t find anywhere else. An especially nice aspect of Seeking Alpha is that many metrics are accompanied by A-F grades, making it easy to compare stocks against their industry peers.
Seeking Alpha also has a community of expert contributors, who write op-ed articles making the bull or bear case for a stock. These articles are very helpful because they offer different—and sometimes competing—perspectives on a company. So, you can take in multiple viewpoints before deciding whether to buy a stock or not.
The platform ties all of its research together with a top stocks list, which has 30-40 top-rated stock ideas. The list turns over every few weeks and provides an excellent starting point for your research. There’s also a top ETF list for fund investors.
Key Features
- Tons of valuation metrics with peer comparison
- Op-ed articles written by professional analysts
- Stock scanner with dozens of fundamental filters
- Top stock and ETF ideas lists
Pricing: $239 per year
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Best for Stock Picks – The Motley Fool
The Motley Fool offers several stock picking services with ready-to-buy stock recommendations. The company’s flagship service, Stock Advisor, has beaten the S&P 500 672% to 154% from its inception in 2002 to April 2024.
With Stock Advisor, you get two new stock picks each month. The picks are accompanied by short research reports, and you can buy them without worrying about entry points. Motley Fool is designed for long-term growth investors, and the expectation is that you’ll hold recommended stocks in your portfolio for at least five years.
Motley Fool has many other services. In addition to Stock Advisor. Notable alternatives include Real Estate Winners, which focuses on REITs, and Rule Your Retirement, which focuses on dividend stocks.
Key Features
- Multiple stock picking services
- Two new stock picks per month
- Long-term growth strategy with minimum horizon of five years
- Outperformed the S&P 500 more than four-to-one since inception
Pricing: $199 per year for Stock Advisor
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Best for Stock Ratings – Zacks
Zacks Investment Research is a stock research service that stands out for its stock ratings. The platform tracks thousands of stocks and leans on professional analysts to rate them on a 1-5 scale, with 1 indicating a Strong Buy rating and 5 indicating a Strong Sell rating. You can quickly find investment opportunities with Zacks #1 Rank List, which includes dozens of stocks that the firm’s analysts think are worth buying right now.
You can dig deeper into the #1 Rank List stocks with Zacks’ in-depth stock research. This includes research reports written by analysts, detailed estimates of earnings and earnings surprises, and A-F ratings for a stock’s value, growth, and momentum.
Zacks includes a stock screener where you can filter stocks based on overall scores, value, growth, and momentum ratings, or dozens of fundamental and earnings metrics. There are also ETF and mutual fund screeners, although Zacks doesn’t offer much analysis for funds.
Key Features
- Ranks thousands of stocks on 1-5 scale
- A-F scores for value, growth, and momentum
- Research reports from professional stock analysts
- Stock, ETF, and mutual fund screeners
Pricing: $249 per year
Best for Basic Stock Analysis – Yahoo Finance
Yahoo Finance is a free research tool that’s great for gathering basic information about stocks. You can find detailed financial data for any company, plus view analyst price targets and earning estimates. Yahoo Finance also offers insights into what percentage of a company’s shares are held by insiders and institutions.
You can upgrade to Yahoo Finance Plus to get fair value analysis, portfolio analysis, and daily trade ideas. Plus Essential accounts also include Morningstar research reports, so you can still see what Morningstar analysts think about a company without a Morningstar Premium subscription.
While Yahoo Finance can be effective for researching stocks, the platform doesn’t offer in-depth fundamental or valuation analysis like the other Morningstar alternatives we’ve covered. It’s best-suited for building watchlists or generating investment ideas with a basic stock screen.
Key Features
- Free for basic stock research
- Plus includes fair value analysis and Morningstar research reports
- Stock screener with fundamental and performance filters
- Watchlists with price alerts
Pricing: Free; Plus from $250 per year
Best for In-depth Stock Research – Stock Rover
Stock Rover is an outstanding research platform for advanced investors. It offers a wide range of analysis tools so you can find stocks that suit any custom investing strategy. Stock Rover also covers more than 4,000 ETFs and 40,000 mutual funds, making it a great alternative to Morningstar for fund research.
