Zacks Premium Review – Are the Paid Stock Research Tools Worth It?

Zacks Premium is the flagship research service from Zacks Investment Research. It tracks and ranks thousands of stocks to help you find top investment ideas, plus offers helpful research tools like factor ratings, screeners, analyst reports, and more. It’s also backed by a track record of market-beating performance, making this service worth a closer look for active investors and swing traders.

In our Zacks Premium review, we’ll dive deep into this stock research service to explain how it works and help you decide if it’s right for you.

About Zacks Investment Research

Zacks Investment Research was founded in 1978 by Len Zacks, who discovered that earnings estimate revisions were a major factor influencing stock prices. Since that time, Zacks has grown into one of the largest retail-focused investment firms. It now offers a wide range of stock research and recommendation services.

Zacks Premium is the company’s flagship research platform for self-directed investors and traders. It offers detailed data on thousands of stocks along with rankings lists and tools to help you find promising ideas.

Zacks Premium Pricing

Zacks Premium is available as an annual subscription for $249/year. There’s no monthly subscription, but you can try out the service completely free for 30 days to make sure it’s a good fit for you.

Alternatively, you can purchase access to Zacks Premium as part of a bundle with Zacks’ premium investment newsletters, which include actionable recommendations from Zacks analysts and portfolios you can follow along with. Zacks Investor Collection includes Zacks Premium and 7 newsletter services for $59/month or $495/year. Zacks Ultimate includes Zacks Premium and 22 newsletter services for $299/month or $2,995/year. Both Zacks Investor Collection and Zacks Ultimate offer 30-day trials for $1.

Zacks Premium Features

Let’s dive into exactly what you get with Zacks Premium and how those tools can help you make better investing and trading decisions.

Zacks Rank Lists

Zacks Rank Lists are arguably the most important feature of Zacks Premium because they tell you exactly what stocks Zacks is rating to buy or sell.

There are 5 rank lists numbered from 1 to 5. The #1 Rank list includes stocks rated as ‘strong buy,’ while the #5 Rank list includes stocks rated as ‘strong sell.’ So right away, it’s easy to jump into #1 Rank list and see strong candidates for your portfolio. It’s broadly similar to the Top Stocks list in Seeking Alpha Premium. 

The #1 Rank list typically contains more than 200 stocks, so it’s a lot to look through. I find it’s best used as an idea generation tool rather than a recommendation tool.

But helpfully, Zacks offers a handful of sorting options and filters you can use to narrow the list. For example, you can sort #1 Rank stocks by price movement over different timeframes, dividend yield, P/E ratio, or earnings revisions, making it a lot easier to focus on stocks that suit your strategy. You can also sort stocks based on Zacks’ value, growth, and momentum scores for each stock (more on those below) or filter the list by sector. A list of additions and removals lets you track how the #1 Rank list is changing on a daily basis, too.

The #2 through #5 Rank lists lack all of these sorting tools, and I honestly don’t look at those lists very frequently. It’s mainly helpful to know which list a stock falls on when conducting research into individual names.

One thing I really like is that Zacks has tracked the performance of each of its Rank lists compared to the S&P 500 going all the way back to 1988. The #1 Rank list has delivered an annual average performance of 23.8% as of August 2026, compared to 11.5% for the S&P 500. There are a handful of years when the #1 Rank list underperformed the market, but these were all isolated years rather than multi-year streaks and the underperformance isn’t huge.

The data also shows that Zacks’ 5 Rank lists track relatively well with performance. The #2 through #5 Rank lists have delivered diminishing returns, with #2 Rank stocks outperforming the market by a narrower margin and #5 Rank stocks deeply underperforming.

Zacks Stock Research

Zacks offers in-depth research on more than 1,200 U.S. and Canadian stocks, which is another big draw for this platform. After finding a ticker you’re interested in from the #1 Rank list, you can really dig into the company’s fundamentals.

There are two primary frameworks Zacks provides to help you analyze stocks. The first is a 4-part scorecard built around earnings revisions that includes:

• Agreement: Is there agreement between up/down earnings revisions over the last 90 days?
• Magnitude: What is the consensus earnings estimate, and how has the consensus changed over the past 60 days?
• Upside: How does Zacks’ earnings estimate for the company compare to the consensus?
• Surprise: How has the reported earnings compared to consensus over the past 4 quarters?

There’s no strict 1-10 or A-F rating for each of these metrics, but Zacks does a nice job of presenting the information visually so you can glance at the scorecard and quickly get a sense of whether the company is on a strong earnings trajectory.

The second framework is around Zacks style scores, which include value, growth and momentum. Each stock gets an A-F grade for value, growth, and momentum as well as an overall A-F “VGM” score, which makes it easy to get a sense of a company’s health or performance at a glance. Zacks also displays style scores and rankings for competitors, which is a nice way to speed up peer analysis.

Other notable research you get with Zacks Premium includes access to analyst and brokerage price targets, insider transaction history, earnings call transcripts, financial statements, and detailed forward earnings estimates. The platform also provides interactive fundamental charts, which are very useful for visualizing how revenue, earnings, or valuation ratios have changed over time and relative to price.

Zacks also publishes detailed analyst reports on individual stocks on a daily basis, although these aren’t available for all 1,200 tickers the company covers.

Earnings Expected Surprise Prediction Filter

One of the more unique tools you get with Zacks Premium is the Earnings Expected Surprise Prediction (ESP) filter. This tool lists all stocks that Zacks analysts think will beat Wall Street expectations for their upcoming earnings reports, based partly on earnings estimate revisions and partly on Zacks’ proprietary research. The Earnings ESP filter tool displays the discrepancy between Zack’s earnings estimate and the consensus, plus each companies’ Zacks Rank and the previous quarter’s earnings surprise.

According to a 10-year backtest Zacks performed with a 1-week holding period, stocks with a positive ESP and a #1, #2, or #3 Rank delivered an average performance of 28.3% per year. Zacks claims the ESP filter is 70% accurate.

There’s a nice selection of filters available to make the ESP tool even more actionable. For example, you can filter stocks according to how many days away the earnings release is, the expected earnings surprise percentage, and the stock’s Zacks Rank. There’s also a separate ESP filter for stocks that Zacks analysts believe will fall short of Wall Street earnings estimates.

Zacks Premium Stock Screener

The other key feature Zacks Premium offers to help you find ideas is the stock screener. This is one of the better stock screeners I’ve tested because it combines fundamental metrics with all of Zacks’ Rank list data, ESP filters, and style scores. For example, you can screen for #1 Rank stocks with an A value score, a positive earnings surprise last quarter, and analyst upgrades.

The only thing missing from the screener is technical filters. You can screen based on price changes over various timeframes, but there’s no filter for RSI or other basic technical indicators.

Zacks Premium also comes with some very helpful pre-made screens. There are screens for undervalued #1 Rank stocks, #1 Rank stocks hitting new highs, and #1 Rank stocks with an A VGM score. If you want to customize the filters, you can easily copy any of these pre-made screens into the main stock screener.

It’s worth noting that Zacks also offers the ability to backtest any stock screener, but this requires a separate subscription to the company’s Research Wizard software.

Zacks Premium Platform Differentiators

Zacks Premium has a lot in common with other stock research services like Seeking Alpha and Stock Rover. You’ll find a lot of the same basic stock data, relatively similar screeners, and strong buy lists across these services.

That said, there are a few things that help Zacks Premium stand out. The biggest one is the Earnings ESP filter tool, which is completely unique. This is especially noteworthy for short-term traders interested in finding aggressive trade opportunities around earnings.

Zack’s style scores are also a key differentiator. These make it really easy to compare stocks within the same sector or find companies that suit your market approach. Being able to filter stocks by style score in the Zacks Premium screener is perfect for finding new, actionable trade ideas around a specific style of stock.

What Type of Trader is Zacks Premium Best for?

Zacks Premium is built first and foremost for self-directed investors, and the tools it offers reflect that audience. It works extremely well for finding medium-term investment ideas and researching them in detail.

That said, it’s not a focused stock recommendation service like the Motley Fool Stock Advisor. The #1 Rank list has hundreds of stocks to sort through and it changes daily, so you have to be willing to put in quite a bit of legwork to figure out which stocks are actually worth buying. The key advantage is that Zacks Premium gives you research on a universe of 1,200 stocks, whereas Stock Advisor limits you to a small selection of featured companies.

For traders, Zacks Premium can be a helpful idea generation and research tool, especially if you’re looking for momentum stocks or comparing tickers within an industry. It’s also a good option if you’re interested in trading around earnings thanks to the Earnings ESP filter.