Stock Rover offers hundreds of financial and valuation metrics for every stock it tracks, and all of these metrics can be charted over time so you can visualize how a company has changed. You can also use all of these metrics to create custom stock screens, enabling you to quickly find stocks that suit your strategy. Stock Rover even offers fair value analysis and stock ratings to make it easier to find promising stocks.
Stock Rover also offers portfolio analysis tools, which are missing from the other Morningstar alternatives we covered. You can run correlation analysis to see how diversified your portfolio really is, plus get forecasts of your future dividend income and assistance with rebalancing your portfolio over time.
Key Features
- Comprehensive research for stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds
- 700+ fundamental, financial, and valuation metrics
- Includes fair value analysis and stock ratings
- Portfolio analysis tools including correlation analysis
Pricing: From $79.99 per year
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Which Morningstar Alternative Is Right for You?
What type of Morningstar alternative is right for you depends on your investing style and how much effort you want to put into researching stocks.
If you want to minimize the amount of work it takes to find promising stocks to invest in, you might consider a research platform like Zacks or Seeking Alpha. Both services offer lists of top-rated stocks, so you can focus on analyzing these instead of starting your research from scratch.
Another option is to use a stock picking service like Motley Fool. There’s no research required with this type of service, although you can pair stock picks with another stock analysis platform if you want to pick and choose which recommendations to buy.
More advanced investors can benefit from platforms like Stock Rover that offer comprehensive financial data and customizable stock screeners. You’ll need a well-defined investing strategy to make the most out of a service like this, but the benefit is that you can find stocks that perfectly fit your investing goals.
FAQs: Morningstar Alternatives
What is the best Morningstar alternative for fund investors?
Stock Rover is the best alternative to Morningstar for investing in ETFs and mutual funds. It offers detailed analysis of more than 4,000 ETFs and 40,000 mutual funds. Plus, Stock Rover has portfolio analysis tools that look at what’s inside your funds to ensure your portfolio is fully diversified.
What Morningstar alternatives offer fair value analysis?
Yahoo Finance Plus and Stock Rover both offer fair value analysis for stocks. Seeking Alpha and Zacks both grade stocks on their relative valuation, although they don’t offer a fair value price for the stocks they cover.
What is the best Morningstar alternative for long-term stock investors?
The best Morningstar alternatives for long-term investors are Motley Fool and Stock Rover. Motley Fool’s stock picks have an investment horizon of five years or more. Stock Rover enables you to find and research stocks that suit a long-term growth or value investing strategy.
How do other service’s stock ratings compare to Morningstar’s ratings?
Services like Seeking Alpha, Zacks, and Stock Rover all provide stock ratings similar to Morningstar. However, these ratings are based on different data. Morningstar ratings are focused on value, while Seeking Alpha’s ratings are focused on valuation. Zacks considers a combination of value, growth, and momentum, while Stock Rover’s ratings are based primarily on financial strength.
Are there any free alternatives to Morningstar?
Yahoo Finance is a free alternative to Morningstar, although you won’t get fair value analysis when using Yahoo Finance without a subscription. Morningstar also offers a lot of stock research and market analysis articles at no cost.
Should you use Morningstar over these alternatives?
Morningstar is better than many of the alternatives we covered if you primarily invest in ETFs and mutual funds. Stock Rover is the only alternative that offers similarly in-depth fund analysis tools, but it’s better-suited for advanced investors who are comfortable doing their own research into stocks and funds.
Conclusion: Morningstar Alternatives
Morningstar offers professional research into stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds, but it’s not right for every investor. Self-directed investors can find more in-depth financial research from Stock Rover and Seeking Alpha. Investors who want more guidance can get stock ratings from Zacks or stock recommendations from Motley Fool. Investors who just need basic financial data can get that data at no cost from Yahoo Finance.
